A 6 cylinder car engine is powerful enough for most transportation purposes, but is that really high performance? Not compared to the 16 cylinders of a Bugatti Veyron - the fastest street-legal production car in the world. Who is the human equivalent of that?
Most owners accept 6 cylinder employees - adequate for the job. 3 cylinders are for the body – someone who turns up, occupies the seat, covers the job description skills. The next 3 cylinders are for the mind. Mind encompasses education, experience and training – all those things that are proudly stated on resume. Yet we've often recruited someone who seemed to have the right background, experience and educational levels, and then found that they didn’t really rise to the challenge.
The missing 10 cylinders come from heart and spirit. The 5 cylinders of heart are about commitment, initiative and emotional involvement with a role. The 5 cylinders of spirit are about vision, inspiration and having a “higher purpose”. What are the implications of looking at human performance this way?
Firstly, at 10 of 16 cylinders, heart and spirit are more important than mind and body. It follows that selecting people should be more about finding the right attitude than training and experience. You can train new skills relatively easily, but it is very difficult to correct the wrong attitude. But too many employers define the necessary training and experience of desirable candidates that they narrow the field of selection unnecessarily. We tend to hire for skills and experience and fire for attitude and lack of commitment.
Secondly, while you can find people with heart and spirit if you look for it, you won’t retain those valuable qualities if you don’t respect and nurture them. People will switch off, and retain those qualities for friends and family, or they’ll just leave you. Such people need to be led, not just managed. They need to find a higher purpose at work than just turning up for the pay, whatever that might be. Some organizations find it easy to offer the higher purpose that helps people unleash all 16 cylinders – in different ways social services, religious, health care, teaching, military and social enterprises can do it. It is more of a challenge for profit making enterprises, but it’s not impossible. Today the coolest job are going to high tech vs investment banking or medical doctors for the interesting and meaningful work.
Thirdly, be very clear that leadership is a 16 cylinder activity, while management may just be a 6 cylinder one. Only 16 cylinder people make great leaders.
Fourthly, what does the employment market value the most? It usually values the mind element the most, even though mind – education, qualifications, sector experience. So if you recruit people with the right heart and spirit, treat them right and have systems in place to deal with any initial lack of experience, they may actually cost you lower salaries.
Finally, it is not impossible to train heart and spirit. Organizations that acknowledge their importance, who want team members to bring emotional commitment, passion and a sense of real responsibility to the job and use it positively, who cherish and acknowledge those qualities and which don’t only reward knowledge, logic and technical skills, will develop the heart and spirit of those working for them. But it has to be genuine or it is likely to be counter-productive – how many people have you met who are working on organizations that espouse high ideals but who are entirely disillusioned by their own reality? Who are the 16 Cylinder people in your organization? For that matter, how many cylinders are you firing on yourself?
How do you find and develop these people? Can you develop a recruitment process that allows existing team members to show their own emotional commitment to their jobs? Can you use behavioral profiling or even emotional intelligence analysis better to understand those areas? Can you define what 16 cylinder performance looks like in someone’s job description and contract?
At ActionCOACH we believe you can - let's have a conversation that'll allow you to recruit for competitive advantage and have your team members operate at the 16 cylinder performance level...
Let's get started. Call me at ph: 972 709 6776 eM: StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com
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