Summary:
- Part 1: Younger, entry-level team members may be more motivated by a sense of ownership and belonging to a larger cause, rather than just a paycheck.
- Part 2: An enthusiastic new-hire’s curiosity, combined with their lack of experience may help identify blind-spots in culture, tools, processes and roadblocks that may help improve organizational performance.
- Part 3: Empowering your lowest-level team members to be able to explain your organization’s goals and decision-making strategy may help support creativity and critical thinking.
- Part 4: Recognition for an entry-level team member may be as simple as genuinely expressing interest in their contributions, even if they are minor.
Innocent fumbling can lead to new insight in places we forgot to look.
Details changed to protect privacy.
Last weekend, I was at the mall waiting in line at a busy Starbucks. To my right was a young man in his late teens. He was wearing a black suit, carefully holding a freshly printed resume in his left hand, and a tall iced frappuccino in the other. He looked anxious, pacing awkwardly between the counter and the condiment bar, seemingly trying to decide if he needed a straw or not. The store manager, mid-30s, sandy blonde hair, wearing a long sleeve thermal tee and jeans, quickly walked past him to the back of the store and returned with an associate. He gently placed his hand on the young man’s shoulder while introducing both himself and his associate before ushering him to a nearby table to begin his very first interview.
After I got my coffee, I sat down at an adjacent table and could pick up a few words here and there; I filled in the blanks with their body language and facial expressions. The questions coming from the manager seemed to be, as many of us would expect, geared towards the behaviors and experiences that promote being a good team player, conflict resolution, leadership, and providing the excellent customer service experience that a place like Starbucks depends on. These questions all came much to the surprise of the young teen who had evidently prepared to discuss his individual competencies that parallel the skills required to keep up with drink production. Seeing potential in the young student, the manager offered him the job.
It is expected that an enthusiastic beginner like this young teen should initially expect, and needs, a directing style of leadership. During his progress forwards, and the leaders’ transition to a coaching style of leadership, many innocent fumbles will likely be made. I challenge that there is more value in this phase to us as managers than we usually give attention to. — Particularly in the realm of something called “Second Order Learning.”
The sad thing is that many bosses, high and low, are so busy giving direction and orders that they fail to listen, and subordinates decide to leave their brainpower at the door as they enter the workplace. People with suggestions are too often viewed as troublemakers or complainers.”
Simonton
Chris Chittenden’s diagram depicts how we take the extra step in understanding the observer-independent root cause of the new-hire fumbles.
If you learned to drive a car near towns or cities in the US, you were probably told that to be a safe driver, you needed to stay within the lane lines unless you indicated that you’re changing lanes. Given that most of us have many thousands of hours behind a wheel, what happens if there is traffic on the highway and the lane lines disappear at night during a thunderstorm? Not much, really. Everyone generally tends to keep some separation from each other, you keep your speed roughly the same, and follow the general flow of the cars on the highway without incident. As we progressed from student drivers to daily commuters, we learned that driving safely from Point A to Point B had less to do with the lane lines we were told about, and more to do with helping other drivers around you understand your decisions (maintaining fairly predictable road behavior under a set of guidelines, taking into consideration current weather conditions, road quality, general flow of traffic, ice, etc.). These are things that we’re so used to doing every day, that we forget sometimes how we learned all of this in the first place.
When I was learning to drive in Florida as a 15 year old, I remember asking my parents: “Why do I have to set my side mirrors to see the side of the car? I can’t see the car next to me!” — This is where I was taught about blind-spots and how drivers need to look over their shoulder to make sure there isn’t a car in their blind spot. “But why can’t I just flare the side mirrors all the time to just focus on the blind spot?” — Well because that’s strange and disorienting! Do you see the opportunity for some second-order learning here?
Jacob Bustad from the University of Kansas describes these mirror settings using this diagram.
Turns out, that the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) had published a recommendation in 1995 for drivers to flare out their side mirrors to reduce the effect of blind-spots by applying exactly this method.
I’m not suggesting that all good driving ideas come from 15-year-old brand new drivers coming out of Florida. Nor that the correct solution (or implementation) to a problem would regularly come out of someone with no experience. I’m suggesting that we have the unique opportunity here for a new set of eyes, with little experience and bias, to give us a sense of how our organizational values, tools, processes and culture fit together in an intuitive way to someone from the outside that isn’t used to doing things a certain way yet. We need real experience, like the SAE in the previous example, to go through and do the real analysis and run the traps to make sure we have a fully vetted solution with an implementation plan and recommended actions.
If we take the time to empathize with the perception of the new-hire, we may be able to uncover new second-order learnings that could benefit the broader organization. Many blind-spots that go unnoticed to our more-seasoned team members are new trip-hazards for our young new-hires. Instead of wholesale dismissing them upfront, consider leveraging all the experience you’ve built up to this point to find the real second-order root cause for these issues. Don’t forget to communicate your higher-level change solution through your team to get the buy-in you’ll need to implement it.
“The skill of listening is every executive, manager and supervisor’s doorway to employee commitment.”
Simonton
Finding opportunities for improving your organization’s performance can come in many shapes and sizes from a variety of sources that sometimes we overlook. Taking the time to listen to these sources also promotes trust, active participation, team motivation, and commitment to your organization’s cause.
- What unnecessary failure patterns have you noticed in your new hires?
- What second-order learnings can you extract from those patterns?
- How do your current tools and processes unnecessarily challenge your new-hires?
- Are your on-boarding programs as efficient as they could be?
- How have you facilitated new brainstorming opportunities within your team?
Part 2 Conclusion:
Listening to the perspectives of our newest team members as they develop and grow in our business culture can help identify opportunities to improve organizational performance through second-order learning. Their complaints may not be intended to cause trouble and taking the time to listen and empathize their perspective can, not only uncover new opportunities, but also build trust and commitment in your newest members.
Masters, do the same to them, and forbear threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.
Ephesians 6:9
Related Articles:
- A Christian View of Management
- Listening, the key to employee commitment
- On Becoming a Different and More Powerful Observer
