How to Hire Your First Employees

In a recent tutorial we looked at the art of delegation, and saw why it’s such a critical skill for entrepreneurs and business owners to master.
But what if you’ve got nobody to delegate to?
In this tutorial we’ll look at how you can go about hiring your first employees. If you’ve been going it alone until now, bringing on full-time staff will be a big step, and it can be hard to know where to start. So we’ll take you through the process of finding and recruiting good people to help your business grow.
You’ll learn how to identify good candidates, how to interview them and select the right people, how to figure out what to offer in terms of pay and benefits, and how to navigate some of the regulatory requirements like tax forms and employment identification numbers.

1. Finding the Right People

Recruiting is a skill, like any other. In large firms, it’s handled by HR professionals, but if you’re just starting out, you’ll have to do it yourself. Here are some pointers.

Be Clear About What You Need

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it can be tempting just to rush into putting up a job ad, to get help as quickly as possible. But if you take some time to define exactly what you’re looking for, it’ll pay off, not only in helping you find the right person, but also in ensuring that the person is happy and productive in the new job.
Not convinced that it’s worth the effort? Check out this Quartz article, in which Silicon Valley recruiter Scott Purcell says that poorly written job descriptions hurt both employers and job applicants.
“A lot of times when companies write job descriptions, they include everything that they dream of having,” Purcell said. “It’s a list of things that they need, then things that they want to use in the future or are thinking about using. They put in everything that’s in their environment, every sort of technology.”
But when you put out a poorly-thought-out job description, you deter good candidates from applying, simply because they lack one particular skill or piece of experience that may not have been important anyway.
So make a list of everything you do, and what you need help with. Refer back to our delegation tutorial if you need help with that. Then put together a short, simple list of core skills that you really can’t do without. Forget the rest.

Sell the Job

Although it’s called a job “ad”, a lot of companies don’t take the opportunity to sell themselves. They pay more attention to the “job” part of it, describing in detail every aspect of the role and its responsibilities.
While it’s good to give information on what the job entails, you also need to make it sound exciting, says small business adviser Evan Horowitz.
“There’s no faster way to bore a prospective applicant than a laundry list of duties,” he says. “Explain the job in a way that highlights what’s great about the job. What do they have the opportunity to do? Why is this role important to the company? What growth opportunities might there be? Get inside the head of the type of person you’re hiring.”

Be Focused

If you want to find the best candidates, it’s important to cast a wide net. But because you’re the one who’ll be sifting resumes, it’s also important to be smart about where and how you advertise.
Huge sites like Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com will get a lot of eyeballs on your ad, and may well generate some good candidates, but you’ll probably have to sort through some less suitable applications too.
The more focused you are, the better your chances of generating not just résumés, but the right résumés. Think about blogs or “niche” sites where your ideal candidate would spend time. Many of these sites will have job boards you can advertise on, and you’ll stand a good chance of finding the right person.
You can also use social media, if you’re smart about it. A recent survey found that:

• 93% of recruiters currently use or plan to use social networks to support their recruiting efforts.
• 73% planned to increase their investment in social recruiting in 2014.
• 73% have successfully hired candidates via social media, with 79% of those hires coming via LinkedIn, 26% via Facebook and 14% via Twitter.

The advantage of sites like LinkedIn is that you get to reach a huge number of people, but in a very targeted way. You can quickly find people with particular skills and experience, and instantly see what they say about themselves. Then approach them directly.
And don’t forget the old-fashioned way, either: just ask around. This is an inherently focused way of searching for a candidate, because people in your personal and professional networks should have a good understanding of who you are and what sort of person you’re looking for, and will be able to make useful recommendations.
Whichever method you use, keep referring back to your initial list of skills as you judge the applications and create a shortlist of people to interview.

2. How to Interview

You may have been a candidate in job interviews before, but conducting them is a different skill altogether. Here's what you should ask, and a few things you definitely shouldn't ask.

How to Prepare

Everyone knows that candidates should prepare for a job interview by preparing thoroughly and doing lots of research. What’s less well known is that employers should do the same.
If you scan the person’s résumé just before the interview and then ask a bunch of generic questions, you’ll get a bunch of generic answers. A job interview is a chance to get to know the person you may be working with every day, so it’s worth investing extra time to get more out of it.
If the person is active online, read through their social media profiles and blog posts, and look for some insights beyond what’s on the résumé. Then you can ask intelligent questions that focus on specific projects they’ve worked on, or specific challenges they’ve faced.
If the person doesn’t have a strong online presence, you can still research the companies they’ve worked for and the things they’ve done, so that you can find some fodder for individualized interview questions.
This may seem like a lot of work, but by this stage you should already have shortened your candidate list to a manageable number, so it’s worth taking a little time to get the most out of each interview.

What to Ask

There are many strategies for interviewing, and the one you choose will depend on what you’re looking for.
If you want to get to know people personally and see how they’ll fit in, for example, then a relaxed, informal approach should work. But if you want to see how your candidates handle pressure, you might want to ask some tougher questions and put them on the spot.
It’s good to mix factual questions with broader, more open-ended behavioral questions. So you might ask some details about people’s experience and how they handled specific projects you’re interested in, and then follow that up with some broader questions about how they’d approach certain job situations, or what their biggest career mistakes have been.
No matter what strategy you use, the key is to tie your questions closely to the list you made back in section one. Your questions should reveal as much as possible about the candidate’s ability to give you what you’re looking for.

