Develop leaders
When an organization is undergoing a transformation, many leaders try to develop “change agents” within the ranks — people who set a new example and advocate for the change.
You can apply the same idea when attempting to create a sense of stability in your company. When you’re trying to focus everyone on the same basic goals and objectives, particularly in a time of uncertainty, it helps to have leaders throughout the organization who can do the same.
“Again, a lot of it starts with me and my senior leadership team,” Proehl says. “We spend a lot of time talking about the culture, identifying overall values that people have and making sure they match our values system.”
By clearly identifying your vision and the principles upon which your culture is based, you’ll be able to better identify what you want in a management-level employee. Forming those parameters is a critical step, because finding the right leaders for your company starts during the recruiting process.
It’s much easier to hire someone with a matching values set than it is to mold someone who doesn’t quite fit.
“It’s hard to change people’s values systems,” he says. “If someone’s personal values don’t match with what you have developed for the company, it’s probably not going to be a good fit, and either they’re not going to be happy or you’re not going to be happy with them. That’s why you spend a lot of time during the interview process trying to determine whether they’re going to fit culturally.”
Proehl and his leadership team send each management candidate through different rounds of interviews with representatives from various departments. The multipronged interview approach helps develop a wide range of perspectives on the candidate.
“Some people interview for technical or scientific skills, while others might interview more on the cultural fit side,” Proehl says. “When we debrief each other on the candidate, we talk about not only whether the person has the skills and experience to do the job but whether they fit within the
c
ulture.”
Each interviewer poses an assortment of situational questions to the interviewee, aimed at getting a feel for how he or she would approach a cultural or ethical dilemma and the process behind their approach.
“You want to see how they’d react under stress, under pressure, in a given situation,” Proehl says. “You get them to explain their processes and how they found a solution.
“A lot of this you can also find through the process of checking references. The reality is, you can try to interview some of this out of folks, but if you’re really good at asking the right questions of references, you start to get a feel for how they interact with people and how they fit within a company.”
Managers need to have both the technical skills and the cultural fit for the job. However, Proehl says the cultural fit is the pivotal factor. Leaders need to focus their people on the goals and mission at hand, no matter what distractions might be buzzing around the company. With that in mind, if a candidate has the skills for the job but isn’t a cultural fit or a competent communicator, Proehl and his staff will look elsewhere.
Good leaders have some common skills and characteristics, all of which can help keep the company informed and focused during a challenging time.
“Leaders in an organization need good interpersonal skills, of course,” Proehl says. “They need the ability to think strategically but also do things tactically. We look for people who have the ability to wear multiple hats, the ability to do two or three different things. And you want someone who genuinely enjoys what they’re doing. If someone is just going through the motions, it becomes pretty obvious. Those are the primary things you want to look for.”
