I was recently reading “The Challenger Sale“, and they got to talking about what makes a great sales manager. The book goes into some depth, but this part stood out to me when they were discussing the core attributes of a person (and not their sales skills specifically). From the book:
Yet interestingly, we also found that performance on these attributes does not fall along a spectrum but tends to be binary. Either you’re reliable or you’re not. You have integrity or you don’t.
I initially disagreed, but as I chewed on it I came around. For me, reliability was the easiest to wrap my hands around because I can easily put everyone either the “they’re reliable” or “they’re not reliable” bucket.
Reliable people are awesome. They show up on time for calls, they don’t miss appointments, and I can forget about emails that I send them because I know they’ll be taken care of. No one is perfect, for sure, but the reliable people I know very rarely make mistakes in that arena.
On the other hand, there are people that I need to remind about meetings, and I need to remind myself to follow up on emails that I sent to them.
We can do the same exercise with integrity. There are people that always focus on trying to do the right thing, and those that don’t. It doesn’t always mean they’re bad people, but they aren’t as concerned with always doing the right thing (like putting their shopping cart away or doing small things to take advantage of their clients).
I often try to make things black and white that really belong on a gradient, but there indeed seems to be a lot of black and white with these types of things. Do you agree?
Like you, I initially disagree with this premise, but as I read your thoughts, I have to agree. This makes me think about hiring decisions I’ve made … and might rethink based on this thought line.
Yep, and the more I think about it the more I agree, as I’m able to quickly put people into those buckets. There’s certainly a degree of gray, but it’s less than I initially suspected.