In brief
- Two people in the same job can get very different reactions from customers and coworkers. The difference usually isn’t personality.
- It’s a behavior the job requires that your company never wrote down.
- Once you name that behavior, you can hire for it and teach it.
A customer comes back a week later with a thank-you card and a gift card. She doesn’t ask for the manager. She asks for Renee, by name.
Renee and Sarah do the same job. Same role, same hours, same job description. You’ve probably seen this pair yourself, at a hotel front desk, a retail service counter, a nurses’ station, or the shipping office on a plant floor. Sarah has been there four years longer. Nobody has ever brought her a gift card.
And it isn’t only customers. Managers bring their questions to Renee first. Other departments route their requests through her. When something tense needs handling, people find their way to her desk. Sarah notices all of it. Some days, between customers, she leans over and quietly asks Renee for help. Her questions are never about the system or the process. Sarah knows those cold. Her questions are about people: How should I handle her? What do I say to him? How do I tell them no?
When a promotion opens up and goes to Renee, Sarah is sure she knows why.
The myth: it’s just personality
Most leaders who notice this already have an explanation. Renee is a people person. People just like her better. Some people have it and some people don’t.
Sarah has an explanation too, and hers is favoritism. “They just like her better,” she tells coworkers. She may have said it to HR.
So everyone in the building has filed it under personality. That feels like an answer, but it actually ends the conversation. If it’s personality, there’s nothing to manage. You can’t coach a personality and you can’t hire for one, so nobody does anything, and the front desk keeps running on whatever Renee happens to bring with her each morning.
Why the myth is wrong: it’s a job requirement
Every customer-facing job has two halves.
The first half is the tasks. Answer the phone. Process the order. Check people in. Hit the numbers. That half is written down. It’s in the job posting, the onboarding checklist, and the review form.
The second half is the behavior. Staying patient with someone who is frustrated. Reading the person in front of you and adjusting to them. Making people feel taken care of, whether they’re a customer at the counter or a coworker from another department. That’s the half people remember, inside the building and out. It’s the half they tell others about and come back for. In most companies it isn’t written down anywhere.
So here’s what is really going on at that front desk.
The behavior your customers love is a job requirement you never wrote down. And if you never defined it, you can’t hire for it.
Renee has tapped into the unspoken culture. She’s meeting a standard nobody named, and everyone around her, customers and coworkers alike, can feel it. Sarah is doing the half of the job she was told about, and nobody ever told her the other half existed.
Sarah’s technical skills aren’t the problem. She knows the systems and the process as well as anyone. What she’s missing is the people side of the role, what most of us call soft skills: how to read someone, how to say a hard thing well, how to make a person feel taken care of. Those are behaviors. They can be defined, and the company is the one that never defined them for her.
What it costs you
Start with your customers, the ones who buy from you and the ones down the hall. Their experience depends on which of the two they happen to get. The thank-you notes, the requests by name, the coworkers who wait for Renee instead of asking Sarah are all telling you what people value. That’s performance data, and most companies never collect it.
Then look at Renee. Customers line up for her. Coworkers bring her the hard conversations. Sarah asks her how to handle people. None of that is in her job description, so none of it shows up in her review or her pay. She’s carrying the part of the job that keeps people coming back, and she’s doing it on her own energy. People in that position get tired, and eventually they get tired of being the only one. When Renee leaves, the thing people valued leaves with her.
Then look at Sarah, and at your hiring. Sarah believes she was passed over because of favoritism, and nobody can show her otherwise, because the standard was never written down. And when you post the next opening for this role, what will it say? The tasks. You’ll interview for those tasks and hire someone who can do them. Whether you get the other half is luck. Sometimes you’ll get another Renee. Sometimes you’ll get another Sarah, and a year from now you’ll be having the favoritism conversation all over again.
What to do about it
The fix starts with a question most leadership teams have never answered out loud: what does a great interaction look like at your company?
Not in general. At yours. A hospital that wants patients to feel calm needs different behavior from a manufacturer that values straight talk on the floor, or a hotel that wants every guest to feel recognized. The behaviors that matter depend on who your company is.
Once you’ve named those behaviors, they belong in the job, right next to the tasks. That changes what you hire for. Along with asking whether a candidate can do the tasks, you ask about a time they dealt with someone who was frustrated or upset, and what they did. Now you’re listening for the behavior you defined.
It also changes what you can do for the Sarahs you already have. Once a soft skill is written down as a competency, a specific behavior with a clear picture of what good looks like, it can be taught. Some people bring it naturally, and others learn it once someone shows them what good looks like. Either way, you stop depending on luck.
Back to the front desk
The next time a customer brings one of your employees a gift, pay attention. The same goes for the next time someone tells you a promotion was favoritism, or a coworker says, “She’s great. I really enjoy working with her.”
That last one is easy to nod along to. Ask a follow-up question instead: what is it about her that makes her great to work with? Whatever they say next is information about your culture. It’s a behavior that person is already living, and one your company has never put in writing.
Read next: How to Hire for a Culture You’ve Actually Named
New here? Start with How to Define Your Company Culture and Put It to Work.
