Level Up Leadership

In his New York Times blog, Jay Goltz shared an anecdote about his management style. When asked by a young MBA how he kept his employees so happy, Goltz told the young man that half of the trick was treating them well, and the other half was firing the unhappy ones.

This sounds a bit harsh, and it is, but it’s also an interesting comment on just how detrimental of an effect unhappy employees can have on a business. To be clear, by “unhappy” Goltz doesn’t mean employees who are a bit depressed — he’s talking about employees who are unhappy with their position or with the business at large. What he’s really saying is that he fires employees who turn out to be a bad fit.

When filling a position in your company, it can be very hard to fish out exactly who will be a good fit and who won’t. Those hiring tend to go by gut instincts more than anything else, but emotional instincts tend to be a very poor indicator of how well the employee will do within your organization. A big part of the problem is that anyone who goes into a job interview is ultimately putting on a performance. Whether they really want the job or not, they can act like it’s the thing they want most in the world and a perfect fit for their abilities, but it’s probably not.

So what is an employer to do?

At Level Up Leadership, we’ve created assessment tools that can help save you from the problem of the bad fit. Our unique tools are designed to help you determine not just the personality of your job applicants, but their personal character. With a strong understanding of an applicant’s strengths and weaknesses, our tools help employers get a solid understanding of how well a job applicant would complement the other people in the company.

Our assessment services also include employee assessment tools that can help you get a better understanding of your current employees. If you have a bad egg in the group or someone who simply isn’t doing well in their current environment, our assessments can help you figure out why that might be and then take reasonable steps to help rectify the situation. It may be that a transfer to a different position or a change in responsibilities could be all that it takes to help create a happier work environment.

Goltz theory about hiring and firing isn’t exactly wrong, but we think there’s a better way in today’s marketplace to avoid a bad fit and deal with the ones that you may already have. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you improve your company culture and productivity with our unique assessment tools which are designed to create win-win situations for employers and their employees.