What Not to Ask

We’ve covered some useful questions you can ask, but how about what not to ask? There’s a surprisingly long list of questions that are simply off-limits in a job interview. If you ask these questions, you could be breaking U.S. law (and other countries have similar rules, so check your local situation).
The idea of these rules is to ensure a level playing field for all candidates and to prevent discrimination. Here are a few things you can’t ask about, according to employment attorney Matthew R. Grabell:

• Private organizations he or she belongs to
• Religious affiliations
• Date of birth (except when that information is required for satisfying minimum age requirements)
• Lineage, ancestry, national origin, descent, parentage, or nationality
• Names and addresses of relatives other than a spouse and dependent children
• Sex or marital status
• Height or weight, unless you can show that information is justified by business necessity
• Physical or mental disabilities

In some cases, there may be similar questions you can ask that will put you on the right side of the law: Kettering University has compiled a list of 30 interview questions you can't ask, with legal alternatives. But remember that the laws are there for a reason, and accept that there are some things about your potential employee that you just don’t have the right to know.

3. Put Together Your Offer

It can be hard to know what to offer in terms of pay and benefits. If you’re just hiring your first employee, you may even be unsure whether you can afford to pay a competitive wage. Just adding one staff member is likely to be a major expense at this early stage.
The first step is to have a clear picture of your financial situation, and some realistic projections of how you expect things to develop over the years to come. If you need help with this, check out our Bookkeeping 101 tutorial, or this one on key metrics to gauge profitability.
If you’ve got a healthy profit coming in and can afford to pay an additional person’s salary out of it, that’s great. But many small businesses are not in such a fortunate position. You may have to hire someone before you can really afford it, reasoning that your new employee will bring in extra business with which you can pay his or her salary.
But if you do this, make sure that it’s a calculated risk, not a leap of faith. Do your sums and try to make realistic forecasts of how much you could expect to make. If the new hire will cost you $50,000 a year, how many new clients would you need to attract to make the hire worthwhile? Is that feasible?
Also keep in mind that on top of the new person’s base salary, you’ll have to figure in other costs, like equipment, benefits, insurance, etc. The HR expert quoted in this CNN article suggests that business owners should expect new employees to cost an additional 25% or 30% on top of their base salary.
When you’ve figured out what you can afford, it’s time to see how that stacks up to what competitors are offering for similar jobs. There are lots of online calculators to help you figure out the average wage for a particular type of job. A few examples:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Glassdoor.com
• Salary.com
• PayScale.com
• CareerBuilder.com
• SimplyHired.com

Also check out other companies’ job ads to see what they’re offering in terms of perks and benefits. Although salary is important, it’s not everything. Things like attractive benefits, a good working environment and flexible hours can make your offer much more competitive.

4. Do It by the Book

Congratulations! Your ideal candidate has accepted your offer. So time to start shopping for a new set of office furniture, right?
Not so fast. If you’re just hiring contractors online, things are quite simple, but when you take on permanent members of staff, there are some regulatory requirements you need to be aware of. It’s important to make sure you have all the paperwork lined up, so that you don’t fall foul of any rules.
In this section, we’ll look at some of the main things you have to do as a U.S. business owner when you hire new employees. If you’re based elsewhere in the world, your local rules will be different, of course. And even within the U.S., different states have their own regulations.
So view this as a general guide to what you can expect, but of course check with the relevant government agencies to find out what rules apply in your area.

Check Eligibility

Is your new employee eligible to work in the U.S.? As a business owner, it’s your legal obligation to check.
The employee must fill out IRS Form I-9, giving full details of their immigration status, and you must “physically examine each original document the employee presents to determine if it reasonably appears to be genuine and to relate to the person presenting it.”
The form itself gives full details of exactly what documents the staff member needs to provide and what you yourself need to check. Read it carefully to make sure you’re following the rules.

Get Set Up for Tax

You’ll need to withhold tax from your employee’s paychecks and pass it on to the IRS, and perhaps also your state tax authority.
The first step is to get an Employer Identification Number (EIN), if you don’t already have one. That’s the number you’ll use on tax returns and other documents. You can now apply for one online at the IRS website.
The employee must then fill out IRS Form W-4 so that you can withhold the right amount of tax from each paycheck, and you should set up a payroll system that allows you to make sure it gets processed correctly.
Then you’ll need to make regular filings to keep the IRS updated on how much tax you’ve withheld. For more information, check this IRS Q&A page or this IRS guide to hiring employees.

Get Insured

If you have staff working in your shop, office or other place of business, you need insurance. According to the Small Business Administration:

All businesses with employees are required to carry workers' compensation insurance coverage through a commercial carrier, on a self-insured basis or through their state’s Workers' Compensation Insurance program.

To learn more about workers’ compensation insurance and other regulatory requirements when hiring staff in the U.S., read this SBA guide to Employment and Labor Law.

Next Steps

So you now know how to find good candidates for your job, how to conduct the interview and put together a competitive offer, and how to make sure you’re following the rules in your jurisdiction.
The next step is to get started. Get clear about what you’re looking for in a candidate, make a short, targeted list of skills and qualities, and then create an enticing job ad and place it in all the right places. You’ll soon have a pool of qualified candidates, and can begin the process of hiring exactly the right person to take your business to the next level.

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How to Decide What to Delegate

Do you feel overwhelmed at work?
If the answer’s yes, don’t worry: you’re not alone. Two-thirds of employees say they’re overwhelmed, according to a recent Deloitte survey of 2,500 organizations in 90 countries.
For entrepreneurs and business owners, it’s often an even more serious problem. It’s your personal responsibility, after all, to make sure that the company succeeds. You probably have a lot of your own money on the line, and you’ll have a much greater share in the success if the company succeeds, or the pain if it fails.
The result is often that business owners take on too much work. A survey by eVoice found that “performing multiple roles within the organization was the number one challenge facing entrepreneurs.” In fact, 44% of entrepreneurs reported wearing five or more hats in their business at any given time.
The answer is to delegate more effectively, so that you can spend less time on minutiae and more time on strategic decisions. But that’s not always as easy as it sounds. You may need to hire extra staff, meaning more expense. And if you don’t do it right, you can end up creating problems for yourself and your business. There are some key tasks, for example, that you just shouldn’t delegate.
So in this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can decide which tasks to delegate to your staff or to outside contractors, and what you should keep control of yourself. By the end, you’ll have a list of tasks you can safely delegate, and an understanding of how to do it effectively.

