FROM: Dave Fogg
I often share true stories of my past because the mistakes I have made are common and can easily be avoided.
1 - Years ago I was promoted to a VP job with my own private office. Just outside my office was a room filled with 30 cubicles where my employees worked.
Instead of walking out of my office to visit my employees at their work stations or ask they come into my office I made the mistake of trying to manage, communicate and train them by sitting at my desk and typing/sending messages.
An example of a mistake is sending an email to 30 people where I addressed a problem and 30 people interpreted my typed message differently.
That caused a nightmare of problems that I had to quickly fix. I caused a lot of problems by trying to communication via email although my heart was in the right place.
These days the same thing happens with text messaging. People actually get into serious arguments over texting when had they talked there may not have been any problem at all.
It is funny but also sad to see a man/woman with fingers quickly typing and sending text messages as they have a virtual argument when had they just talked maybe there would not have been any issue.
I could have and should have walked out of my office into the main room and verbally addressed the team so they could verbally ask me any questions.
These days with Zoom/Teams video call never should a Leader try to communicate complicated information over typed messaging. It is too easy for people to interpret written information differently from the way the Leader intended.
It is soooo important to use Zoom/Teams or other video call with screen sharing to make it nearly the same as if your workers are sitting next to you. You can show them your computer screen so they can see you talk and show your information which is a much better method of communication than sending typed emails or messaging.
The problem is it is just to easy to sit there and type messages compared to just a little effort to use video call with screen sharing. A lazy leader cannot be an effective leader!
And, if we work at home maybe we must take a shower and comb our hair to be presentable for video calls LOL, wow 🙂
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2 - Before I starting using Microsoft 365 with a shared/cloud drive I would often send information back and forth by email. If I made a change maybe the other person did not receive my most current version.
Creating folders in Microsoft 365 or Google where documents can be SHARED is a very good idea. If you make a change this is saved on the shared document so everyone who has access always has the most current version and information.
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3 - I will use recruiting for this example, although this can apply to any type of job. When talking to recruiting managers I notice many think recruiting is much easier than it really is. Maybe because they were never top producing recruiters before they somehow were promoted into recruiting leadership? This is fairly common out there.
Usually what happens is the manager wings it and makes up the training and tries to squeeze this into their other work responsibilities.
There is usually some un-organized training and then the manager becomes too busy doing their own job that they fail to provide the structured training and support that newly hired employees require = setting people up to fail.
There are people on my Dominican team who have worked through me for different companies as recruiters for 5 years and now they are very well trained but it took 4 to 5 years with different companies to become well trained.
If the 1st company I assigned them to had very good structured 30/60/90 day training it may have taken only 1 year to achieve the level of knowledge that often takes people 3 to 5 years to learn after bouncing through a few companies.
And/or 3 to 5 years of work experience at companies that are bad at training usually means such a person is not good for you to hire especially in performance jobs like sales or recruiting. Accounting is different, but with performance jobs sometimes several years of experience means years of bad training and bad experience = not good to hire.
There are countless salespeople and recruiters on LinkedIn with years of experience who are not any good and will be bad hired for any company that hires them.
Sometimes creating a bullet proof well structured 30/60/90 day training may require time and effort on your part but the end result is much more control over success vs. failure of the people you hire be they in USA or remote.
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4 - If you provide complicated training or instructions, before you allow people to do the job ask them to pretend you are a newly hired person and they are the leader and ask them to explain the instructions or training to you. I mean, if you do not somehow TEST workers how do you know if they fully understood your training or work instructions?
Think of the truth, how many times do leaders set up people to work and then become angry and even fire workers for not following instructions when the leader never tested to verify the workers fully understood the training.
LOL, is like my father saying "Son, what did I just tell you, I want to hear you say it"
As you can see, none of this is rocket science. The issue is we are living in a world where it is too easy to sit at a desk and type/send messages and hope people 100% understand. The old saying is very true, we get out of people what we put into them.
Dave Fogg