Is Reward Seeking Behavior the Key to Success?

Recently HVS Executive Search conducted interviews with three male executives and a breakfast brief made up of approximately 12 women and three men. One of the males in this group suggested that males spend 50% of their time doing a good job and 50% of the time seeking approval and are therefore more visible. This high visibility is the key to their success. He went on to suggest that women spend all of their time doing a good job and do not seek approval. This behavior, therefore, is the key to their lack of visibility and drives their failure. In another interview, one of the executives suggested that males climb the corporate ladder because of their visibility due to the approval they seek for doing a good job. This is interesting fodder for discussion. However, we know through the use of assessments, that both men and women seek rewards for their work. The other two drivers for success mentioned in the interviews by various contributors were development and relationships.

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Is Your Team Unstoppable?

Several sports have handicaps. For example, golf, bowling, and polo all have a handicap as a part of play. Sometimes people have handicaps as well. Some people might use the simplest handicap as an excuse for not pursuing success.  Teams are especially good at this.

Excuses like not trusting one another, a lack of communication, misunderstandings, or misguided perceptions of one another. However, building trust, learning how to communicate with one another, reducing misunderstandings, and clearing up perceptions are tools that can help lead your team to success. However, we often avoid using these or a myriad of other useful tools because of our perceived handicaps.

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How To Keep Your Customers Enthusiastic

Life-long learning has become one of our society’s most recent buzzwords. But it does not have to be just a buzzword that runs through our collective minds and goes in one ear and out the other. It is a phrase that should not be placed in the same category as “Groovy man” or “Yeah, Baby”. Instead life long learning has proven to be a catalyst for inspiring your customers to do business with your company. Here is how it works:

Of course there are the obvious means to life long learning like going to school, reading books, reading industry relevant newsletters, periodicals, etc. But there is another avenue to pursue that not only leads to the acquiring of new knowledge but also adds interaction, enthusiasm, networking and that sparks new ideas. This avenue is joining an association, being active in that association and attending workshops and conventions put on by that association. Let me give you an example.I am a member of the National Speakers Association. Each year the association puts on a national convention as well as a winter workshop, one for the Eastern United States and one for the Western United States. Some people attend all three every year as well as their local chapter meetings. Recently I attended one of the winter workshops. While I was at the workshop, I made many new contacts, each of whom were doing many diverse projects to help their respective business grow. We shared our ideas, questions and suggestions. My head was almost bursting with new ideas and concepts. At one point, I sat down at a table and I almost could not get my pencil to move quickly enough to keep up the ideas spilling out of my head and onto the paper.

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The Value of Self-Evaluations

During a recent meeting with some associates, the topic of Performance Appraisals was addressed. This led to the issue of self-evaluations. Several associates stated: “I don’t like to do the self-evaluations”. Other associates asked, “Why do we have to do self-evaluations?”. Still others thought it was a waste of time because they felt that employees would just rate themselves as excellent in every category. What if we understood the real value of self-evaluations? What if self-evaluations could be a practical and useful tool for us to use to make our work lives better? This article will address each of these three concerns and help you to understand the role of self-evaluations in your success. Taking these concerns in order, the first is: “I don’t like to do the self-evaluations”.

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Are You Using LUCK or LOGIC?

We have all heard this story over and over again. “Our new hire had all the right experience, good references, and interviewed like a champ! But here it is, six weeks later, and he’s just not working out. We can’t ignore the fact that he’s simply wrong for the job, and we made yet another hiring mistake. Now, we have to start all over again!”

The Luck of the Draw

Does “The Luck of the draw” describe your hiring system? If your hiring system consists of finding warm bodies, or hiring the first person that applies, or hiring the one with the slickest resume, you are doomed to repeat the above scenario and your luck may be about to run out if you continue to select talent the way you always have, hoping that you will be luckier next time

Today with intangible assets accounting for much of a business’s market value, something has to change.

“Luck never made a man wise” (Seneca – Roman philosopher). What does make
one wise is to establish an integrated hiring system. Building such a system might appear to be a huge change for some organizations, however, this system can help you hire the right talent for the job, reduce costly hiring errors, grow your profits, and make your competition wonder how you got so lucky.

What’s In Your Hiring System?

A totally integrated hiring system goes far beyond ads, recruiting, applications, background checks, etc. While these are basic components of most every organization’s hiring scheme, they are not enough to ensure that you will hire the best fit for the job, reduce turnover, or increase productivity. You know, like finding a four leaf clover with every hire.

So, which option would you select to remedy ineffective hiring practices?

1. Interview more people, faster!
2. Throw all your resources into recruiting!
3. Find and implement a more effective hiring system!

If you chose number three, you are on the right track. You are beginning to realize that continuing to hire as you always have will not move your business forward or reduce hiring costs. A new emphasis on identifying and retaining top talent is far overdue.

So, are you willing to invest in a new, logical approach? Or are you going to test your luck against the odds?
Thank you for reading this blog. For more information on better hiring practices, call 404.320.7834 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Logical Strategies for Organizational Change

Many businesses are still practicing talent mismanagement through “fire, ready, aim” rather than “ready, aim, fire.” Although you might get lucky and this approach may work, implementing a more logical and effective process for selecting top talent is the key to your company’s future success.

One approach starts with a clear definition of the key jobs your company has to fill. You will have a much better chance of finding the right fit for a job if you first define the job, then hire the talent that matches the job. Yet, this concept is still too new for many businesses. Besides, is it possible to measure a job and then apply the same measurement to talent?

Yes! It is possible! And you can take advantage of a patented, time-tested approach that has proven to be beneficial for many companies in the typical, “unlucky” hiring situation. Performance Strategies’ benchmarking process will help you define jobs and identify matching talent with factual, unbiased measurements. It’s a matter of beginning your next hiring process by assessing the job first and quantifying its top three to five key accountabilities. The rest will be a guide for objectively assessing and hiring matching talent.

So why wait? Increase your “luck” in finding the right person for the job by adding this new, “logical” assessment methodology to your current hiring process to help prevent poor hires and the related drain on your business. Your investment in an effective talent selection process will undoubtedly be a valuable decision in the future success of your business!

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