1. Set Your Priorities

Start with a blank sheet of paper. Forget about all the things you’re already doing, and think about the ideal mix. If you could start over and do things right, how would you spend your time? Don’t worry about the practicalities of how you can achieve this for now. Just write down the ideal state.
Stick to broad categories for now, rather than individual tasks. In an average week (or month, or whatever period makes sense for you), how much time would you ideally allocate to each activity?
For example, if you’re running a small software company, your mix might look like this:

• Planning and strategy (30%).
• Networking and pitching to win new business (30%).
• Reviewing employee performance (15%).
• Marketing initiatives (15%).
• Accounting and finance (5%).
• Email and admin tasks (5%).

Invent your own categories, of course, and focus on the most important things you could do to move your business forward.

2. Track Your Time

When you’ve got your ideal state defined, it’s time to see how reality matches up. You may already think you have a good idea, but you might be surprised when you start tracking those hours and minutes in detail. 
For one week, track how you spend your time. There are plenty of time tracking apps and software programs out there to help you, and many of them are free, at least at the basic level. Toggl and Harvest are a couple of popular options. You could also use a simple spreadsheet or pen and paper if you prefer.
Each time you begin a new task, record it using your chosen method, and then note the finish time. This may seem like a lot of work, but remember it’s only for one week. The idea is to get a clear picture of where things stand right now, so that you can begin to shift towards your ideal state.
You may find, for example, that your actual time is spent on different tasks and that it looks like this:

• Fixing bugs in the software (30%).
• Accounting and finance (20%).
• Email and admin tasks (20%).
• Writing the company blog (10%).
• Keeping up the social media presence (10%).
• Reviewing employee performance (5%).
• Marketing initiatives (5%).

Not good. You’re spending most of your time on tasks that don’t move your business forward, and not finding any time for important things like planning, strategy, and pitching for new business.
How can you move from reality to the ideal state? We’ll cover that next.

3. What to Delegate

You should now have two lists: one ideal, and one reflecting the reality. Compare the two lists against each other, and make a plan of what to cut back on and what to place more emphasis on. Then start to pick individual tasks, and people to delegate them to.
What sort of things should you be delegating?

Admin

Some things are obvious candidates for delegation. Routine administrative tasks, for example, clearly don’t take your company forward, and don’t require your attention. They’re important, but you can easily delegate most of them to other people in the company.
If you don’t have available staff, or if money is tight, consider using virtual assistants. You get more flexibility that way, and can get your tasks done at lower cost than if you’d hired a full-time staff member. The quality on sites like Elance and oDesk is pretty variable, but there are plenty of qualified people out there. You could also post in online job forums, or try a site like Zirtual, which specializes in providing companies with U.S.-based, college-educated virtual assistants.

Approvals

One common task that eats up a lot of a business owner’s time is checking and approving things that other staff members have already done.
If you’ve hired good people, you don’t need to look over their shoulders all the time. Trust your sales people to communicate with key clients and prospects, for example, and your marketing staff to handle the blog and social media accounts. If a task falls into someone else’s area of expertise, you shouldn’t be getting involved unless there’s a truly unusual, critical situation that could have wider implications. Otherwise, let go of the need to approve every decision.

Things You’re Not Good At

Running a business involves a lot of tasks that probably aren’t your core strengths. Outsource or delegate as many of those as possible.
As we saw in our recent tutorial on bookkeeping basics, for example, many small business owners simply don't have the expertise or the interest to do a good job managing their accounts. You can learn the essentials (and the tutorial will help you with that), but if it’s simply not your strength, you could hire a bookkeeper and/or an accountant to take on the day-to-day management of the accounts, so that you only need to take a more high-level view.
Similarly, if you’re not particularly technical, don’t try to design and run your own website all by yourself. Hiring help is an expense, of course, but add up all the time you save, and often you’ll come out ahead.

Things You Are Good At, But Have Hired Someone Else to Do

In our example above, the software company CEO spent 30% of her time fixing bugs in the code. If she started a software company, it makes sense that coding is something she’s good at. But is it a good use of her time?
Assuming she has other people on staff who could handle it, clearly the answer is “No”. As head of the company, her time would be better spent on things like planning and strategy, as outlined in part 1.
But what can often happen is that people jump in to work on things they know how to do. They know they should delegate tasks like that, but think, “It’s quicker if I just do it myself.” All that does is eat up time, and take responsibility away from the person you’ve hired to do the work.
Bottom line: Even if in the short term it might be quicker to do it yourself, in the long term it’s better to help someone else learn how to do it.

4. How to Delegate Effectively

If you don't do it right, delegating can actually create more work, because you spend more time correcting other people's errors and clearing up misunderstandings than you've saved. The danger is that you end up thinking it's not worth it, and take the task on again yourself. So here are some guidelines for doing it right.

Choose Carefully

If you don’t delegate to the right people, you might suffer from what this Wall Street Journal article called the “boomerang effect”. You delegate lots of tasks, but then find them coming right back to you because the people you assigned them to couldn’t complete them.
To avoid this, make sure that you manage your resources properly. If the people you delegate to are already swamped with work themselves, the task won’t get done—or at least it won’t get done well. So check their workloads, and hire extra help if necessary. And consider the strengths and weaknesses of the people you’re delegating to, to make sure they’re equipped to do what you’re asking of them.

Give Clear Instructions and Support...

A crucial element of successful delegation is giving clear instructions. Time study consultant Mark Ellwood suggests starting by clarifying the desired outcome and the amount of decision-making authority the employee will have. Explain what resources are available, and ask if there’s anything else they need.
Then set milestones along the way, and ask for progress reports to make sure things stay on track. Be sure to give praise and feedback as the project progresses, and when it’s successfully completed.

