Have you ever encountered a manipulative coworker, team member, or candidate?
Today we would like to tell you a story that happened to one of our clients and what to do to prevent or handle a similar situation.
One of our clients happened to find a great candidate to take on the role of General Manager. This was a person who seemed to know exactly how to achieve individual and team results and furthermore was able to keep them motivated and aligned with the company targets. At first glance, an ideal candidate.
As the new General Manager of the company, this person started suggesting and changing processes and strategies for the Operations Manager; a team member who has been at the company for 8 years now.
The Operations Manager had established and developed a system of employee training that boosted productivity and performance. The company was doing much better than years before having a system running.
The new General Manager appealed and manipulated the owner by suggesting that the training plan was costing the company too much money without producing results and that the employees promoted by the Operations Manager were being paid ridiculously high salaries. He convinced the business owner of changes in the field that they did not understand and gave instructions to stop the program and cut wages causing chaos in the company.
A few months later, the team wasn’t doing well, and neither was the new General Manager. He didn’t produce what was meant and was even worse, destabilized the team and dropped the team morale by changing a few of the systems previously used in the company.
The owner almost lost everything because of a bad hire!
After a while, we realized the HR manager and owner had decided not to complete the reference checks as they were too impressed by this person!
The moral of the story:
Reference checks can save your business from situations like this!
A manipulator will try to convince you of the correctness of an idea, opinion, or action that is not yours. This person will play dishonest behaviours that harm others with the only objective of destroying and destabilising. It is more important to them to maintain their status and position.
We recommend that when hiring people, you always look at the real valuable results behind the candidates. Only then will you know that you can make an informed decision and trust that the candidate will add value to your company.
If you are not sure how or even where to start on reference checks. We can teach you!
Our next Performance Hiring Training will be on the 18th – 20th of November one of the most important topics covered during this amazing training is how to do a proper reference check.
We wish you the best and what we want for you, is to never, ever allow a manipulator to enter the team and business you’ve worked so hard to build and thus never cause you any damage