How much time have you spent developing your listening skills?

Think about the time we spend learning how to read, how to write and how to speak, the basic pillars of communication, vs how much time is given to listening, there’s a significant gap.

When we ask our candidates what they’re looking for in their next job, they frequently answer growth. I ask them, “What does that mean to you?” and hear things like:

• My manager is available to me to ask questions and get answers.
• I have a mentor who listens to my goals and helps me to achieve them.
• The team discusses issues and provides support to each other.
• There are onboarding resources and people who help me engage more quickly.
• There is ongoing training.

Listening is key for each of these aspirations.

Stephen Covey is famous for the philosophy of, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

To understand another, you must listen to them.

Covey suggests that we are filled with our own rightness and collective monologues. When another person speaks, we typically listen at one of four levels. Covey breaks down these different levels of listening:

Level 1: Ignoring (What parents sometimes do)

Level 2: Pretending to Listen (As a busy Manager, what you may do)

Level 3: Selective Listening (Choosing what you want to hear)

Level 4: Attentive Listening (Repeating back what you’ve heard) and then there is Level 5, Empathetic Listening (Sharing the emotions you’ve heard).

The 5th level is the highest level of listening. In empathetic listening, you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You use your right brain as well as your left.

I’ve also noticed a recent trend where candidates are choosing to leave inside sales jobs where all their interactions are by phone and computer, for outside sales where they meet in person with prospects and customers. With the latter, it’s easier to use the highest level of listening.

Imagine how many times, in work, or life we have had conversations where we just don’t seem to be getting through, we don’t seem to be heard, understood, or validated. We all know how frustrating this can be. Then imagine how much more effective we could be by practicing empathetic listening. Working on this small but significant skill could be transformative, leading to better relationships, team engagement, loyalty, and performance.

What can we do to practice better listening?

Here are ways you can get started to improve your listening skills:

• Clear your mind before starting a conversation, put down your phone, turn away from your computer, or other distractions.
• Make time.
• Listen with your ears and your heart and without judging.
• Avoid interrupting, or cutting off someone’s sentence before they finish speaking.
• Give people time to think, don’t be too eager to rush in when there are moments of silence. This is a tool that savvy salespeople use when trying to understand a customer’s needs.
• Clarify or ensure you understood what was said.
• Ask open-ended questions to understand feelings and perspectives.
• Refrain from giving advice if you are not asked for it, especially along with your autobiographical story.
• Remember you do not need to agree or feel the same to understand.

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”

Karl A. Menniger, Psychiatrist

First, let’s define the term “middle management” within an organization. Middle management refers to the intermediate level of management with an organization, occupying a position between top-level executives and front-line supervisors. It typically includes managers, directors, or department heads who are responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations and activities of specific departments or teams.

The main role of middle managers is to bridge the gap between the strategic decisions made by top management and the practical implementation of those decisions by lower-level employees. They act as a communication channel between upper management and the workforce. One might say that leading a team effectively to execute the company’s strategies is one of the most important responsibilities of an organization’s management team. To achieve this within a set timeframe and budget, managers must foster a high-performance team environment. They play a fundamental role in talent development, a factor that is crucial for any growing organization’s health and financial performance.

You would think that as such an important asset, managers would be given the tools and freedom to focus on meaningful work. However, a recent survey proves otherwise. Surveyed middle managers reported spending nearly half of their working time on nonmanagerial work rather than focusing on the work that makes an organization run – nurturing talent.

Managers can’t achieve greatness in isolation. They need a supportive ecosystem, including clear expectations, targeted training, inspiring leadership examples, and adequate infrastructural support. Research shows that having more top-performing middle managers leads to much better financial outcomes. What actions can organizations and executives take to create more top-performing managers and in turn, increase the value they bring?

Optimize the Organization’s Structure

Organizational optimization is the practice of aligning and making the most of an organization’s resources to maximize success in achieving its goals and objectives. By systematically reviewing an organization’s structure, leaders can identify where their managers are not set up to succeed and create value.

A couple of common mistakes are, 1 – assigning overly large spans of control creating a significant strain on managers’ time and leaving them with little opportunity to give meaningful coaching or to spend sufficient time on strategy. And, 2 – promoting successful individual contributors into a people leadership role without finding out if they’re motivated by managing others and if they have the competency to do so.

Management is responsible for so much in the organization. Middle managers are the key to effectively executing strategies and achieving company goals.