... But Trust the Employee to Manage the Task

Although you should be involved and help the person you’ve delegated to, don’t micro-manage. That defeats the object of delegation. “Delegate the objective, not the procedure,” says Ellwood. “Outline the desired results, not the methodology. What needs to be done and when should it be finished?”
After that, leave it to the employee to achieve those results. You may have your own way of working, but delegation is about relinquishing control over the details. So step back and let them get on with it.

5. What Not to Delegate

There are some tasks that a business owner should never delegate to anyone else. Here's a rundown of things you should always keep control of yourself, or at least monitor very closely. 

Monitoring Financial Health

As we saw in part 3, day-to-day bookkeeping can safely be delegated or outsourced. But you should always have a clear picture of your company’s financial health, and a forecast of how things are set to go over the next year. Regularly monitoring your finances and knowing what state they’re in is something you simply can’t delegate. Get help with the details, by all means, but be sure to monitor at least the high-level numbers. Here are a few key profit metrics to focus on, for example.

Hiring Key Personnel

A business lives or dies by the people who operate it. As your company gets larger, you’ll probably delegate some hiring tasks to an HR manager. But when it comes to key personnel, it’s good to stay involved. Steve Jobs used to take potential hires at Apple for long walks around Palo Alto so that he could get to know them and see if they’d be a good fit. Mark Zuckerberg later adopted the same approach at Facebook.

Managing Crises

So your customer database just got hacked, potentially compromising their passwords and financial data. The latest release of your flagship software product is full of bugs. Your HR manager is being sued for sexual harassment.
These are all major threats to your company’s reputation, and need your full attention. You can delegate some individual tasks, like preparing press releases and dealing with customer complaints, but you’ll need to be very hands-on in managing the crisis as a whole.
Just remember that not every “crisis” is business-critical. Some things your staff can handle by themselves. But if it’s a serious threat to your business, don’t delegate: get involved.

Next Steps

In this tutorial, you’ve seen how to identify tasks to delegate, and have got some tips on doing it effectively. Now it’s time to take action. Make that list from part 1, showing how you think you should spend your time, and then track your time for a week. Compare the two lists, and come up with a set of tasks that you can delegate, using the guidelines from this tutorial.
You may never reach your “ideal state”—there are always compromises to be made, and unexpected events can derail you. But with a little planning and some well-thought-out delegation, you can free up valuable time in your schedule, allowing you to spend more time on things that will truly take your business forward.

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Feedback for Managers: How to Give it, How to Get It

by Lisa Jo Rudy

You get feedback from the time you're a toddler. "Good work!" "Put that down, it doesn't belong to you!" "You can do it! "
In school, you get grades and report cards, win (or don't win) awards, become (or fail to become) part of a winning team.
Sometimes, feedback can be difficult to give or get. But in the business setting, feedback is a key tool for success. That's because a manager who doesn't give and take feedback is lacking key tools needed to lead a successful team, sell a successful product, or manage a difficult situation
In this article, we’ll look at just two kinds of feedback you’ll need to manage: feedback you give to employees for work they've done, and feedback you receive from employees about your managerial performance.
Each of these types of feedback can—if properly collected and shared—be a valuable tool for improvement. If poorly managed, though, feedback can become a painful experience which leads to bitterness, in-fighting, and other serious problems. Let’s look first at methods for giving feedback which inspire rather than undermine your employees.

5 Managerial Strategies for Giving Feedback 

Feedback is, essentially, commentary on an employee’s performance. It is NOT the same thing, however, as a performance review or annual evaluation. Feedback, ideally, is immediate, accurate, fair, clear, and action-oriented. It happens, not on a schedule, but as needed. It may be positive or negative. Most importantly, as described on the Feedback and Coaching page of the Florida International University website, it is a collaborative tool to help your employee—not a weapon to punish, threaten, or humiliate.
We can unpack this description by looking at five specific examples of effective feedback.

1. Immediate Feedback

Effective feedback is immediate. Rather than waiting for many offenses (or successes) to pile up, it’s helpful to respond quickly when an employee has failed or succeeded in coming up to expectations. Feedback delayed can lead to a domino effect of problems.
Imagine Ralph, a young employee who comes in late. Rather than mentioning the issue, you let it go. It happens again. And again. You become increasingly annoyed. Ralph’s co-workers become annoyed. Meanwhile, Ralph assumes that your lack of response means the behavior is acceptable—so he continues to come in late. By the time you address the issue, you and Ralph’s co-workers are truly angry, and Ralph is confused, hurt, and possibly even overwhelmed by your response to a behavior that’s been tolerated up until now.
On the other hand, what if Ralph is doing a terrific job managing his clients? You’ve been hearing good things, but don’t think to mention it to Ralph. As a result, Ralph has no idea that his approach is a good one, and may start making changes that undermine his excellent work. Immediate praise not only leads to continued excellence, but can also motivate employees to even greater effort.

2. Accurate Feedback

Accuracy builds trust between manager and employee. It also forestalls the possibility of a pointless argument about whether your feedback is based in fact, hearsay, or assumptions.
Before giving feedback (particularly negative feedback), it’s important to do your research, ask appropriate questions, and have clear evidence in hand of the problem you’re addressing. If you’re not sure why a problem has arisen, find out rather than guessing.
When Bill tells you that Jessica is undermining their shared project, don’t take his word for it. Ask for details and evidence, and double-check your sources. When Linda’s performance begins to decline, don’t assume it’s because she’s become lazier over time; instead, describe the issue to Linda and ask her to explain what’s going on. True, she may just be lazy—but she may also be dealing with a personal crisis or an illness.

