Are you thinking about firing before you’ve even hired someone?

This happens frequently among business owners who are hiring for the first time. Maybe it’s even happened to you, too.

You’re nervous about hiring. You worry about all the things that could go wrong. And somewhere along the way, you heard that it’s best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, so you think that’s what you’re doing.

You think that spending your time preparing for the worst-case scenario will help you avoid it, or at least have a plan for if/when it does happen. Unfortunately, you’re only setting yourself up for exactly what you fear the most – hiring someone that you’re going to have to fire.

Your Thoughts Create Your Results

When you spend all your time preparing for the end, you miss out on all the important steps in the beginning, which will actually set you up for success and help you avoid the outcome that you dread so much.

I love the quote by Henry Ford that goes, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

What he meant by this is that if you think you can do something, you’ll put your mind to it and you’ll accomplish whatever it is that you want. But if you think you can’t do something, then you’ll convince yourself that you can’t and you won’t achieve what you desire.

Our minds play a powerful role in hiring. When we think about hiring differently, we start to hire differently.

Let me give you two examples of what I mean:

Example: Business Owner 1

This business owner worries about hiring because she’s nervous about having to fire someone. She constantly thinks about all the things that could go wrong, like: “What if the person I hire doesn’t show up for work on time? Or they don’t produce quality work? Or miss a bunch of deadlines? How would I handle that? I’d definitely have to fire them, right? But I don’t like confrontation. I don’t want to fire anyone.”

This business owner may or may not ever hire. And if she does, she’s going to have a really hard time hiring when all she can think about is the end. By thinking of things that haven’t happened yet, she can’t properly focus on what she should be doing right now in order to avoid what she dreads the most. 

She’s too worried about what she’s going to have to do as a leader in the worst-case scenario. And while planning for what could potentially happen can be a helpful exercise, getting stuck in worst-case thinking definitely isn’t.

Example: Business Owner 2

This business owner knows that letting someone go could potentially happen. But she also knows that hiring someone to join her team will help her grow in so many positive ways that the reward is worth the risk.

She thinks about the help and support she will be able to get in her business and how she’s creating a job for someone else to help them support their own dreams, goals, and needs. She thinks about the impact she’s creating in the world and is eager to expand her impact to include others.

While she thinks about all the good that will come from hiring help, she considers what she needs on her team in order to fulfill her vision and meet her goals. She’s thoughtful, patient, and focuses on making sure the person she hires is a great fit.

Confirmation Bias: The Good and Bad

In these two examples, you can see that Business Owner 1 is focused on failure, confrontation, and firing. Whereas, Business Owner 2 is focused on success, collaboration, and positive impact.

Business Owner 2 will have much more success with her hiring experience than Business Owner 1, because she’s focused on and expecting positive results, which means she will take aligned action in order to create those results. Business Owner 1, on the other hand, will always be looking for trouble and unfortunately, she will most likely find it.

This is called “confirmation bias.” And it can either work for us or against us.

When we think positively about the future and about our goals, we have a tendency to see that things are always working out for us.

However, when we get stuck in toxic thought cycles and see only the negatives that may exist in the future or about our goals, we have a tendency to find evidence to support those thoughts.

Final Thoughts

The results that we’re creating in our businesses can provide us with powerful information on the thoughts that we’re thinking, both helpful and unhelpful. If you’re not getting the results you want, examine the thoughts that you’re thinking about the situation.

If you think you’re going to hire the world’s worst employee, you probably will. But if you think you’re going to hire the world’s best employee, you probably will. Because our thoughts create the results that we experience in our businesses.

Make sure to think good thoughts when it comes to hiring, so you can focus on taking the right steps to hire the best person for your team and set them up for success. Because when they win, you win. And when you win, they win, too.  

Authored by Ashley Cox, PHR, SHRM-CP