Reset Manager Roles

Organizations can conduct a thorough review of manager roles using, for example, focus groups and calendar analysis. Management tasks should be categorized based on whether they add value or not. Then, begin to look for ways to automate repetitive tasks, canceling unnecessary meetings, and eliminating as much bureaucratic work as possible. Generative AI can be leveraged to update the way a number of day-to-day activities are completed.

Align Skills

Once managers’ roles have been redesigned, make sure that your current managers have all the skills needed to perform in their new role. A benchmark process can be used to define the skills and competencies necessary to perform at the top level in different leadership roles. This data can guide future hiring needs as well. Once gaps in your managers’ current skillset have been identified, provide the training and resources for individuals to upskill to maximize their performance. This benefits both the employee and the company. Growth is consistently rated as one of the top things individuals are seeking in their work. Maintaining the best workforce skills for the company’s current and future goals makes good business sense.

Are Cups Overflowing?

Research shows that middle managers are the most burned-out job level across organizations, as they’re tasked with implementing changes in the organization through their direct reports while helping them to stay engaged and motivated, what’s sometimes forgotten is that middle managers are employees too!

What can you do?

1. Foster a Supportive Work Culture by encouraging open communication, providing ways to get emotional support, and acknowledging the importance of work-life balance.
2. Set Realistic Expectations that are reasonable and achievable. Avoid overwhelming them with excessive responsibility.
3. Provide Training and Resources and include programs that focus on stress management, time management and leadership skills. Invest in the tools that help them to handle challenge effectively.
4. Facilitate Peer Support by creating opportunities for middle managers to connect with and support each other. Peer support can be invaluable in coping with burnout.
5. Recognize and Appreciate Effort regularly and show your appreciation one-on-one and in group settings.
6. Encourage Delegation and Empowerment as part of the company culture. Managers should be routinely delegating tasks to reduce the burden and give them a sense of empowerment in their roles.
7. Encourage Regular Breaks during the day and by using vacation time. Encourage your managers to lead by example by taking breaks themselves.
8. Conduct Burnout Workshops so that managers can recognize it in themselves and with individuals on their team. Organize workshops that address burnout, stress management, and resilience, providing managers with practical strategies for managing their well-being.
9. Offer Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) and make sure that everyone knows that it’s available and how to engage in the confidential counseling services and mental health resources provided.

“A CEO’s performance is as good as the performance of their middle managers”

Med Jones, American Economist and President of Research Organization, International Institute of Management.

Accountability Mechanisms

The final step is to build accountability mechanisms to help reinforce what great looks like and to give middle managers continuous progress updates on how they are doing. Understanding what they are accountable for and linking it to the company’s overall strategy and goals helps to give managers a purpose.

People management should be the most important aspect of middle managers’ job. Provide the opportunity for them to be evaluated through a 360 process. This process elicits feedback from those in the organization who surround and are impacted by the manager’s performance, including their direct reports, peers, and their own manager.

Additional accountability comes by maximizing the use of your organization’s performance management system by using it to set short- and long-term goals, provide continuous feedback, performance reviews, and consequence management.

Companies cannot afford to overlook their middle managers who are key contributors to both organizational health and financial performance. Leaders take note, top performing managers will not only be better equipped to nurture the talent that is the foundation of a healthy workplace, they can also increase ROI by directly adding to bottom-line revenue. That’s a win-win!

How Can We Help?

We help our clients build top-performing teams and retain the best talent by:

1. Offering a comprehensive recruiting process that helps you to attract and hire the best sales and leadership talent.
2. Our Assessment comes as part of our recruiting process, and it gives an in-depth look at an individual’s behavior, motivators and skills.
3. A customized report that gives the keys to managing and motivating the best performance from your new hire, that can be used as part of the onboarding process.

Many clients report receiving more applicants from larger corporations than in the past. You may be as well. If you’re considering bringing a candidate who has primarily worked for large corporations into your small business, here are four things to consider:

1. Are they looking at your opportunity as a bridge job?

If you have a short-term need and a candidate can bring near term value, hiring someone who will likely stay for a short period of time can be a win-win. In that case, JESSI Search can discuss options such as a temp staffing, to fill your need. If you’re looking to add to your team long-term, this could be a costly mistake. Candidates don’t always realize the impact of cultural differences in a smaller company. They think it’s just what they’re looking for, but oftentimes leave quickly saying, “It was a lot different than I expected.” And sometimes, what they’re really saying is, “I took your position as a bridge while I searched for my ideal position.”

