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HELP I hired an Idealist

Written by: Jeremy Heighton

Article Overview: Using the ideals of your more youthful staff can be a great strategy for creating buy-in and ownership at the staff level

HELP I hired an Idealist

Recently I have been working with a young woman who has a very strongly entrenched set of personal ideals. By this I mean that she has a preconceived idea of how others should behave, what types of interactions should be tolerated, what is right and wrong and what is generally acceptable. To me this sounds like a person with a well defined personal compass, right?

Many leaders are able to recount a time when a young idealistic employee joined their ranks. This person comes in bubbling with enthusiasm about how they are going to change the world to meet their expectations or ideals only to fail miserably for some unknown reason. Soon, they settle for the realities of the workplace and grudgingly accept their place in life, their spark extinguished and their enthusiasm waning.

Leaders identify idealists by the way they seem to drift away from other employees. Often these employees can’t identify with other's behavioral uniqueness, they are often critical of entrenched policies and procedures, and they may be quite vocal about their general discontent. The challenge as leaders is to take the time to work with these young idealistic employees so they retain their enthusiasm, while redirecting their expectations and ideals to the realities of the work environment.

The best method of redirection is coaching. When coaching your staff, always tune the conversation to how the employee will benefit or gain from refined behaviours or interactions. Find ways to gently identify methods for the employee to engage with others more effectively. Most importantly, identify that their behaviours are having consequences with others.

Idealists generally are not trying to create dissent or conflict. Usually they are trying to resolve the gap between their perception of the world and realities of the world they live in.

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Article Tags: behaviours, conflict, consequences, discontent, dissent, gap, perception, personal compass, personal ideals, policies and procedures, preconceived idea, realities, redirection, uniqueness, work environment, young woman



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