3. Fair Feedback

One of the biggest complaints employees have about their managers is that they are “unfair.” Typically, this means that some employees get more and are expected to do less than other employees. In some ways, this sort of “unfairness” is unavoidable: some employees may need to work longer hours because of a deadline or because of the nature of their work. Some employees may be paid more because of seniority, or because they’ve earned a commission. But often unfairness is the result of intended or unintended favoritism.
Before giving feedback, therefore, it’s important to analyze the content of the feedback to be sure it’s truly fair. That may mean checking your corporate policy to see whether, for example, it’s allowable for a parent to take extra time off for a sick child, or to what degree certain employees should have access to resources, supplies, perks, or other goodies that are not available to all. Be sure, before you share your feedback, that you’re ready to respond effectively to the comment “That’s not fair!”

4. Clear Feedback

Elizabeth is a member of your team, but she’s also a good friend. She’s been shirking her responsibilities as part of a working group, and you need to let her know that’s not acceptable. But you don’t want to undermine your friendship. So you tell Elizabeth, “You know, it’d be great if you did a little more, you know, with the working group.” Elizabeth walks away hearing “If you like, you can do a little more with the working group,” decides she isn’t interested, and does nothing. A clearer message would help Elizabeth to work more effectively with her group, avoid negative comments, and retain her positive relationship with you.

5. Action-Oriented Feedback

Hard as it may be to hear feedback, it’s even harder to hear feedback and have no idea what to do about it. When you tell an employee “Your performance is slipping,” you’re giving them almost nothing to work with. The same is true even of positive feedback: “Great job!” doesn’t give your employee any information about what’s working well. Whether you’re describing a problem or a success, therefore, it’s important to give concrete information about what’s working or what isn’t working, and what kind of action you hope to see in future. Much more helpful than general feedback are such clear, action-oriented statements as:

• “You’ve arrived late for work three times this week; I need you to be here five minutes before work starts.”
• “You did a great job describing our services to the client; stick with that approach for future client meetings.”
• “I’m worried about your progress toward the deadline; let’s meet weekly to be sure you’re hitting objectives in a timely manner.”

Your job as a manager doesn't end with giving others feedback or direction. As the leader of your team, you also need to be open to hearing and responding to feedback about your own abilities and challenges. Even more importantly, you need to create a channel of communication that allows your team members to keep you in the loop when problems, challenges, or opportunities arise.

6 Tips for Receiving Employee Feedback

According to the Harvard Business Review, “Most people have good reasons for keeping their opinions from higher ups.” The most prevalent reason given is fear of retaliation.
The more power you have as a manager, the more anxious your employees are about saying anything that could result in lower pay, fewer opportunities, or a glass ceiling.
As a manager, though, you need to hear from your employees. What’s working well for them? What’s working poorly? Are there bottlenecks you’re not aware of? Personnel issues no one has mentioned? How can you improve your employees’ situation so that they can improve their performance? A great example of this comes from an article produced by the Academy of Management which describes the value of employee feedback at NASA:

On one occasion during his tenure with NASA during the 1960s and 1970s, famous chief scientist Wernher von Braun sent a bottle of champagne to an engineer who admitted that he might have inadvertently short-circuited the Redstone missile which went out of control during pre-launch testing. A subsequent investigation revealed that the engineer was right. As a result of the engineer's voluntary disclosure, an expensive missile redesign was avoided.

In this example, a manager let his employees know that they were encouraged to share even bad news—and that open communication would be valued above flawless performance. As a result, an employee chose to share information he might otherwise have withheld. In the long run, opening lines of communication led to huge savings in cost and time. Here are some tips for opening up communication between yourself and your team members.

1. Create an Old-Fashioned Suggestion Box—and Use It 

Nothing says “anonymous” like a suggestion box placed in a public location, where anyone can drop in a note without signing it. Not every suggestion will be positive or welcome, but some will be. When you receive a useful suggestion from the box, be sure you mention it to your employees so they know their voice has been heard.

2. Develop and Consistently Follow a No-Retribution Policy

It’s one thing to say “there will be no retribution for negative feedback;” it’s another thing to get employees to believe it. Make sure your employees are aware of your written policy and how it works, and mention it when appropriate so they know it’s being utilized.

3. Show Employees What Useful, Constructive Feedback Looks Like 

Whenever you provide feedback to your employees, be sure it’s immediate, accurate, fair, clear, and action-oriented. Explain what you’re doing so that the process is transparent; for example, you might tell an employee “I’m letting you know this right away because you’ll be doing this type of project in the future, and I want to nip any potential problems in the bud.” Let employees know that they are encouraged to give you similar feedback.

4. Listen Carefully to Feedback, and Gather More Information When Necessary

If an employee tells you “I need more direction,” rather than nodding and smiling, ask for more details. Find out what information the employee feels he’s missing, and how he’d like to receive additional direction. If appropriate, get the team together to find out whether the individual employee’s criticism is relevant to the whole group.

5. Show Your Employees That You Listen to and Value Their Feedback

When you’ve received helpful feedback, say so—in meetings, in newsletters, or in group emails. Give credit as it’s due; for example “Joe mentioned to me that you’re having a hard time getting the resources you need, so I looked into options and found that I could get you more laptops and an updated version of the software you’re using.” This type of positive response should inspire more employees to share critical information with you, rather than complaining behind your back.

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6. Respond to Feedback With Moderation

An employee accuses you of unfairly favoring another employee, and you hit the roof or give a long explanation of your motivations and reasons. A few minutes later, upon reflection, you realize that the accusation had a grain of truth in it. By now, though, it’s too late to take back your hasty response.
Even if you were to apologize, your employee might think twice about bringing concerns to you in the future. A better choice is to listen, take notes, ask questions, and let your employee know that you’ll think carefully about his feedback. If your employees are upset, it’s more important to understand and fix the problem than it is to defend your motivations or actions
Like Werner von Braun in the NASA story described at the beginning of this section, you can benefit tremendously from honest, timely feedback from your employees. Like von Braun, though, you'll need to show your employees that you honestly want, value, and will listen to feedback. It takes self-confidence and flexibility—but isn't that why you were promoted to a managerial job in the first place?

