When hiring, promoting, even just putting together your team, you should look for the smartest people in the room, right? Not so fast.
Intelligence is one of those characteristics where there is a minimum level needed to be in the game. Once past that, too much intelligence can be a drawback or worse. Interesting situation is it not?
Intelligence is one of those characteristics where there is a minimum level needed to be in the game. Once past that, too much intelligence can be a drawback or worse. Interesting situation is it not?
Certainly, the job for which you’re hiring makes a difference. I do want big-time intelligence for researchers, analysts, and coders, but you can lock those folks in a room and let them do their thing because they work on their own. If they lack emotional intelligence or interpersonal skills, any damage they do is limited because of their independent work.
The problem with really smart people is that they often think they know more than everyone else. Maybe they do. But that doesn’t help them when they’re trying to get others to buy into whatever they’re selling
The irony is that sometimes the most talented person can make for one of the most ineffective managers. You can see this in sports, for example, where retired superstars often find it difficult to coach or manage successfully because they are now supervising lesser mortals that weren’t blessed with the same degree of innate talent.
It’s not just brainpower where more may also not be better. For example, is it good to keep reducing the time it takes for technicians to help customers requesting assistance via call-in centres? What about the quality of the advice, how the customer perceives the value of the advice or even whether it’s such a great idea in the first place to try to optimise on speed?
Zappos, the US-based online shoe store, actually rewards employees for spending more time with customers who call in with questions about products they are thinking of buying. For Zappos, customer experience on a call trumps any simple metric that, in its view, can actually detract from profitability.
When employees are motivated to cycle through customers as fast as possible, platitudes that the customer comes first are just that — empty, cynical slogans that mean nothing to sales staff.
The quest for more may well be the defining ethos of our time, but the downside that comes with this single-minded fixation warrants greater attention. Relying on the smartest and the most talented to lead and manage people and teams may be one of those things that sounds a lot better in theory than in practice.
It is interesting that these things happen in business.. especially big cooperation's ledgers and regulations. Where is that personal touch.. The real 'Assistance'. That personal Touch which is incorporated in old fashioned sales and services. Is It lost??? in this centaury????
