Put the extra effort into hiring. There are too many cases
where people are hired into
leadership because they were good supervisors at mid-management who had excellent professional and technical skills, but they might
have been lacking or short in
the people skills.
Far too many people end
up getting derailed or not
being successful at the highest leadership levels because
of those relationships. So,
for those top leadership positions where it’s really going
to be critical, it’s incumbent
upon us senior-level managers to go the extra step to
learn about the people that
you’re considering hiring,
and that means more than
just doing a review of the
application and talking to a
reference or two.
You have to take the time
to go and talk to people and
visit the organization, if possible, to discuss with a variety of different people that,
that person has been working with. I recently did that
in the process of hiring a
new chief academic officer.
I visited the campus and
spent a whole day talking to
the president, to peer vice
presidents and talking to the
persons who report directly
to her at the institution that
she’s been working at to get
a sense of those very issues.
It was clear that she was
professionally competent
and successful, but until you
go and sit down and talk
with people and ask them
questions about those people
skills and relationship issues,
it’s hard to really know.
HOW TO REACH: Broward Community College, (954) 201-7350 or www.broward.edu