Feedback: A Tool for Growth

Whether you're giving or getting feedback, as a manager you're using feedback as a tool for growth. When you provide the right kind of feedback to your employees, you're offering them immediate, relevant, actionable information they can put to work for positive change. When you make yourself available to receive and act on feedback from your employees, you give yourself the opportunity to learn, change, and grow.
As you improve your feedback skills, you’ll also improve your ability to recognize and respond to positive and negative behaviors. You’ll also gain insight into your own strengths and challenges as a manager. Over time, you’ll develop a solid rapport with your employees—and your business will benefit.

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Behavioral Interviewing Strategies for Hiring Managers

by JoAnn Greco

It's no secret that hiring the wrong candidate can be a costly mistake for any company, large or small. Estimates of the costs involved range from one-third of the hiree's salary to five times, including expenses associated with interviewing and training, also depending on how high up the person is, and how long he or she remained in the position.
Yet, hiring managers continue to select people who, despite all appearances, are not the right choice. According to a three-year-study conducted by Washington, D.C.-based Leadership IQ, nearly half of 20,000 new hires it tracked had failed within their first 18 months on the job.
That wasn't because managers hadn't correctly ascertained their skill sets—instead in the great majority of cases what was missing was an attitudinal fit. After all, as Herb Kellher, former CEO of Southwest Airlines has noted, managers "can change skill levels through training. But [they] can't change attitude." Whether attitudinal mismatches include a lack of emotional intelligence or a lack of motivation, they are precisely the kinds of intangible assets that are key definers of corporate culture.
Since a a job candidate is likely to interview with not only several persons in the department, but even other managers and staff in several other departments, a good strategy is to try to find a fit for the group and not just the position, according to management consultant George Mentz. In fact, some companies are increasingly turning to their own employees and internal networks for referrals, realizing that the high performers in-house are likely to be able to locate more people just like them.
However you find your candidates, conducting an interview that breaks the mold is critical once you bring them in for an interview. Some companies, most famously, Google, have already learned this and have long mastered the art of the mind-bending brainteaser—How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane?—designed to give hiring authorities an idea of how nimble the candidate is, how adept they are at thinking outside of the box. But as one senior vice president of people operations at Google told The New York Times, such questions are a "complete waste of time. They don't predict anything."
What works, instead, he continued is "not giving someone a hypothetical, but starting with a question like 'Give me an example of a time when you . . . .'"
So-called behavioral interviewing like this attempts to predict future performance by looking into past behaviors rather than potential ones (What would you do if. . . .?). By providing real-life examples of their past on-the-job performance, candidates are forced to reveal insights into their personality, work ethic, and, yes, skills. What the hiring authority avoids is hearing canned (and not necessarily true) responses to the same old questions. In short, asking the right questions results in a better interview—and gifts a company with the right candidate.

Get Some Culture

Before a manager begins formulating the right questions, though, they must have a clear understanding of both their corporate culture and the kinds of answers that they want to hear from their questions.
Mark Murphy, author of Hiring for Attitude and the founder of Leadership IQ, notes that while most jobs have tests that assess technical proficiency, quantifying less tangible skills—like the ability to stay motivated or to be innovative—is a lot more difficult. If an executive "has an authoritarian, hard-driving style and they're being hired into a social culture where happiness and camaraderie are paramount, that combination isn't going to work," Murphy told Forbes Magazine.
In addition to Southwest and Google, companies from Apple to The Four Seasons hire for attitude—but, points out Murphy, they may be looking for different things. "Every company has to discover the attitudes that make their organization unique and special," he told Forbes. "Those attitudes will always be an organic reflection of their most successful people." Many experts define an organization's culture as the "way things actually get done"—a set of practices that drive key business decisions and behaviors.

Tell Me a Story

To dig out these examples, experts recommend asking STAR questions. The acronym stands for situation, task, action, and result.
Together, these successive elements add up to a concise anecdote—the content of which doesn't matter as much as the candidate's ability to adequately address each facet. According to Deepa Barve, senior recruitment leader at SSOE, an architecture and engineering firm in Portland, Oregon, hiring authorities may have to work hard to help  a candidate formulate his or her story. Too often, she notes, candidates lean on hypothetical situations, so if they can't think of an actual example, try broadening the parameters of the question or framing it in a different way. Looking at the resume, ask these types of questions:

• Why do you think the X project worked so well? 
• What would you do next time to make it even more successful?  
• How did the success of that campaign help you in further projects?

If these don't work, suggest that they turn instead to a personal example. Has the candidate listed a volunteer effort on his resume? Perhaps an experience with the organization might prove relevant. Did she change careers at one point? Ask her to discuss some of the pivotal considerations in that choice.
Once a good story has been elicited, don't let it sit there. Ask follow-up questions and seek clarification to better understand the context. By making it a conversation—not, cautions Barve, an interrogation—both sides can relax a bit. And that's important since the ultimate goal is for the interviewer to get a sense of how the candidate behaves outside of the interview setting.

