Are you creating drones or superstars?

• Author: Dee, Kevin M.
• Position: HR Matters

Are you creating the workforce you want or a bunch of drones just putting in their time until something better comes along? Are you hiring people who are different and bring new perspectives and creativity to the team? Or do they all act and look a bit like you? Have you fully assessed what your group needs in order to meet the challenges facing them now and in the future? Your very survival as a company may depend on how you answer these questions.

Little Boxes

We as a species are really, really good at sorting things. We sort and classify things all day without even thinking about it. This ability can be our worst enemy or our best trait. We have survived on this planet by being able to differentiate. We separated the foods that nourish us from those that may kill us. We learned to sift through the background noise and separate out the signals of danger heading our way. Today our brains work similarly. Just think back to the last car you bought--or even just wanted. Did you start seeing it everywhere? That's because we told ourselves to pay attention.

Our brains respond and sort out all the other clutter, so you can glance over in traffic and immediately notice the car that's on your mind. Our brains are wired to see that which we program ourselves to look for. Therein lies the problem. If we program in the wrong things we will get the wrong results. In business, our wiring can work for us or against us when it comes to creating high performing teams.

Many employers and managers naturally want to group and classify people by their age, looks, or demeanor so sorting people into little boxes is easy to do. They are "Generation X" or "Y" or "Millennials" (along with a whole host of other terms). There are papers and articles devoted to describing each one, their strengths and weaknesses and so on, so we can put them in the proper box.

Seek to Diversify

When hiring a candidate, we interview them not looking for what the team needs but whether they "fit" into the team or one of the boxes we have in mind. We commonly call this box a job description. Rarely does a team seek out someone different than their groupthink or style. Similarly, who can say they specifically sought out a lazy person to improve efficiency within a company? Yet it is the lazy person who may find the simplest and most efficient way to do things.

A famous general in World War I, Baron von Hammerstein-Equord, uniquely classified his officers: "Anyone who is both clever and...