Recruitment – the most important management skill
I have come to believe that of all the management practices and skills, recruitment is the single most important. The other skills will work if and only if the right people have been recruited. Jack Welch said that nothing matters more in winning than getting the right people on the field
Indeed Dan DiMicco, CEO of Nucor Steel, goes as far as to say:
Hire the right people, give them the resources and tools to do the job, and then get the hell out of their way.
If you recruit the right people, then everything else is fairly plain sailing. If you recruit the wrong people, then everything becomes really hard. Recruiting the wrong people will damage a large company and destroy a smaller company. I know this to my cost.
A manager’s job is to get things done (willingly) through people. The essence of the managerial job is to inspire, teach, develop and ultimately to delegate to people of ever-increasing knowledge, skill and confidence. However, this depends upon having the right people on board first.
What we are recognising, through the concept of tough love, is that ‘niceness’ is not the end point – that people can be challenged, exhorted, tested, extended and pushed a bit harder. Accepting low standards, ‘for fear of upsetting someone’, is not acceptable. As Stuart-Kotze says:
The behaviour centres on getting people to take responsibility for themselves, to challenge themselves, to take risks and stretch themselves, and to grow and develop.
Again, the right people can and will do this – given that they respect the organisation – while the wrong people will not.
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