The Lesson of the Coffee Pot

J.C. Dominguez, President of SCI companies recently gave an inspiring talk about how you can tell a lot about the people who work with or for you based on the coffee pot.

Have you ever really wanted a cup of coffee only to go to find the coffee pot completely empty? Somebody in your office had to have had the last cup of coffee yet they didn’t have the decency to fill it up for the next person.

J.C. states this is a major red flag for working for him and an act, which if you get caught taking the last cup and leaving the pot empty, will get you fired. Sounds dramatic right?

But if you cannot trust your employees to be thoughtful enough to fill up the coffee pot, how can you trust them to look out for your organization, your team or your Customers.

Simple yet profound.

So often we hire people who have all the right “technical” or “required skills” to perform the task for a job but we don’t really find out about their ability to relate and care about people.

We have to continue as organizations and leaders to hire smarter. To ask tough questions to ensure we are hiring superstars. To be patient and not just hire to keep a position from being empty. To bring people to our teams that care about refilling the coffee pot.