2. What is their reason for expressing interest in your opportunity?

Candidates say a lot of things based on what they think you want to hear, to prompt an offer. Their enthusiasm can be contagious. Be sure you listen and assess carefully to discern their true motivators for joining your organization.

3. Do their behaviors and motivators align with the role and your company culture?

Motivation can’t be taught. Motivational fit is important. JESSI Search focuses on another truth and that is, past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior. That’s why our interview process and assessment instruments focus on uncovering examples of past behavior.

4. Do they bring the skills to do the job well and continue to grow with your organization?

Some skills can be taught, some take time to develop, and some, like work ethic and tenacity cannot be taught. It is very important to validate that the candidate brings the right level of skills for the position to maximize value within your desired timeframe.

JESSI Search uses an assessment as part of our hiring decision-making process. It helps identify an accurate picture of the candidate’s behavior, motivators and competencies, which are key to assessing their ability to move from one environment and culture to another. Specifically, they fit your small business culture. Additionally, our assessment helps validate the interview and will also identify additional competencies to focus on to maximize their performance and possible problem areas.

For many, a small company fits their style and motivation better. BetterUp Coaching lists these as the top reasons why someone should consider joining a small business:

• You’ll have more opportunities to grow
• They’re adaptable
• You’ll have a bigger impact
• You can flex your creativity

Hiring is expensive and impacts the team’s time and morale. Making sure you are adding individuals with the right motivation to join and grow with your team is key.

“Moving doesn’t change who you are. It only changes the view outside your window”

Rachel Hollis, American Lifestyle Author

In a word, yes! There are times when seeking an external recruiting firm to partner with your internal team makes perfect sense. They can help bring in more candidates when hiring is urgent, expand the candidate set by using different sources and expertise in recruiting passive candidates, and add efficiency to the process during the search process by bringing in fresh ideas, to name a few. As Kathleen Duffy of Forbes points out, “The secret ingredient in making this work is relationships.”

If you’re considering bringing in additional recruiting resources by partnering with a recruiting firm, or, adding contract recruiters to your team, here are some things to think about:

1. Terms – If your need is for one key position, the fee likely will be a search-based fee. If it’s a larger effort, terms may be by milestone, hours or a project-based fee.
2. Project Kickoff – Having key people together to set expectations will help all parties understand who is doing what and the overall goals and timelines.
3. Success Metrics – Your talent brand is a valuable asset. There are key talent metrics that should be measured regularly to show your talent brand’s health. Measuring the success of your hiring project is also important and can include things such as time-to-hire, interview to offer rate, offer acceptance, candidate experience score and these days when ghosting has become common, in addition to measuring accepted offers, actual starts should also be measured.
4. Communication – Scheduled meetings can be helpful to assess progress and answer questions and discuss next steps. Of course, open communication with the entire recruiting team and hiring managers is ideal as well.
5. Turnover – Define end of project deliverables from the start.

A few ways you might also consider partnering with an external recruiting resource, include:

Talent Pipelines – Grow your potential applicant pool for existing and future opportunities by having your recruiting partner source ideal candidates for the position profiles and your company culture. If you’re working with an external recruiting agency exclusively, they will know your culture and can understand what’s most important based on the position profiles.

Courting Candidates – Recruiters are often experts at accessing passive candidates and gaining interest in their client’s opportunities. It can be touchy reaching out to candidates who work at another company that is both a competitor and at times a partner organization. Having someone external to the company gauge interest with these candidates is a common process.

Assessment – There is a lot of expertise that goes into an interview and selection process. Even with the best process and interviewers, it can still be wise to use a valid assessment as part of the interview process.

We use the Trimetrix Assessment because it has the highest level of validity against bias and it was developed for sales talent and leaders.

Onboarding – Selecting and hiring the right people is only a piece of the talent equation. These days, your onboarding process is a valuable asset during the hiring process, and it is key in getting your new hires off to a great start where they feel included, supported and motivated to learn and grow with your organization!

One great hire will continue to pay dividends. Other ways your investment can be maximized is by scheduling a turnover meeting to ensure your internal team maintains any new information, tools and processes that were developed during the hiring project.

At JESSI Search, some of our strongest placements have been with clients who treat us as an extension to their business. We have worked on many sales hiring projects where we have played a role in helping companies achieve their revenue goals for the upcoming year and beyond. We value our internal recruiting partners and the ability to jointly help business leaders accelerate growth. Making our internal customer team shine is always one of our top goals!

