I met this startup CEO at a party. When he found out I’m a leadership consultant he said, “Heh that’s great. I could probably use your help.” So I asked him to tell me what kind of people problems he has.
“I guess I’m really lucky,” he replied. “I don’t have any people problems.”
I don’t work at his startup. Never talked to anyone there. But I knew his statement was demonstrably false because I’d seen his company website and this was the team photo:
So there’s one data point. Another is that I’ve worked with lots and lots of companies. Every single one has people problems. A final piece of the puzzle fell into place when he informed me this is his first professional job. Ever. Just graduated university and started a company as CEO. Rarely is it advisable to just tell a startup founder that there’s a lot of stuff they don’t know they don’t know. But this guy was squarely in that part of the Dunning Kruger graph (and yes, I know DK has been largely debunked…the graph is still helpful).
Something that might’ve helped my conversation with this CEO was to explain what I meant by “people problems”. Here we go.
The employee experience (EX) is the entire set of ways a company interacts with employees. I break that down into nine categories. It starts with job seekers and goes all the way through eventual separation from folks we’ve hired. How we interview, onboard, train, equip, develop, and manage our people…it’s all EX. Any source of friction that prevents a team member from having the best possible EX is a people problem. Untrained interviewers talking to candidates, lackadaisical onboarding, managers who don’t know how to manage. All of these are people problems. And that’s just scratching the surface.
As it turns out, it’s really easy to have some of these issues (and many others that are more insidious) without realizing it. Even if you’re a highly experienced leader and you’re actively looking, you might have trouble unearthing issues with psychological safety and unconscious bias (see above photo). I can pretty much guarantee they exist in your org, though.
I imagine it’d be helpful if I just compile a list of the ten most common people problems I encounter. If I had the list handy when I was talking to this CEO, I’m pretty sure he would’ve fairly quickly changed his stance on whether or not he has any people problems.
> I’m pretty sure he would’ve fairly quickly changed his stance on whether or not he has any people problems.
…would he tho… ?
Heh. I’d say he perhaps would’ve switched to acknowledging, but downplaying. Akin to, “Well sure here in the infectious disease lab we occasionally spill a vial -doesn’t everyone? – but none of the really pandemicky stuff.”