I Have Bad News. Your New Hire Doesn’t Know Jack!

Your new hire has all the enthusiasm in the world but very little know how on the job. Anyone ever experience this gut wrenching feeling?  If you have you’re not alone.

It’s 7:00am and you get to work early and realize Jack starts today.  You quickly get your day started knowing this is going to be a major, yet necessary distraction to your day.  You’re working fast and furious when your phone rings, Jack has arrived.  You bring him into the office and start the process of showing him the basics – where the bathrooms are and where the coffee/lunch room is located.  As you walk him around, you dread the next 30 minutes, saying the same thing 20 times to all the people you will be introducing him to – what a pain.  You can’t wait to get him into his space and get back to what you are hired to do, lead the team and your people. 

But now that the excitement of the introductions and getting comfortable has worn off and you are now at a point where you need to get Jack to work, you just get hit in the gut.  You just spent an hour with him and realize Jack doesn’t know jack about what you do or how you do it.  This is when the real anxiety and stress kicks in and now you need a plan of how you are going to get him up to speed and get him productive as possible – not just for his sake but for your sake as well so you can get back to doing what you need to do.  Without a plan and without a process, this can be one of the most painful times for a leader and manager. 

The excitement will burn out quickly and be lost if you don’t implement a clear management strategy to ensure your employee learns the job quickly and develops the necessary skills to deliver your product. Many managers mistakenly interpret enthusiasm for competence and the two couldn’t be more different. It is your job to be a good steward of their beginner’s enthusiasm by telling them exactly what to do again and again and again. Model it for them. Show them what a good job looks like. Share examples. Take on a directive style of leadership for this situation and your new employee will interpret it as safe structure and guidance. This is the stage to micromanage for a season…. with the intent to make your employee self-sufficient.  But if you approach this with a process and a plan, this can help eliminate one of the biggest pains in your neck as a manager.

As a leader it is important to understand the difference between enthusiasm and competence in your employees. For further information see Ken Blanchard's outstanding book, Self Leadership & the One Minute Manager.

About Me

Why would anyone want to listen to me? Why does the world need another blog and another conversation? What do I have, if anything, that would benefit you or anyone else out there? These are the tough questions I have asked myself and thanks to the advice and encouragement of others, I have the answer.

What person on this planet hasn’t heard of and been fascinated by the Yo-Yo? Yo-yos were my life for 13 years and where I got started in my career as I worked for a start up company presenting motivational programs in elementary schools. I was the “Yo-Yo Man” and traveled to all 50 states and 4 continents sharing stories of inspiration, motivation, and encouragement to tens of thousands of children and adults around the world. I was “the show” for 13 years – the way that kids could connect and realize they were important and had a lot to offer the world.

Fast forward to today and while the faces have changed and are now business leaders, owners, executives and management, my message is still the same – inspiration, motivation and encouragement around helping them alleviate one of the biggest headaches they all have, managing people. What makes this even more of an issue is when they have to deal with temporary workers to solve immediate and time sensitive needs. This is where I can help put the pieces of the puzzle together for them and allow them to see how they can significantly reduce this burden.

The Yo-Yo has so many analogies and connections to business and people. It helps me connect with them and discuss in fun and relevant ways how they can eliminate the headaches of their HR issues when bringing people into their organization. They are messages around motivation, encouragement, integrating people into their organization, getting the most out of people (temporary or permanent), team building, support, leadership, and many other issues they deal with daily. This is where I can help and through my stories and experiences, relate this in a way everyone, young and old, can appreciate.

I hope you read and enjoy. This is meant to be an “interaction” for everyone reading, not my oratory on life alone. I look forward to meeting you through my blog and learning about you as well.

Michael