[推荐]像园丁一样栽培你的员工

像园丁一样栽培你的员工
The Head Gardener
Sharman勋爵
Aegis集团主席

You must focus on the strengths of an individual – what they’re good at rather than what they’re not so good at. The reason I say that is because you can’t build on a weakness. A weakness is there: it’s something you have to take into account, but the way in which you get superior performance out of a group of people is to figure out what they’re good at and then get them into a role that uses that to the maximum advantage.

I’m very fond of gardening myself and I’m fond of gardening examples. To some degree, developing people in an organization is impossible. You can’t develop them – they develop themselves and so your job is like that of a head gardener. You figure out what the various micro-climates are around the place and then you figure out the qualities of the plants that you need to go into those micro-climates. Then you select the people based on their strengths and place them in those jobs. I’ve seen notes of appraisal interviews, which say that two-thirds of the interview is spent talking about what the guy’s not good at. Now, that’s great; I can’t imagine anybody coming out of an interview like that feeling anything other than very depressed.

What you want to do is spend time talking about what the person is good at and how he’s going to develop that. Sure, see whether you can do something about the weaknesses, but to my way of thinking appraisal interviews should be two-thirds about what the person is good at and how those great assets can be used within the organization. If you look at good coaches in the sports field – and I’ve always been fascinated about how good coaches work – they don’t actually coach technique very often. The really good coaches are the ones that coach the mind and the attitude.

You’ll always have people who find it much easier to be critical than to be encouraging. The tone at the top has got to be right. If you start criticizing your colleagues about what they’re bad at all the time rather than encouraging them, that’s sure as hell going to get down through the organization very quickly.

When I was at KPMG I insisted that one of the senior guys used to meet every person joining the organization. It didn’t matter whether they were a typist, telephonist graduate recruit or somebody being brought in as a senior manager, the induction programs were always attended by people at the top level of the organization. I used to do half a dozen a year myself.

In some organizations, sponsorship is extremely strong and extremely important and there’s the notion that you’re not going to get anywhere unless you work for him or her – that you have to go and work for them to get on. I don’t think that’s desirable but I do think having someone that takes an interest in you and helps you over the bad times as well encouraging you through the good, is very important: particularly to young individuals and in retaining people. With people-based industries, every time you lose somebody you’re losing an investment. People don’t like me saying this but it’s like writing off a piece of new plant. If you had to write off a production facility because it was no longer useful to you, people would get quite exercised about the impact on the accounts. If you lose ten guys or girls who you’ve spent the last five years developing, that’s as big an investment; it just doesn’t show up on the balance sheet.

        你必须关注员工个人的优势与长处，重视他们擅长的领域而非他们的缺点。我这样说是因为你不能依赖员工的缺点。缺点确实存在，也是你必须考虑的因素，但你若是想从员工团队中获得较高水平的绩效表现，你必须了解他们擅长的领域，最大程度地发挥他们的优势。

　　 我喜欢自我培养，也喜欢培养榜样。在某种程度上，在企业中培养人才是做不到的。你无法去培养他们，只能让他们实现自我发展，因此你的工作就好比一个首席园丁。你要了解你周围存在的各种微观环境，了解在这样的微观环境中员工需要怎样的素质。然后根据他们的优势与长处，进行人才选拔，将他们分派到适合的岗位上。我看过不少个人评估的谈话记录，2/3的评估是在谈论员工的缺点。这下可好，那些员工从会议室里走出来的时候，我想象不出他们除了沮丧还会有什么别的表情。

　　 你需要做的是，花时间讨论员工的长处，以及如何帮助他们进一步发展。当然，无论你是否能够帮助员工克服缺点，我认为，在评估谈话中，2/3的关注内容应该是员工的长处及如何在企业里发挥这些长项。看看体育赛场上那些优秀的教练，我常常被他们的做事风格吸引，其实他们往往不是在传授技能。真正优秀的教练是那些向队员传授思想与态度的教练。

　　 总有一些人会认为，做出批评比给出鼓励更容易。高层的话总是对的。如果你总是批评同事哪里做的不对，而不去鼓励他们，那很快就会对企业造成破坏性的效果。

　　 我在毕马威工作时，我坚持认为高级管理人员应该亲自面试每一位新员工。不论是打字员、接线生还是高级经理，企业的高层领导应该参与到他们的入门指导计划中。我一年中会参加6次这样的计划。

　　 在一些企业里，“担保人”发挥着非常重要的作用，如果你不为这些人工作，你将得不到任何机会，因此你必须讨好他们。我认为这不合适，但是拥有一位良师益友却很重要，他会在不好的时期帮助你，在好的时期鼓励你，特别是年轻人，同时有助于留住人才。在以人为本的行业中，每当你失去一位多年培养及栽培的员工时，就意味着你白白投资了一笔。尽管这话不太妥当，但这的确就好比是报废掉了一棵成长中的大树。如果你报废的是一台失去利用价值的生产设备，那肯定要分析它对账务的影响。但如果你失去十位你花费五年时间栽培的员工，那意味着你损失了一大笔投资，尽管这在资产负债表上无法显现出来。

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