Get The Conversation Rolling

Although the goal is a conversational tone, having a set list of questions on hand is optimal. Here is a baker's dozen sampling of behavioral interview questions:

• Tell me about a time when you were able to persuade others to change their minds and see your point of view?
• On the other hand, can you describe a time when you lost an argument and how you handled it?
• Let's discuss the hardest trouble-shooting challenge you've ever had to address.
• Can you remember a decision that in hind-sight you realized was wrong? What did you do about it?
• Describe an instance where you were criticized by a colleague or superior. What happened? How did you get along subsequently?
• Talk about the work situations that have most frustrated you. How have you overcome them?
• Tell me about a goal you set for yourself—and whether you achieved it. How did you feel when you met it?
• Describe a specific skill that you've been determined to learn, and how you went about doing so.
• Tell me about a professional risk you took. Was it worth it?
• Have you ever gone beyond the call of duty to please a client? Why did the situation arise? What did you do?
• Was there a time when you were in the position of criticizing a subordinate or giving them unwelcome feedback? Talk about how this made you feel and how you dealt with the situation.
• Think back to a time when you faced unusual stress in your job. How did you handle, and eventually, overcome these feelings?
• Have you ever improved a process at work? What was it, what was lacking, and how did you change it?

As should be evident, different questions are posed to ascertain different attitudes and behaviors. Questions about goals and learning can help suss out the ability of a candidate to manage their time and keep motivated. Stories related to disagreements and critiques are perfect for getting a sense of how a candidate works with teams. Other questions might address issues related to decision-making, organizing, communications, client services, interpersonal skills, or adaptability. Determine which of these are most important to the position and the candidates ability to fit into your department and company.

Know What To Listen For

Thanks to their emphasis on anecdote and narrative, interpreting complex behavioral interview questions are not as easy as nodding politely to the ole "Where do you see yourself in five years?"
Since each question is designed to assess a particular skill, it's critical, then, that the you have a good idea about the kind of answer you are looking for. When a candidate is asked, for example, to describe a situation where they failed, the details of the actual mistake won't matter as much as the way in which the story is relayed.
According to Barve, the ideal response should include two components in addition to the details of what happened: the remedial action initiated to correct the errors and the steps taken to prevent them from re-occurring. You may have to prompt the candidate to address these two elements, but they, more than anything, are the most critical. Similarly, a candidate who simply replies, "I've never made a significant mistake" is revealing a great deal.
Because the questions demand more of the interviewer—as well as the candidate—it's important, too, that the same set of questions be asked of everyone. (Followups can be tailored, of course, since they will be more specific to the stories of each candidate.) And, since the emphasis with this type of interview is not to be predictable, interviewers should be careful about trying to lead the candidate or tipping their hand. Just as candidates have cleverly figured out what kinds of answers are expected of them when it comes to a standard interview, a wealth of material now exists to guide them through behavioral interviews. Don't make it any easier for them!

Plan Carefully

There are some challenges involved with this style of interview. Firstly, the nature of the answers received will be difficult to reference-check. That's why it's imperative that the interviewer strive for depth and consistency by asking for various examples, pressing for more details, and coming at the same question from several different angles.
As a candidate moves up through the interview process, make sure that each manager is provided with the notes from the previous interview/s and alludes to those anecdotes in their own interview. Be careful that each interviewer doesn't exactly repeat the questions, but instead builds on them or looks for elucidation or more details.
According to Amanda Papini, recruiting director of Response Mine Interactive in Atlanta, hiring managers often don't have as much time as they'd like to prepare for an interview, so it can help if a human resources person such as herself does some of the homework for them by coordinating questions and the interview sequence. She also recommends that a scale be developed to help everyone assess candidates' performances during a behavioral interview.
And, she adds, keep on reminding managers that tech skills can be taught, while soft skills cannot and require a larger time investment when things go awry. Still, technical skills remain important in many key positions, Papini concedes. To help, she recommends formulating a few behavioral questions that include technical aspects. A good example: Tell me about a time when you identified a discrepancy and how you were able to validate it and then take corrective action quickly? This type of question accomplishes several things at once. It identifies attention to detail, ability to work under tight deadlines, and comfort with a position's technical demands.

The Reward: Hiring the Right Person

This new approach may seem complicated and demanding but, say experts, the extra effort will reward hiring authorities with the confidence that they've made the right choice. And since that means not interviewing for the same position as frequently, both time and money will be reaped, as well.

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7 Key Tools for Coaching Your Management Team

Lisa Jo Rudy

If you’ve read any business articles in the last few years, you’ve probably come across articles that describe the manager as a coach. If you’re a manager, you may find that idea a little strange. For most of us, business isn’t a sport—it’s a way to make a living.
But if you look a little more closely at the metaphor, it really does make sense, as Entrepreneur Magazine notes, “A manager shows someone how to do something, such as the day-to-day tasks for his job and a coach goes a step further to help an individual realize his full potential and maximize positive outcomes.” If you are a manager, then you are a coach.

How to Be Both a Manager and a Coach?

The idea of a manager as a coach suggests that you’re grooming your team members to play a game. And business, after all, is business. You may feel a disconnect between managing and coaching. But sports and business aren’t as different as they may first seem.
Imagine yourself as a coach for an adult league sports team. You’ve been playing your sport since you were a kid, and you’re exceptionally good at it. You know all about the league, because you’ve been playing in them for years. Is there an away game? You know exactly where you’re headed and what to expect when you get there. Are you playing a rival team next week? You already know their strengths and weaknesses—and you have a solid strategy for winning.
But who’s on your team? Your players may not have played your sport for years, or they may even be brand new to it. They may have heard or read about adult leagues, but never gotten involved. They may not know how to read other teams’ strengths or weaknesses, or have a clue what it means to play on someone else’s field. All they know is—they’re on a team, they’re playing a particular sport, and they want to win.
In order to effectively lead your team, you’ll need to direct your players. But you’ll also need to encourage them, motivate them, support them…coach them.
In order to effectively lead your business team, you need to do many of the same things as a sport coach, but in a different context. As a business coach you have a number of critical jobs—and quite a few strategic tools for doing those jobs as effectively as possible. It's important to know these tools well. Following are seven tactical tools to master that will improve your business coaching effectiveness.

1. Know Your Players 

What does each player bring to the game? Where are their strengths? What are their challenges? What motivates them—and what undermines their confidence? Are they reliable under stress, or are they at their best when things are calm and under control?

