Separating the Cream from the Crap

10 Ways to Frustrate and Squander the Cream of Your Crop

1. Unclear vision from the top
2. A mission that seems meaningless
3. Little or no strategy
4. No system for holding people accountable
5. Having a system for accountability but not using it (a.k.a. the slackers get to slide by)
6. Mediocre managers who lack clarity, commitment and passion are difficult to respect
7. Rewarding mediocre people whose only skill is knowing how to work the system
8. A culture rife with whining, complaining, blaming and excuse making
9. Having to rely and depend on people who are not reliable or dependable
10. Having your best people see other companies where their talents would be much better utilized

Warren Bennis recently told me: "There are none so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not hear, none so ignorant as those who will not listen… and none so foolish as those who think they can change those who will not see, hear or listen."

Warren explained that more than a half century of studying leadership, working with leaders and working as a leader has taught him: "To attempt to gain cooperation from those that are thoroughly disinclined to do so is not only unproductive and frustrating, it runs the risk of causing a manager to either:

• a) Forsake moving into a leadership position and instead go back to dealing directly with customers and clients.
• b) Direct his frustration away from truly exasperating individuals and take it out on the people he likes by complaining or whining.
• c) Lose the respect from others or for himself by continuing to tolerate such miscreants.
• d) In the most tragic instance, to burn out in mid-career well short of fulfilling his potential."

Tracy Kwiker, owner of Los Angeles based event planning company Pivotal Resource, adds: "Talented people are too valuable a resource to waste and nothing wastes them more than allowing too much focus on the mediocre people who will never change. Such people are cultural 'black holes.' Furthermore, one of the worst things you can do in a company is have a mediocre manager managing highly talented people."

What is a manager to do when he is trying to implement change by working through mediocre people who are resistant to cooperating? He could follow the zeitgeist that is going on in the executive search, psychology worlds and the popular business press of the past decade.

In executive search, much interest and money is going into assessing candidates for positions to try to discover the right person for the right job at the right time. The potential damage to these firms' reputations that a bad hire for a senior position can inflict, is too great to risk. So forget position titles; Search firms are trying to drill down to identify the key roles, responsibilities and functions that performing successfully in a job entails.

Jim Kennedy, founder of San Rafael-based Management Team Consultants and one of the proponents of behavioral interviewing, says: "The best indicator of how someone will do in a new job is how well they performed the behaviors in past positions necessary to succeed in their new one. If, for instance, their new role requires excellent delegation skills, ask how well they delegated in the past. How clearly did they communicate the what, when, why and when necessary -- and the resources to accomplish the how -- to subordinates? And if you were to ask those who they delegated to, how they would grade this candidate? The lesson here: pay attention early and drill down to ascertain the actual (vs. claimed) skills and behaviors of candidates, before you pay dearly later on when they are unable to do what they professed they could."

Dana Borowka approaches this challenge using in-depth personality assessments built upon the highly reliable 16PF personality assessment tool which can point out "red flags" that you will want to delve more deeply into during the hiring process. As Dana says: "The high cost of hiring the wrong person is something a fast company cannot afford." Dana has taken assessment to a new level by supplying additional information on how to best manage "red flagged" people if they are already working for you.

In psychology there has been a sea change away from an illness-based approach to helping people improve. Martin Seligman made a 180 degree turn away from "learned helplessness" and launched the field of positive psychology when his research demonstrated that focusing on what people need to do to succeed and helping them do it is more effective than focusing on what they do wrong.