Whenever I go to an event, church, the movies or any other place where people sit auditorium style, I have a problem. It is a big problem. It is a problem that affects less than one half of one percent of the US population. It is ironic because in many ways it is an advantage and I would never trade it for not having it. However, it is an issue in these instances. I am pretty tall (six feet six inches). I know, I know, I can hear all the 99.5% of the world telling me ‘cry me a river’… But at events, it means I am worried about the people behind me not being able to see. My family always wants to sit toward the front and I always want to sit in the back… You can see it on the faces of the people behind me as I walk up to the seat. The eyes roll, the deep sighs happen… They look at me hoping I will keep going… I am pretty sure they think I have chosen the wrong seat.
In our business, we do this all of the time. We put people in the wrong order. We ask them to do things they shouldn’t do. We allow them to choose what they want to do. What if instead of randomly placing people in an auditorium, we did it by what makes sense? We put the shorter group to the front and put the larger folks toward the back? From a viewing standpoint, it would make a lot more sense right? Everyone would be able to better do what we were there to do. Think of your company in the same way. Do you have people doing accounting that aren’t passionate and focused on numbers and balance? Do you have sales people that struggle to close? Do you have managers that were good at their previous job but now struggle to deal with their new responsibilities? Your theater is possibly just in the wrong order.
Having people in the wrong spot causes a great deal of stress on the team. Anyone worth their salt as a coach or trainer can tell you that given enough motivation, anyone can accomplish just about any role in the organization for a short period of time. I have had people tell me that they absolutely can not ask a closing question. They are just too uncomfortable. However if I tell them their life depends on it, they will close with the best of them. The problem is that you can’t use that extreme of motivation with people. One, it isn’t good for their psyche, two, they won’t stay long. Asking people to do things that are out of their natural abilities causes them to expend huge amounts of energy to alter their personality. I refer to this a lot when reviewing personality profiles with people. The profile doesn’t tell you what you can or can’t do… Rather it tells you what your natural tendencies are. What you are most comfortable with. If someone is an introvert, they can be extroverted. They just have to have the right motivation and enough energy to make it happen.
The best scenario is one where everyone is doing a job that takes advantage of their natural tendencies and we shore them up where they are weak. An example: I am not a natural detail person. I tend to focus on big pictures and broad strokes of the brush. I generally hire detail-oriented people for my team. They love checking spelling and making sure web photos line up. They generally don’t prefer to be ‘on stage’ in front of people. We balance each other. There have been times where I had
people on my team that had to move seats. We started in one place and realized that the job had changed into something else or that we misread their strengths. After moving them to a new slot, many times a team member that was struggling became a huge success.
Don’t keep people in their current ‘seat’ just out of convenience. It is not only holding them back, it is holding your organization back. What if every member of your team was a superstar at their position? What if all of them said, “I love what I do!”? Assess your team, both by watching and maybe even having profiles done. Talk to them about what they enjoy and dislike about their current position. See if there are synergies where you could move duties around to make everyone do as many things that they love as possible. Even if you can’t make the move, just asking the question and recognizing the challenges will cause a boost. And if you can make the move… the improvement in production and morale will be monstrous. Now go make something happen!