Tools

There are a wide range of tools available for getting to know your team players. These range from common sense to formal testing—and may include both.
On the common sense end, you know that a recent college graduate is unlikely to have extensive experience in your particular industry, and thus one of her challenges may be a lack of industry-specific knowledge.
Formal personality testing may also reveal that the same team member is likely to be impulsive, is motivated by public recognition, and may find it difficult to work well with slow, methodical individuals.

2. Have Objectives and Goals 

In sports, of course, your goal is to win each game. But knowing that you are unlikely to win every game, you need smaller objectives that your team can reach with a moderate amount of effort. Perhaps you want to reach a certain score, or successfully complete a particular strategy. Even if you don’t win the game, you can still point to successes that build confidence and team spirit.

Tools

“Having objectives and goals” is another way of saying “you need a strategy.” And strategic planning is a time-honored procedure for which there are many existing tools.
Depending upon your industry and your team’s role within your company, you may want to access tools for setting incremental sales goals, project milestones, financial objectives, or other benchmarks that allow your team members to see and celebrate success.

3. Create the Right Environment for Success 

If your team is practicing on a field filled with potholes and weeds, and the other teams are practicing on groomed turf, you have a problem. Your team needs the tools and resources to succeed—and that might mean training, software, marketing materials, samples, or strategies.

Tools

You know what your team members need to succeed, because you know your business and you know your competition. Sometimes you can provide those tools within your own department, but just as often you’ll need to work with other managers and departments to ensure that you have what you need.
You may need to build a case for new computers, software, publications, samples, or other tools—and that means getting input from your team members to build that case.

4. Provide Feedback

If you’ve ever been coached, you know that feedback is absolutely critical to improvement. What did you do well? What did you do poorly? How can you improve performance? Of course, giving and getting feedback is an art in itself.

Tools

According to Inc.com, “The actual goal of feedback—even negative feedback—is to improve the behavior of the other person to bring out the best in your entire organization.” 
You probably already know this, but are not sure how best to provide negative feedback that is also constructive. In short, the rules are simple:

• Give feedback immediately and in small quantities. 
• Listen actively to hear your employee’s responses. 
• Suggest clear steps for improvement.
• Implement a process for tracking and supporting positive change.

5. Respond to Feedback

No coach is perfect, and there are times when you’ll need to hear and respond to your team members when they tell you something isn’t working well. Often, team members not only tell you what the problem is, but they also provide workable ideas for a solution.

Tools

Flexibility, perspective, an open mind, and a strong sense of your own value are all important tools for hearing and responding positively to employee feedback. Often, feedback is extremely helpful as it is an opportunity to understand how your ideas are working out in the trenches—where your employees spend their working days.
Sometimes, of course, feedback can be negative, and that’s where perspective is most critical. If you can listen, see things from your employee’s point of view, and respond without anger, you’re way ahead of the game.

6. Manage Conflicts Among Your Players 

As you know from playing on any kind of team, team members don’t always get along. Not only do some team players tend to bully others, but some team members tend to hang back and allow others to do the work. It will be up to you to see interpersonal issues, understand them, and develop procedures for mending relationships and avoiding future problems.

Tools

The Houston Chronicle outlines several well-established methods of managing conflict; each of these has its place, depending upon the circumstances of the conflict. They include:

• Accommodating. In some cases, the most effective course of action is to give the difficult employee what he or she wants.  For example, an employee who complains about a loud co-worker can simply be moved to a different location.
• Collaborating. Rather than choosing a right or wrong, you ask people who are in conflict to work together, bringing all of their strengths to the table.
• Avoiding. From time to time, issues arise that will resolve themselves without any intervention at all. When that's the case—because the issue is time limited, the employee will be transferred, or some other resolution is on the horizon—the best choice might be to sit tight and wait it out.
• Compromising. Can you resolve the conflict by giving each individual part of what they want? For example, it might be possible to give equal access to an in demand resource to two employees at different times.
• Competing. Whose idea is really the best? To find out, some managers ask the individuals in conflict to research and present their ideas so that they can select the option that's most likely to be successful.

7. Motivate and Support Your Team 

In sports, locker room talks and cheerleaders help team members to stay upbeat and excited about their game. In business, you’re the team’s chief motivational speechmaker and cheerleader—the person who cheers when a team member succeeds, keeps the team moving forward, and applauds even a partial success.
You’re also the person who represents the team to higher management when they are getting less than their fair share of resources or compensation.

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Tools

There’s a difference between false optimism and real, enthusiastic support. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, "Positive feedback strengthens performance. People will naturally go the extra mile when they feel recognized and appreciated." In your role as motivator and booster, you have a number of tools at your disposal to leverage giving positive feedback. Many are simple:

• Start team meetings with congratulations to individual team members who have achieved specific goals. 
• Be sure team achievements are recognized in corporate newsletters. 
• Celebrate milestones with special recognitions that can range from lunch for the gang to trophies, plaques, and badges. 

Meanwhile, be sure you are aware of and responding to any issues that arise for your team, such as an unfair bonus systems, lack of resources, or unrealistic expectations coming from upper management or other departments.

Putting Your Coaching Tools Together

If this list of “need to’s” seems awfully long, it is! You are the coach of a team, and your team depends on you. Many of the tools you'll be using, though, may already be second nature to you.
If you've coached a real team—or been coached as a team member—you've probably already given and gotten well-crafted feedback. You may have resolved conflicts among team members. You may even have crafted or followed a team strategy, or motivated a team with the promise of exciting rewards.
As you take some of your existing skills into the realm of business management, you can  also draw on the experience and advice of others who have gone before you and perfected some of the tools you’ll be using. Whether you have a business mentor or you're exploring other resources, it's good to know that you’re not in it all by yourself: many people have paved the road you’re walking.

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