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The Truth about Managing People Editor's note: During a 30 year career teaching and writing about managing people at work, Stephen P. Robbins has read upwards o f 25,000 research studies on human behavior. He has identified a select set o f topics that are relevant to business owners, practicing managers and those aspiring to management positions and compiled suggestions on them in his new book, "The Truth , About Managing People ... and Nothing but the Truth." Following are some excerpts from that book. THE TRUTH ABOUT HIRING Forget Traits; It's Behavior That Counts! You're interviewing applicants to fill a job position in your firm. What are you looking for in these applicants? If you're like many managers, you'll answer with terms such as hardworking, persistent; confident and dependable: After all; how can you go wrong trying to hire people with traits such as these? Well, you can! . The problem is that traits aren't necessarily good predictors of future job performance. Most of us have a strong belief in the power of traits to predict behavior: We know that people behave differently in different situations, but we tend to classify people by their traits, impose judgments about those traits (being self assured is "good"; being submissive is "bad"), and.make evaluations about people based on these trait classifications. Managers often do this when they make hiring decisions or evaluate current employees. After all, if managers truly believed that situations determined behavior, they would hire people almost at random and structure the situation to fit the employee's strengths. There are two problems with using traits in the hiring process. First, organizational settings are strong situations that have a large impact on employee behavior. Second,. individuals are highly adaptive, and personality traits change in response to organizational situations.The effect of traits in explaining behavior is likely to be strongest in relatively weak situations and weakest in relatively strong situations. Organizational settings tend to be strong situations because they have rules and other formal regulations that define acceptable behavior and punish deviant behavior, and because they have informal norms that dictate appropriate behaviors. Those formal and informal constraints minimize the effects of different personality traits. In contrast, picnics, parties and similar informal functions are weak situations, and we'd predict that traits would be fairly strong predictors of behaviors in these situations. While personality traits are generally stable over time, there is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that an individual's traits are changed by the organization in which the individual participates. Moreover, people typically belong to multiple organizations that often include very different kinds of members, and they adapt to those situations. The fact is that people are not prisoners of a rigid and stable personality framework. They can adjust their behavior to reflect the requirements of various situations. If traits aren't very good for predicting future employee behavior, what should managers use? The answer is: Past behaviors! The best predictor of a person's future behavior is his or her past behavior. So when interviewing candidates, ask questions that focus on previous experiences that are relevant to the current job opening.
THE TRUTH ABOUT LEADERSHIP Experience Counts! Wrong! In many instances, experience is the single most important factor in hiring and promotion decisions. Some inexperienced leaders have been outstandingly successful, while many experienced leaders have been outstanding failures. How could it be that experience doesn't make leaders more effective? Intuitively, it would seem that experience would provide learning opportunities that would translate into improved on-the-job leadership skills.The problem seems to be twofold. First, quality of experience and time in the job are not necessarily the same thing. Second, there is variability. between situations that influences the transferability of experience.
One flaw in the "experience counts" logic is the assumption that length of time on a job is actually a measure of experience. This says nothing about the quality of experience. The fact that one person has 20 years' experience while another has two years' doesn't necessarily mean that the former has had 10 times as many meaningful experiences. Too often, 20 years of experience is nothing other than one year of experience repeated 20 times! In even the most complex jobs, real learning typically ends after about two years. By then, almost all new and unique situations have been experienced. So one problem with trying to link experience with leadership effectiveness is not paying attention to the quality and diversity of the experience. Moreover, the situation in which experience is obtained is rarely comparable to new situations. It's critical to take into consideration the relevance of past experience to a new situation. When 'selecting people for leadership positions, be careful not to place too much emphasis on their experience. THE TRUTH ABOUT BUILDING TEAMS What We Know That Makes Teams Work Teams are hot! They have become an essential device for structuring job activities. But how do managers create effective teams? The key components making up effective teams can be subsumed into four general categories: work design, team composition, contextual influences and process variables. Teams work best when employees have freedom and autonomy, the opportunity to utilize different skills and talents, the ability to complete a whole and identifiable task or product, and a task or project that has a substantial impact on others. These characteristics enhance member motivation and team effectiveness because they increase members' sense of responsibility and ownership over the work; and because they make the work more interesting to perform.Composition includes variables that relate to how teams should be staffed: the ability and personality of team members, size of the team, member flexibility and members' preference for teamwork. To perform effectively, a team needs people with technical expertise, people with problem-solving and decision-making skills and people with good interpersonal skills. The most effective teams are neither very small (fewer than four or five) nor very large (12). The three most important contextual factors are adequate resources, effective leadership and a performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions. Each plays an important role in facilitating effective participation by team members. Process variables include member commitment to a common purpose, establishment of specific team goals and a managed level of conflict. Effective teams have a common and meaningful purpose that provides direction, momentum and commitment for members. Members of successful teams put a tremendous amount of time and effort into discussing, shaping and agreeing upon a purpose that belongs to them both collectively and individually.
Successful teams translate their common purpose into specific, measurable and realistic performance goals. These goals help teams maintain their focus on getting results. Conflict on a team isn't necessarily bad. Teams that are devoid of conflict are likely to become apathetic and stagnant. Conflict can improve team effectiveness when it stimulates discussion, promotes critical assessment of problems and options and leads to better team decisions. Stephen P Robbins, Ph.D., is the world's best selling textbook author in the areas of management and organizational behavior. His new book is published by Financial Times-Prentice Hall.
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