To Keep The Good People Around

When we talk about business, we talk about people. No business can be made without people - whether they serve as employees or customers or in whatever position they are. We live in an interconnected web of people - people need others to support one another. As a matter of fact, we work better in teams. There is a group dynamic in which when we work together the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, two heads are always better than one. It means that when working together, people can produce much more than if they work independent from each other. Even when the independent works are combined, the end result cannot match those produced by team work. Team, business partners, friends, family, community, and other ways of forming a group - all serve a multiplicity factor. Like soldiers fighting a war, we simply need others to survive, in business as much as in life.

Therefore, we need others to help and support us. In other words, we need a good team. Except in certain family situations in which bad behaviors are more tolerated, we want good people around. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. How many times do we experience living in a mess - canceled plans, loss of money or possessions, flustered emotions - due to misdemeanors committed by some irresponsible fellows. That doesn't even take criminal acts into account. Sadly, this leads to the conclusion that working with people is like a double-edged sword - they can hurt us as much as we need them. What can we do to minimize the risks while maximizing the benefits?

The first thing we can do is probably to make sure that we can separate the good from the bad. We need others because we need them to support and help us. In other words, we depend on them. A good team work means that each member can depend on the other. An undependable person creates a missing link to the chain that leads to a chain reaction. One missed deadline creates a series of delays, one after another. It works like a domino effect and the cycle will continue. Therefore, it is very important to be dependable that dependability can be the first criteria in selecting the team, the people we want to be around.

When we talk about dependability, we talk about trust. We trust the person to be dependable, that he/she will not screw up. However, dependability goes further than simply not screwing up. Dependability requires ability to complete a task as expected, with quality. So, there are two things that we need to see when selecting people - the person is dependable and he/she will not screw up. At the very least, the person will not screw up - he/she will not do any harm. How can we tell? Do we have to wait until the person screw up? It will be better if we can anticipate it before the bad thing happens. It is much more costly to recover or fix something, if it is ever possible, than to prevent it from happening. What can we do to anticipate? In a formal company recruitment process, there have been a number of psychological tests designed to screen people and to predict their ability to perform. Unfortunately, there are many situations in which we don't have the luxury to execute such tests to screen people. What can we do to predict someone's behavior so as not to let the person cause any harm in the future? What can we do to see if we can trust the person?

There are many ways we can do to see if someone is trustworthy. Some people can see the aura. But for the average people, we can just see the pattern and the person's history. Did the person commit to some sort of violations in the past? History repeats itself, if the person screwed up in the past, the chance is he/she will screw up again in the future. In terms of dependability, we can see the pattern of consistency. Does the person perform in a consistent fashion? If not, there is a chance that the person will screw up at some point.

Nevertheless, we don't want to keep people away simply because we are not willing to take the risk. Human make mistakes and it is part of the learning process. People deserve a second chance as long as they show willingness to keep learning and keep improving.
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