We hope you are gleaning from our guest series, Why Did We Hire This Person” by Ben Dilla and Ron Evans. Part 5 is for organizations that have found themselves saying…
“We hired someone really different and now we find they’re not fitting in well.”
Congratulations, you succeeded in “breaking the mold” and finding someone with different background and experience who doesn’t look/talk/act like everyone else in the room. And suddenly that feels uncomfortable…for everyone. Differences that seemed engaging during the selection process just seem annoying now. You may have even hired the
person to do some things that no one else had been able to do, but now the organization has lost the collective will to follow through, and the new person may become “the biggest loser.”
Comment: Research and experience shows that an “onboarding” process with new hires can make a critical difference in assimilation into your organization as well as actual performance on the job. Several books have highlighted the first 3 months (90-100 days) as especially critical. Our experience says people may need support and coaching for six months or more to see a full cycle of organizational events and be able to “hit their stride.” Having an internal mentor can help, or an outside coach who knows your culture and can provide a safe person for the new executive to confide in. In cases where the new person has been brought in to do tasks that weren’t getting done, there has to be a commitment to “stay the course” and see difficult changes through, at least for a pre-specified period of time before you even consider giving up.