When Tony Argiz was rising through the ranks of his accounting and consulting firm, he took every evaluation seriously. If just one employee criticized him, he would devote the next year to improving that aspect of his leadership style.
Now as CEO and managing partner of Morrison, Brown, Argiz & Farra LLP, he encourages his 261 employees to seek progress in their career paths, as well.
“Obviously, they’re our No. 1 asset. It starts with our employees,” says Argiz, who led the company to fiscal 2008 revenue of $60.2 million. “If our employees aren’t happy and they’re not developing, we can’t really grow, and clients are going to not be satisfied.”
Argiz uses employees’ personality profiles to pair them with mentors and to deliver their evaluations. All the while, he stays in touch on a personal level to see how they’re tracking.
Smart Business spoke to Argiz about guiding your employees toward development.
Match mentors by personality. At the time of hire, we do a personality index on the individual. It’s called a predictive index. From 120 questions, it gives you four main components of the employees: whether they have leadership skills, whether they’re introverted or extroverted, whether they’re multitasked, and whether they’re detailed.
We determine: Is she going to be a business development person? Is it someone that is going to be more technical? We look at their strengths and try to gear them in developing their careers based on that personality index.
You use the input from the mentor’s PI and you also look at the new employee’s PI to match them based on personality. If their predictive index indicates that that employee is quite extroverted, that might be someone that we could develop as a business development [person]. They’re going to try to match that person with a mentor that’s been successful in the business development area. Or if that employee shows that they’re very detailed and multitasked and introverted, they might go to someone that’s highly technical.
One supervisor might have five mentees. They will go to lunch with them once a month and try to give them ideas: ‘What are your problems? What are you doing to succeed in your career? Are you getting your MBA? Are you studying for your CPA exam? Do you want to develop in other areas?’ Try to get that information upfront so that employees’ development path can be monitored and assisted.
We do it on a 12-month basis, so they have the ability every year to select someone else that they feel might have more of their traits. The only rules are that it be in the same department. You don’t want a mentor for an auditor to be in the tax department, because they really don’t work with each other. It has to be a supervisor that’s constantly working with that employee so they can help them through their careers on a day-to-day basis.