To employ, Or not to employ … That is the question

Things are starting to look up and business is moving forward. Time to expand … hang on though! That involves recruitment! How do we know we’ll get the right person(s)?

Swiftly we go from a positive outlook to uncertainty, questioning if it’s the right thing to do! And that step forward becomes less attractive! Has this raised questions within your own company I wonder?

We’re not recruiters but what we do know is people are your biggest investment and, as importantly, your biggest asset so what happens when you take the plunge and bring them on board?

When employed you might expect them to be up and running straight away and forget it takes some a little longer to settle in!

If, they simply don’t seem to understand WHAT you’re telling them, this might be because of HOW you’re telling them!

Consider the following 7 Learning traits that we all fall into. See what your preferred style is and then how you go about understanding those coming on board thus helping/teaching the new recruit(s) according to ‘their’ thinking. Stephen Covey’s habit #5 depicts “Seek first to understand… Then to be understood”, master this and you will lead the way to communicating with those important assets.

VISUAL (SEEING):

• Prefer colour, layout, and spatial organisation in your relationship with ‘Visual’ words in your dialect (eg not just “It was large” but “It was as big as a hot-air balloon”).
• Use images, pictures and other visual media with colour highlighting major/minor associations.

AURAL (HEARING):

• Use sound to provide a background aiding visualisations.
• When creating reminders, make the most of rhythm and rhyme. Set them to create a jingle.

VERBAL (LINGUISTIC):

• Use role-playing to teach verbal exchanges such as negotiations sales or cold calls.
• Record your teachings and use it later for reviews.
• When you read content aloud, make it dramatic and varied.

KINESTHETIC (FEELING-TACTILE-PHYSICAL)

• Introduce writing and drawing of diagrams in your teaching.
• Use physical objects as much as possible.
• Describe the physical feelings of your actions.

LOGICAL (MATHEMATICS)

• They may find it challenging to change existing behaviours or habits.
• Create systems thinking to help understanding the bigger picture.
• Create and use lists by extracting key points from the teaching material.

SOCIAL (INTERPERSONAL):

• Sharing key information with others in groups aiding understanding by exploring all variations on a theme.
• Ask they share ideas and present to other people.
• Introduce role-playing.

SOLITARY (INTERNAL-EMOTIONAL):

• Self-study and solitude learning is preferred.
• Modelling is a powerful technique to help them associate themselves internally with others.
• Align objectives/goals with their beliefs and values.

The most important thing is to understand that we are not all the same and people aren’t being awkward or belligerent, it’s just that they may not ‘see’ things the same way as you (oops! That’s just given away my thinking style! Did you spot it?).

Coaching to Success use a myriad of tools to help get messages across to employees through their workshops and one-to-one sessions, should you be in a position to undergo employing new members of staff, contact Neil on 07761 187238 or email neil@coachingtosuccess.co.uk for an informal conversation to see how we can help increase the productivity of new staff or other matters concerning business development.