We love to hear from candidates after they start with the companies we’ve partnered with to add new hires. We work especially hard to make a great match and post-start feedback is a valuable measure for us. We placed a candidate in a role where they would have peers and direct reports all over the globe. It was wonderful to hear the lengths her new employer went to ensure that she was introduced to varied team members and walked through the internal processes and tools that she needed to hit the ground running. We hear a different story from candidates who want to network with us because they are disenchanted with the company they recently joined, leading them to continue their search.

There are many terms popping up to describe the employee/employer relationship. Quick quitting is one of them. According to the 2022 Job Seeker Nation Report, nearly one in three new hires will quit their job in the first 90 days. After investing time and money to get someone to hired, the last thing business leaders want to do is start the process all over again because their new hire quick quit.

It’s week one, are your new hires sitting in their office space without even knowing where the restroom is located? Learning new names, places and the lay of the land can be daunting. It can be especially difficult to feel connected when you’re starting in a remote role. Organizations who are great at helping new members feel immediately welcome and part of the team do these key things:

1. Focus on Onboarding – It’s not all about the paperwork!
2. Get to know them as a person.
3. Start the process, even before the first day.
4. Intro them to the team and provide single points-of-contact.
5. Develop relevant training.
6. Set up ways for them to quickly engage in their work.
7. Discuss what they can expect in their first 90 days from you, their manager, and what you expect from them.
8. Check in with them regularly.
9. And if they’re relocating, they do more!

Yes, there is paperwork requiring completion to allow access to systems, provide tools and, of course, get paid. Effectively using a digital onboarding system allows new hires to do those things early and effortlessly. Ordering equipment and technology they will need should also be done prior to start.

A few days before they start work, send them a friendly note sharing how excited you are to have them join your team. Let them know at what time they need to arrive on their first day, where to park, who to ask for and what the dress code is.

In addition to these things, a key focus should be to make your new hires feel connected. Some companies put together a photo collage of teammates, delineating what each team member does, how they can help you, and perhaps most importantly, what interests each individual in their work and outside of the job. This helps to remember people when the team is introduced and to build connections more quickly. Assigning a mentor for the first 30 days is common. Whether you assign one mentor or a single point-of-contact for different areas of the job, having a defined go-to person is a benefit.

Assessments are sometimes used as part of the interview process. I’m a proponent of using them coupled with behavior-based interviews. The added benefit is that you can use the data to customize the onboarding process based on the individual’s style of processing information and communication.

 

You hired this individual for a specific skill set and experience. However, there are things that the rest of you know about the company’s objectives, drivers and approach that the new hire needs to understand. Having a well thought out training program pays dividends.

I was extremely impressed by one of our US-based client’s objectives to have all new hires for their sales expansion initiative hired and onboard before their annual sales strategy kick-off meeting in Europe. While there was expense to send dozens of new sales executives to this week-long international meeting and the training sessions, the pay off in allowing them to hit the ground running was huge. We placed over 20 individuals for this initiative and when I checked back with them after one year, they were still with the company!

A key desire when someone is starting in a new role is to “get started!” Thinking through the tasks you will assign in the first four weeks, 60 days and 90 days, and communicating these, helps to give the new hire an understanding of what will be expected of them from the get-go. It will also allow them to prepare and focus their attention and feel like they are contributing more quickly. It’s important to seek your current employees’ opinions, this is a way to show that you value their opinions while making sure the plan is all inclusive.

Finally, if you looked outside of your area to find the right person, helping them and their family to have a smooth transition to their new home location is a way to differentiate your company culture as welcoming, as well as helping to remove some of the distraction that goes along with a relocation. Some companies put together a packet of information from real estate data and local Realtors to school districts, favorite restaurants and service organizations. These packets are always appreciated!

The risk of not implementing a strong onboarding process is that the person you invested so much in finding and hiring, becomes frustrated in their early days on the job and continues to entertain other opportunities. Make sure your team is not one where people are quick quitting by understanding that you have not really closed a candidate until they are integrated into the company and functioning in their job.

You’ll never regret investing to hire right or in your employees’ start with the company. What does your company do to make new hires feel welcome? We’d love to hear from individuals who recently joined a new company, as well as hiring managers and talent acquisition teams about their creative ideas to help a new employee to feel welcome, quickly integrated into the team, and set up for success in their role.

You’ll never regret investing to hire right or in your employees’ start with the company. What does your company do to make new hires feel welcome? We’d love to hear from individuals who recently joined a new company, as well as hiring managers and talent acquisition teams about their creative ideas to help a new employee to feel welcome, quickly integrated into the team, and set up for success in their role.