New Hires

When you hire new employees after years of having tenured staff, you quickly recognize all the things you previously said or acted upon where you didn’t give much contemplation due to the similar footing everyone shared.  Things like work attire, schedules, acronyms, and processes take on new meaning to a novice entering a company.  Hiring staff is an opportunity to reflect upon former ways of doing things while bringing newness into the fold.  Making assumptions is a remedy for confusion and chaos if you aren’t deliberate in your approach as the manager.

Even if you aren’t a supervisor in an organizational sense, we all manage areas of our lives: our homes, social endeavors, work capacity, etc.  When we get overly comfortable in those settings it is easy to assume that everyone is on the same page.  It’s understandable to falsely believe that everyone involved speaks the same language, holds the same shared values, and has the same beliefs.

For example, the other day I was rambling on about something to my kids and they informed me that my words made no sense to them.  We got a kick out of the fact that I was so tired I was conveying instructions in an utterly incoherent fashion.  However, what if this conversation had unfolded when we were under stress, if it was regarding something very important, or it was a novel concept they were seeking to understand?  I doubt we would have found the humor then.

If we transfer the freshness of a new hire/management perspective to routine things we do in life, I am confident we would provide more clarity and dialogue to those who need it.  It’s easy to slip into autopilot without remembering that many times people benefit from more direction and insight.  Additionally, it’s simple to forget that people need compassion and understanding in areas we take for granted.  We were all novices at one point, so a shift in viewpoints can help everyone navigate life with less tumult.  When we interact by changing our pace, providing different types of information, or opening our emotional bandwidth, others get the opportunity to grow quicker and with fewer errors.  This, in turn, should help reduce our level of frustration as well.  So, it’s a win-win when we pivot.  The newbie isn’t the only beneficiary of our change because authentic living is about continually evaluating the handbook of life.

Changepoints:

Remember when you started a new occupation and what was effective or ineffective in your onboarding:

·      How would you define a good supervisor-subordinate relationship in the broader sense of just employment?

·      What does it look like from your lens to effectively make something approachable or digestible for the sake of in-depth learning?

·      In what areas of your life could you provide more detailed feedback, transparent interactions, or benefit-of-the-doubt to those less seasoned than yourself?

·      How will you ensure that you instill patience as you allow others, and yourself, to grow?

o   Who models these virtues in your life so that you can replicate similarities?

o   How will you create checks-and-balances for yourself to prevent the habit of slipping into autopilot? 

Let’s try not to forget that before we could run, we learned how to walk.  And, before we mastered walking, we first started by crawling.  So, too, should our interactions be shaped with those around us.  Not everything in this world comes with an instructional manual, so we have opportunities to create safe spaces to grow and develop when we consider that most of life is really a process of onboarding into the unknown.

outSIGHTin, LLC: Creating awareness as a changepoint for improved organizational results.