When it is time to grow your management team it can be a frightening experience. How do we know if this person will fit in? How do we know if this person will help build the kind of culture we want to create?
There are a few tricks of the trade that have proven to be effective. You just need to create situations where people show their true character.
A common technique that I have found to be effective is the “waiter test.” You can learn a lot about how a person really treats other people by taking them out to eat and observing how he treats the waiter or waitress. USA Today credits the first official documentation of this technique to Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson in his book Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management.
Among those 33 rules is only one that Swanson says never fails: “A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person.”
I had an entrepreneur in a growth management seminar I teach offer his “bowling test” as an example of how to judge character. He and his partners in their engineering firm wanted to create a culture that was not too stuffy. They did not want a firm that was populated by engineers who were “full of themselves.” So part of the interviewing process was to take prospective engineers bowling. If they had a good time and enjoyed themselves, they passed the first screen. If they seemed uncomfortable or even embarrassed, they probably would not fit in.
A local coffee shop owner has applicants fill out an application that includes two questions:
If you could have a 1-hour conversation with anyone living or dead, who would it be and what would you talk about?
If you were to write an autobiography, what would the title be? Explain.
He understands that his coffee shop is as much about the atmosphere as it is the coffee. So he wants to fill his stores with interesting people. I doubt Starbucks pays that close attention to its hourly employees.
We had our “receptionist test.” I gave our receptionist veto power over all major hires who came in for an interview. If they were rude or condescending toward her, they never came back for another visit. If she gave the thumbs up, we would invite them back for the “real interview.” We wanted staff who could work in a flat structure where all employees play a key role. (The receptionist was considered part of our marketing team due to her close interaction with customers day-to-day).
Know what is key to your culture and find ways to assess all hires that come into your business to assure that they will fit in. (And by the way…yes, it is legal to screen for fit with culture as long as you do not use it to discriminate against a protected class of people).