Shawnee Love   •  
November 24, 2016

If you have experienced the diversity dilemma, you might be wary of hiring people who are different going forward.  I am not suggesting small business owners should only hire people like themselves.  My point was merely that hiring polar opposites might not be ideal either.

An approach to solving this dilemma can be found in the following two steps:

• Determine your deal breakers.
• Hire progressively, on criteria other than your deal breakers.

Your deal breakers are what truly matters to you.  To know your deal breakers, consider what you would fire someone for on the spot. (By the way, you should never fire someone on the spot ever. I am just asking for what would make you made enough to want to do that.)

The things that make you “mad enough to spit” are indicative of what truly matters to you.   If you’d want to fire someone for stealing, it is likely that honesty is a deal breaker for you.  If you blow a fuse when you here someone say “That’s not my job”, then teamwork is near and dear to your heart.  Most people have multiple deal breakers so don’t rush this discovery process.

These deal breakers (aka your personal and corporate values), should not be sacrificed when hiring employees.  I.e., everyone who works for you doesn’t have to have the same level of passion for them, but they need to understand them and work in a fashion that aligns with them.  (Hopefully it goes without saying that your deal breakers shouldn’t be illegal or unethical.)

Outside of your core values, different perspectives and experiences can be hired progressively.  If you assume you are the core of the onion, layer people around you who are close enough to relate to but different enough to have new ideas.  Empower your next layers of people to do the same (as long as those core values are protected).  In doing so, over time your organization will ends up with a wide variety of ideas without sacrificing what really matters.