What is most desirable in a direct report? Question for managers and anyone who has or aspires to manage people.
Please participate in the LinkedIn poll:
http://polls.linkedin.com/p/28844/gnrnh
Pick one from the list:
- Intelligence
- Loyalty
- Honesty
- Punctuality
- Humor
Comments are appreciated, both here and on LinkedIn.
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There we go: Looks like
There we go: Looks like loyalty is now in the running.
William W. (Woody) Williams
Senior Project Manager
Software Development, PMO, IT Governance
My door64 Blog
enweave
From your list -
From your list - intelligence. But the honest answer is someone who doesn't need me to tell them what to do because they are experienced enough and smart enough to understand the task based on objectives, and simply come back to me with the job completed on time (or early).
I suppose that would be
I suppose that would be intelligence in the context of employment.
Jane Prusakova
Software Architect & Developer
My blog
Innate intelligence.
Innate intelligence. Someone who can think without being told. Someone who can do, without being supervised. Someone who understands with repetitive explanation.
How can you separate innate intelligence from intelligence in the context of employment? You either are you you are not (intelligent).
Some of this is entirely
Some of this is entirely role based, but for the most party Loyalty, Punctuality, and Honesty are as trite as "Don't kick puppies" and "Be nice to Mom".
Intelligence is key - Who doesn't want a smart person working for them, after all?
Emotional Intelligence, however, is critical. Emotional Intelligence is someone who recognizes their capabilities and their limitations. They are self-aware and consistently demonstrate self-control. They think before they act and they act in ways that are transparent. They don't have to be rocket surgeons, though typically that's not even remotely the case, but they can be consistently relied upon to do the right thing in any situation.
The people that have worked for me that I've appreciated the *most* are the ones that have enough self-confidence to go tackle things themselves and when things start to go south, or simply want to verify they are on the right track, have the smarts to see it coming and ask for help.
They know that the best thing they can do is keep me from being surprised. The absolute worst thing you can do to a manager is knock them on their heels because you were afraid or unprepared.
I can handle a dumb mistake by someone who figured it out early, realized they don't know the answer, and came clean. In fact, that person will get my respect early and I'll do everything I can to develop them because they've demonstrated they are taking a longer view.
What drives me nuts is someone who is shifty and lazy, or thinks that getting results they seek for themselves is more important than results that benefit everyone in the organization, even if it means they don't get the credit or the limelight.
I want confidence, humility, adaptability, organizational awareness, teamwork, and collaboration. More than anything else, I want them to have self-respect.
Help others and reap the rewards. Help only yourself and suffer the consequences.
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Jay Grady
jay@bootstrapservice.com
I'm curious, given the
I'm curious, given the nature of modern business, why such a high premium is being placed on loyalty by so many of those responding to the poll.
To me, it seems that loyalty to a company is simply not going to be reciprocated. An employee is, after all, a resource. If I am no longer of use to my employer for whatever reason--for example because my position has run its course, or it has been deemed one of the least essential during a wave of cost-cutting, or it has been outsourced or offshored--I fully expect that I will be let go, regardless of how my manager feels about me as a person, coworker, friend, etc. I'm OK with that. That's business.
It seems a bit much to me, though, to require that I not apply the same economic logic to my own decisions. If I find that I can do better in terms of some combination of salary, career advancement, benefits, contract terms, work/life balance, job satisfaction, and so on, why should I sacrifice that opportunity for an entity that would not make a similar sacrifice on my behalf?
To be clear, I'm not suggesting unethical or unprofessional behavior, such as walking off a job without notice, slacking on the job, or placing oneself at odds with a supervisor. I very much believe that if you're going to do a job, you should give 100 percent. It just seems a bit disingenuous to demand loyalty of an employee in a business culture that provides little security to the employee in return.
Maybe I'm using too narrow a definition of loyalty?
It depends on the job, of
It depends on the job, of course. If I'm hiring a plumber, I don't need them to be super-brilliant. I do want them to be more punctual than average as plumbers go. (If you don't understand why, you've never had a major plumbing problem and a flaky plumber.)
If I'm hiring an engineer, I place very different weights on these qualities. Typically these jobs are flexible enough about time that there is not even such a thing as "being 15 minutes late for work". High intelligence, on the other hand, is absolutely non-negotiable.
One quality that I didn't see on the list that I might have voted for is communication skills. Tech work is typically done in a group. Having one worker who can just not communicate, to the extent that any attempt to try to work with them is a migraine-inducing nightmare, really drags down productivity for everyone.
thank you! Jane
thank you!
Jane Prusakova
Software Architect & Developer
My blog
I couldn't agree more about
I couldn't agree more about communication skills. I've run into too many cases where that was an issue, and not always just with non-native English speakers or people who are 12 hours and 12,000 miles away. I've run into native speakers who just had bad communication skills or were grumpy/curmudgeonly/etc enough that they refused to communicate. You are not kidding about productivity hits caused by communication issues. Been there, done that.