Our great privilege, as owner managers, is that we are also the architects of our social environment at work. An interview will help determine which candidates are not right, making it easier to choose the people with whom you work. Few recognise this, if only because the criterion of whether you like someone never figures higher up the list than factors such as relevant experience or the right image.
But surely it makes sense to only employ people you like and who will fit in with the rest of the team. The argument goes that the other criteria are non-essential. Does it really matter if they do not have the experience? If they are intelligent, then they will learn the necessary skills quickly enough. Good training programmes will help develop employees with the right credentials, but nothing can turn new recruits into people with whom you get on. There is little that can be done to change a destructive ego, which can wreak havoc in your midst.
Someone without the experience, who probably also comes from a different background, will approach things in a different way. They will bring skills from another arena to the one in which you work. As an accounting firm, we purposely seek out arts graduates rather than people with a so-called ‘relevant’ degree in higher maths or accounting.
That’s not just because I have a degree in fine art, but also because the clients, with whom we must bond to form valued relationships, are probably going to want to chat over a beer about something other than accounting.
We can surround ourselves with like-minded people, but the key question is whether or not a team of people who are all alike can function effectively as a business unit.
Or is it the case that the dream team requires a diversity that is only borne of opposites? For Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, the essential step in creating a truly great business involves getting ‘the right people on the bus’. The right people will all believe in what their leader has to say about life and will all have the same attitude to building a business.
Like for like
But wait a minute, is it actually the case that the people you like, are like you? Not if you are still the sort of person that seeks out or tries to buy in what it is you haven’t got. This is often the cause of most failed first marriages; the proof lies in the evidence that most people second time round realise that they are better off with someone like themselves, made in their own image, a soul mate.
So what is the essential ingredient in the dream team? What makes people exude enthusiasm at work that is so infectious, that makes light of every problem and that makes over-achievement the norm. What creates the loyalty that makes people stay at their job so that you can build up the team over the longer term? It is not the money, but moreover, a sense of belonging. How can that be achieved without a feeling of homogeneity in the team?
Make sure that the personal agenda of everyone who works for you is the same as your corporate agenda. Make sure that what is good for the company is good for everyone and make sure that your company’s agenda fits those who work in it.
Then it becomes impossible for one member of the team to profit purposely through the misfortune of another. It will become more likely that your staff will want to teach each other everything they know, rather than guarding their knowledge for their own benefit; where if one of you has a problem on the left, everyone on the right will rush across to help. It is the creation of that virtuous circle that is such a powerful dynamic in creating and maintaining exceptional performance.
How are you going to do that if you don’t like everyone who works for you?
Christopher Jenkins is senior partner of Wingrave Yeats
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