A HiringChallenge

A colleague of mine, let's call her Jennifer, was in the process of hiring an administrator. In the process of interviewing people, one candidate, named here Susan, stood out as being an absolute fit for the scope and quality of the job. The only catch was that Susan wanted significantly more money than Jennifer's budget; more, in fact, than Jennifer herself was earning. She approached me, initially, to get a sense of what people atBayNVC were getting paid, to help her assess how to respond. After some back and forth, what stood out to me was that she was going to make the decision by herself, without involving Susan. Whatever course of action she was going to take - accepting what Susan asked for, turning down the offer, or negotiating with Susan about a lower pay - all of that was going to be inside of Jennifer. In this, our familiar and common world, she would be operating separately from Susan, and Susan from Jennifer. Each would decide for herself what works for her.

Here's what I said in a final email: "Does she know she will be making more than you? Are the reasons for the 'minimum' she wants about sustainability or about dignity/value? Dialogue with her, invite her into the dilemma, make a decision with her."

This idea - inviting people into the dilemma - is one I am more and more drawn into. It's one of the ways that I see myself supporting people to embrace collaboration. It's revolutionary in its simplicity, and in general doesn't occur to people. Most often, when I find a specific enough application, people welcome and embrace it - whetherparents or bosses. In this case, with Jennifer being an NVC [Nonviolent Communication] trainer, she was very happy to experiment, and invited Susan to have a conversation.

And what was the outcome? After their conversation, Susan said this: "I was particularly impressed by being 'invited into the dilemma.' It's an excellent example of the kind of open communication and collaboration that I strongly value and that draws me to the work you do!"

Jennifer told me that the invitation allowed for a heart opening and immediate sense of partnership and mutuality. It helped Susan to see and hold Jennifer's needs alongside her own, and it moved the conversation into much more of an interdependent process.

The conversation also allowed Jennifer to understand why Susan was asking for the amount of money she wanted. Rather than thinking of it as 'high pay,' it allowed Jennifer to understand Susan's need for security and sustainability and it opened the door to look at other possible solutions. They both agreed to take some time to see how far they could stretch and to make room for creative ideas to emerge.

This created a total shift - the kind of shift that is at the heart of collaborative problem solving - the shift I call "from conflict to dilemma." Instead of "negotiation," this kind of exchange moves into emotional, practical, and more than anything mutual "engineering" of a solution together. Everyone is working on the same issue from the same direction. Regardless of the outcome, the key is the invitation. Now both parties can work in partnership to solve the puzzle.

In this case, they didn't find a way for Susan to take the job. As it turned out, the very day that they were having the conversation, Susan's familial circumstances changed to such a degree that her capacity to stretch, which she would have been "willing and happy" to do, in her words, was totally compromised for external reasons. Nonetheless, she expressed a desire to continue to aim for ways to collaborate, and is now volunteering a few hours a month in support of Jennifer's work.

In the world of the future, and I see it as a possibility in the current world, with only minimal tweaking, as in this case, I see the process of "job application" as potentially instructive and collaborative rather than transactional. Of course some people are completely not a fit. However, what if we have a few candidates that are potentially a fit? How much more satisfying could it be, even if scary, if the finalists would all get together with the hiring committee and engage in a collaborative approach to identifying the best fit?

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1025