Growing Employees

When hiring for and growing employees within an organization, it is important to consider both character and competence traits. Considering only one or the other could be like being stuck in a fence. The single best strategy for helping a company improve results starts with hiring the right people for the right business needs. It is far better to leave a vacancy unfilled rather than fill just because any warm body in the chair will help. The pain and cost of making poor hiring decisions is unnecessary. Sprinkle the hiring process with a bit more deliberation and patience and watch the long-term results take an upward course. Too often, managers or would-be leaders blur the lines between character and competence partly out of fear and partly out of ignorance. The fear factor comes from our litigious society that promotes fudging or hiding the truth. The ignorance comes from a lack of intellectual curiosity that leaves us with too few leadership thinkers. For best use to any organization, character and competence need to be viewed in all their distinctiveness of meaning and use. Before talking about the people side though let yourself think about the position.