So, you are searching for a new manager, the selection process is going fine, you are satisfied with some candidates but there is one that stands up from the crowd. "What a lovely person!", everybody agrees, "She will be a valuable addition to our company." And she is in.
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When searching for a new manager, there are many things to consider, from hard to soft skills and everything in-between, and every experienced human resources expert has his own methods for selecting right candidates.
However, not every company can afford to hire a top head hunting company and even if they can one candidate can go through the selection process just like that - but the company later discovers that (s)he doesn't fits in at all. Not a bit. Zero fit. De nada. How's that possible? The answer is simple and absolutely understandable: A person "loved by all" is excellent at breaking barriers but can be a terrible leader.
Now, it may seem a bit silly to say that "loved by all" employee can be a mistake, but let's dig a bit deeper into it.
First, there is no such thing as "loved by all". Each and every one of us has personality and those personalities are different. Somebody likes to laugh, somebody is serious all the time, one manager has a warm approach, another likes golf... There's no way for one person to be equally loved by all, so we must be very suspicious if our candidate leaves equally good impression on all interviewers and people in the company.
Let's elaborate that a bit. If you, for example, are thinking about promoting an engineer to a managerial position, s(he) will impress your production workers a lot more than, say, your marketing department. If you want to employ an accounting expert, you already know that people in distribution have no idea what (s)he is really doing.
Now, the problem is that interviewers in any serious company are from different departments, and if all those different people come with "What a lovely person!" Well, something is wrong.
Second, in the case of "loved by all" candidate, you must ask yourself a simple question: "Does this person pretend?" No kidding, you must think seriously does that person have the ability to read people perfectly and give them answers they need. If that's the case, there are two possibilities: you have a perfect salesperson in front of you or you have a person that will create huge problems in your company.
The thing is, there is no "loved by all" kind of person in business. Every manager must make decision and those decisions are not loved by all, their purpose is to make the company more competitive, not to make a good atmosphere around the barbecue. At business meetings it's quite normal to hear a lot of arguing, arguments are flying around, voices are raised, files are thrown away - all for the better future of the company. And "loved by all" person can't do anything of that.
If you hire such person, (s)he will try to please everyone, will avoid any conflict, will enter endless conversations just to please everybody, and will be unable to rise above personal relations. In short, such a person will try to prove to each and every employee in the company that all people are brothers and sisters. And there will be no time left for real business. We guarantee, that person will not do anything useful.
You see, we are all humans and humans are not perfect. That's the reason your boss is real pain but your company works well, the chief engineer is a "cold, strange guy" but comes with wonderful solutions, your secretary is "doing nothing" but has better memory than your computer, and that "strange guy" from the accounting department can shift the money around the world faster than Nasdaq. If you look around you, you will see that your company is a mix of a different personalities and groups of people working together.
So, if you see a "loved by all" person, hit the red button with ALARM! on it and be very careful. If you have time you can try to find out a bit more about that candidate but our advice would be to open the door through which that person will exit. Your time is too valuable to be spent on the personality that doesn't exist. ■