WINNING WITH AVERAGE EMPLOYEES

I once heard a coach say “I have coached average people and I have coached talented players and I discovered that I am a better coach with talented players”. As an entrepreneur and consultant, I have had both average and great staff members and I can also say, I am a better entrepreneur with great staff. I know you can also relate to that.

Wherever two or three Chief Executive Officers are gathered this issue is almost always discussed. I visited the CEO of an IT company who services some of the top organisations in the country and he was lamenting. He needed to hire 5 sales people, interviewed over 40 people and was still not able to find two who could fit into that position. Some HR professionals would say that he was even lucky to find 2.

I have also heard of organisations that shortlisted over a thousand people for 10 job vacancies and were not able to get up to 5 qualified people to fill in those positions.

It has become rather alarming the quality of workforce we currently have as a nation. When I initially started my career with a consulting firm, one of the things I heard the most was that Nigerian graduates were unemployable. That statement seemed to startle me anytime I heard it but after conducting so many interviews I am sad to say I concur with it.

I once interviewed a first class graduate whose project was related to the vacancy he was being considered for and he could not explain it to a panel of 5. You may say maybe he was terrified about the panel, I thought so too. So we invited him again the second time, this time with only 2 interviewers and he fumbled big time.

The problem I see in our clime is that we seem to have more average workers than great workers. It really seems that the most of the good ones have been taken while the rest are entrepreneurs themselves leaving us with a workforce that has little or no skills in addition to a poor workplace attitude. The question then becomes, if all the good ones have been taken and we need to use the services of the available average worker in the marketplace, how do you win with them?

How do we achieve more with less and how do we harness the best out of the worst?

Let me share 3 things that would help.

Even if you have average workers, ensure you have great leadership:

Everything rises and falls on leadership. An African proverb says that an army of sheep led by a lion will conquer an army of lions led by a sheep. Likewise an average workforce with a great leader will always outperform a great workforce led by a mediocre leader. In this situation, as with every other one, the quality of leadership makes the difference.

Former Disney Executive Vice President Lee Cockerell says "You can’t have a great company without great leadership. They create the right environment and the kind of culture where people are able to do more than they think they can."

One aspect of leadership that greatly affects the productivity of the workforce is the ability to set realistic expectations. In my book,  , Good: The New Mediocre, I encouraged employers of labour not to assume that people know what they are being employed to do but rather to set clear expectations and to communicate it to their employees.

Another aspect of leadership which makes the difference is to vary your style of leadership to suit the employee. This is what management gurus Dr. Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey describe as situational leadership. Many employees who join your organisation are initially enthusiastic beginners; they are high on commitment and low on competence. They are eager to learn but bring little or no experience to the table.  At this stage, the employee needs more direction by the leader. He or she should be told what to do and what not to. Little should be left to their imagination and creativity.

The situational leadership model helps leaders understand what stages their employees are at and then know what leadership style to apply. Average people for instance require more directing and instruction, not delegation until they earn the trust and competence required for them to do their jobs with little or no supervision. As they grow in competence and confidence, you can vary leadership style to coaching, facilitating and ultimately delegating.

Run a systems or process based business not a personality based business.

If as a restaurateur, the quality of the food that is served to your customer is determined by the skills, discretion and moods of your chefs, then you are running a personality based business and not a system based business. Your goal as an entrepreneur is to develop a process or system that can be run by people of low or average skill and yet produce great result. An average staff working in a highly systematized environment will most times outperform a great employee working in an environment with no processes or systems. The top 4 consulting firms in the world hire fresh school graduates, put them through their processes and systems and then they are assigned to very huge projects which are most times, done successfully.

McDonald’s fast food restaurants are most times staffed with high school kids because there is a system and process for doing everything: greeting, sweeping, mopping, cooking, serving, dressing, and practically everything else.

As an entrepreneur or manager, develop a system and process that would make you win. One book that could help you is E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.

Hire for attitude, train for skill.

An employee with great attitude and low skill should be chosen over a highly skilled employee with very poor attitude. I have met many averagely skilled people with great attitude who with a little training, coaching, directing and mentoring are doing very well and have turned out to be some of the best employees in their organisation.

Many people are and remain average because of the quality of education and training they have received over time. If as employers of labour we are passionate about people development and would do whatever is necessary to develop the skills of our employees, many of the workforces in our clime will stop being average in a little while.

A number of employers have said that the reason they don’t train their staff is that they could spend a lot training an individual who then leaves to another organisation. That is a legitimate concern but what will happen to the ecosystem if every organisation trains their employees and they leave? The answer is that we would have an ecosystem of trained people. Don’t expect what you are not willing to equip your employees to do. Train your people and also train them to learn by themselves and in no time you would see a remarkable difference in the quality of people you have.

In conclusion, take the words of Dr. Ken Blanchard to heart, “I think people want to be magnificent. It is the job of the leader to bring out that magnificence in people and to create an environment where they feel safe and supported and ready to do the best job possible in accomplishing key goals. This responsibility is a sacred trust that should not be violated. The opportunity to guide others to their fullest potential is an honor and one that should not be taken lightly. As leaders, we hold the lives of others in our hands. These hands need to be gentle and caring and always available for support.”

I welcome your comments and more strategies on winning with average employees.

If you would like me to speak to your organisation about moving from being Good (The New Mediocre) employees to Great employees, kindly send a message to my inbox.

Don Azubike Onyegbu is a workplace performance strategist, corporate training consultant and speaker and the author of the newly released book, Good: The new mediocre.