I ended yesterday with the comment that charm was the number one reason for bad hires, and that I often forget that looks are the number one reason for missing good hires.

I’m not saying that looks don’t also influence bad hires, and that the combination of looks and charm are often devastating to the hiring process, but that can be dealt with fairly well via our Four Hiring Rules. However, according to Dr. Patzer’s research, we’re born attracted to attractiveness.

Attractiveness isn’t about model-level beauty, it’s more about everyday human attractiveness; and since Patzer’s research shows that even infants respond to attractiveness, we aren’t talking about looks as defined by a culture or race, nor, apparently, is it learned behavior, therefore, this idea of attractiveness must be embedded in human genes.

Certain careers are magnets to attractive people, think sales and marketing, and others have drawn the less attractive, think technical, phone-based work, etc.

Think I’m nuts? Take a visually objective walk around your own company and see what strikes you.

The question here really is, Does it matter? If everybody is wired the same way, then who cares. The company with the most attractive people wins, right?

Wrong!

Attractiveness doesn’t equate to talent, and your job, as a manager, is to acquire, motivate and retain talent; nor does it excuse running on assumptions, which, in fact, have no excuse at all.

Being hardwired merely means that we need to rewire our brains, starting with an awareness campaign, followed by the specific work needed to make changes in our MAP.

Changing involves building new habit patterns, which is typically done through practice and repetition. Practice this 24/7, until you find yourself consciously thinking, “X isn’t very attractive, but it doesn’t matter.” When that happens on a regular basis and it really doesn’t affect the outcome of the interaction, then you’ll know that you really have bypassed the original wiring.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Business info, Communication, Hiring, Leadership, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: attractiveness
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