How To Evaluate Your People In 2 Simple Steps

We're big on keeping things simple. Whether it be in life or in our business coaching practice when advising our clients. Basically you can evaluate your people in two broad categories:

1. Skills
2. Attitude

It boils down to this:

1. If someone has the wrong skills AND they have a bad attitude, YOU SHOULD GET RID OF THEM IMMEDIATELY!
2. If someone has EITHER great skills or a great attitude, then should invest in improving the weak area (i.e. the skills or the attitude).
3. If someone has BOTH the skills and the attitude, promote them as fast as you can and include them in as many things in your organization as you can. This is someone you want in your organization for the long haul.

Poor Skills & Bad Attitude
It never ceases to amaze us how many companies employ people who have poor skills and bad attitudes. We've seen it in both our big corporate days as well as in the small business world.

This employee is typically not the result of a bad hiring decision. Instead, they are usually a long-term employee who had some relevant skills when they were first hired, but they have not continued to hone their skills to get better over the years and the skills they brought are no longer as relevant in today's market.

A good example would be someone who doesn't have strong computer skills, but is in an administrative or support role. Chances are there are significant advances in technology over the past several years and decades that could make them better at their jobs if they had the proper training.

Those poor skills are a drag on the organization. While things may still get done, chances are they are not getting done as quickly as they could with someone who is well trained. That equates to higher costs in your business and less profit for you.

If you throw a bad attitude on top of the poor skills, things only get worse. Have you ever tried to train someone who has a bad attitude? It doesn't work. Even if they get some training, it typically won't stick because they'll find excuses to not change doing what they're doing.

If someone in your organization has poor skills, chances are your other employees are spending a lot of their time fixing that person's mistakes. Eventually your other employees will not be able to catch all the mistakes their co-worker is making and some mistakes will get out to your customers.

This is true whether the person lacking skills has a bad attitude or not. If they also have a bad attitude, the co-workers may just simply give up trying to cover for their co-worker's incompetence because they're hoping to get rid of that person.

Ridding your organization of this person will truly be addition by subtraction. Your remaining employees will thank you.

Great Skills OR Great Attitude
If someone has a great attitude but poor skills, get that person trained on the skills they need. With their great attitude they'll most likely learn those required skills in a hurry.

If they have a poor attitude but great skills, your job is to figure out why they have a poor attitude and get it corrected as quickly as possible. Few things are as infectious as attitude (whether it be a good or bad attitude).

If after some effort either the skills or attitude don't improve, then this person should also be removed from the organization. You won't be successful with each person, but they are at least worth the effort.

Great Skills & Great Attitude
This is the Holy Grail when it comes to employees. Imagine how good your organization would be if it was filled with people who have great skills and attitudes? There's nothing you can't accomplish.

The reason they have great skills is because they are constantly learning. Their great attitude enables them to continue to look forward and work on things they can impact. They realize they can't do anything about what happened yesterday and that there's nothing they can't accomplish tomorrow!

Identify which people in your organization are in this class and do everything you can to keep them in your organization and make sure you continue to help them improve their skills.

Just because someone is in this category today, doesn't ensure that they'll be there tomorrow. If they are surrounded by people with poor skills and bad attitudes, they'll do one of two things: i) they'll leave to find a place that has people with great skills and great attitudes, or ii) they'll begin to develop a bad attitude and let their skills slip so they come down to the level of their fellow employees.

Evaluating your people is one of those things that should be done on an ongoing basis, not once a quarter or every six months or once a year.

Keep it as simple as always evaluating someone's skills and attitude. Then you'll stay on the right track and your people will never be your problem.

If you make it a point to stress that you'll only hire and retain people with positive attitudes, then all you have to focus on is improving skills. That's what companies like Southwest Airlines do. They "hire for attitude and train for aptitude." Maybe it's not just dumb luck that in an industry that has lost money for its entire history that Southwest Airlines has always made money.