Up-Close with Chin Teik: MC3

MC3
21st Century Desired Talent Requirement

Hiring Managers need to re-think hiring right criteria. Given the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) of the 21st Century, I recommend MC3 as the 21st Century Desired Talent Requirements.

MC3 
M is mindset. The success mindset includes:

• Growth, Open, Outward and Promotion

3C are:

• Character are equivalent to roots of a tree (deep and is not quick to change with seasons) while personalities are equivalent to leaves of a tree (change with different seasons)
• Capabilities are life skills not soft skills
• Competencies are tied to the functional role or the education earned. They quickly become irrelevant

Re-Think:  Instead of hire for competencies, hire for fit to culture and the potential to grow with the success mindsets and character. 

Listen to my podcast to hear the unpacking of each of the 4 words in MC3. 

Transcript

MC3 – 21st Century Desired Talent Requirements 

 What is MC3? M is Mindset, the 3 Cs are Character, Capabilities, Competencies. I recommend that you consider MC3 for your desired talent requirements for the 21st Century. I will unpack each of the MC3. Today, most hiring managers are hiring based on their similarity, experience and expedient bias and that’s why they are hiring for today and for functional competency. Some are also using personality tests hoping for the right hire. Functional competencies become irrelevant very quickly given the technology change today. The employee needs to have the right mindset, the will and the how to stay relevant. 

 Why MC3? Covid pronounced a few areas that were often overlooked – mindset and capabilities in dealing with black swans and VUCA – volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. The business news cover the need to reset organization culture and the type of character required to remove toxic culture. While it is often labeled as leadership, it is really the character behind the leadership. Satya Nadella talks a lot of culture reset in his book Hit Refresh. The new CEO of Boeing talks about the company’s poor performance and the business results and the need to reset the culture. 

Note: Hiring managers will need to re-think and hire for fit to culture and potential to grow for the future. Of course it is easier said than done. However it is an important relearning for the organization’s long term performance with reduced cost of poor hiring, more highly engaged employees and stronger bench depth. 

 MC3 – Let’s unpack the 4 words

Mindset: 

Ryan Gottfredson speaks of success mindset and they are growth, open, outward and promotion.

·       Growth mindset is you believe you and others can change abilities, talent and intelligence through dedication and hard work

·       Open mindset is you seek truth and optimal thinking

·       Outward mindset is you see others as people of great worth and value them as such

·       Promotion mindset is you have a clear purpose and destination that you are shooting for

There is also the development of System 2 thinking – think slow and deep as opposed to the current way of thinking fast and shallow, which is System 1 thinking (reflexive). Creativity and innovation come often from the System 2 thinking or reflective. 

Character 

Try this quick exercise. Draw a tree. When I ask people to draw a tree, 9 out of 10 people will draw trees without roots. Roots are deep and nourish the tree, the flowers, fruits and the leaves. Roots represent character. Leaves, which change with the season, represent personalities. Personalities are not deep and can change based on the environment. Be careful of over relying on using personality tests as prescription to understanding each other or for hiring right.

Character is about truly knowing your purpose in life and your destiny with the following visible traits of passion, perseverance, humility, courage, forgiveness, love, hope, joy, gratefulness, self-control of emotions, hospitality and many more. 

Oxford University has done a lot of research on Character Leadership. I believe this needs to be the basis for manifestation of all the other leadership styles that have been taught and proposed. 

Capabilities

This is life skills and not soft skills. Life skills are not associated with any industry. They are transferable repeatable and predicable, because of structured frameworks, methodologies and principles. Some of these life skills include 2-Page, critical thinking documented, structured problem solving & decision-making, stakeholder engagement & communicating for impact and influence, habits of high performing teams. Life skills add value to the functional competencies by giving talent breadth to their contributions. 

Competencies

They are tied to the function or to the education received. They quickly become irrelevant. 

I recommend that the re-think for hiring is to hire for fit to culture and hire for tomorrow based on the potential of the talent. The integrating, training and development need to also include on building character leadership, changing habits (life skills) and knowing when to use system 1 and 2 thinking. Be conscious of the human bias and call it out to pause the brain to re-think. Similarity bias is the tendency to view people who look or think like us more favorably than people who are different. Expedient bias is the tendency to rush to conclusions in an effort to minimize cognitive effort. Experience is the tendency to believe that how we see the world is inherently truer than someone else’s perspective 

Thank you for pausing and listening to my language. I have 2 hope. 1 is that organizational leaders and managers will consider MC3 as a starting point for their talent engagement strategies including leadership development. 2 is that the education industry will consider building MC3 into their curriculum.  

Thank you and be well.