Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A Great Leader Builds A Great Team—Part 2, Would You Hire This Person?

By George McQuain

Let’s assume you are hiring a new member for your team. While reviewing the resumes/CVs of potential candidates, you come across a resume that contains the following “accomplishments”:

1.     She/he started two businesses that both failed

2.     She/he ran for political office six times and lost all six times

3.     Knowing one of her/his references, you call them and find out that she/he has gone through many “bad” circumstances in their life and that he/she may suffer from depression

Now, would you interview this person or offer them a job on your team?

If you said “No”, you just failed to interview and/or hire Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States and, arguably, one of the greatest leaders and statesmen to ever live.

In my last blog entry, I wrote about hiring people based upon the attributes/attitudes needed for the role you are trying to fill and tailoring your hiring process and interview questions so that you make sure that the candidate hired has those attributes and attitudes. Today, I am going to address three very important attributes/attitudes that I think are critical and often overlooked in hiring—tenacity, humility and the willingness to learn. In my opinion, these three attributes/attitudes are critical in hiring for a leadership position, a turnaround or for a start-up team that will be charting new territories for your organization. In fact, tenacious and humble are the two main attributes/attitudes of leaders who are “Level 5” leaders in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great--Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't.

If you study the life of Abraham Lincoln, you will find that he demonstrated all three of these attributes/attitudes.

On numerous occasions during the U.S. Civil War, Union forces lost battles and many people called for Lincoln to end the war. Lincoln persisted and persevered, continuously searching for a way to achieve victory. He was tenacious in his belief in the Union cause and that victory could be won. Lincoln demonstrated an ability to withstand adversity and to move forward in the face of losses. Lincoln had an intense will to win and a do or die attitude. He knew what was important and never wavered in his pursuit of it.

Lincoln often demonstrated humility in his interaction with people and in doing his job (President of the United States) in such a way that put mission first (preserving the Union), team second (the army and people of the Union) and himself last. We also see Lincoln’s humility demonstrated in his interaction with others and in his habit of giving the credit for success to others. An example of Lincoln’s humility, is that after he delivered the Gettysburg Address (which some believe is one of the greatest speeches in U.S. history) Lincoln received a letter from Edward Everett who spoke for two hours just before Lincoln spoke. In the letter Everett praised Lincoln for his eloquent and concise speech, saying, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes." Lincoln replied that he was glad to know the speech was not a "total failure" (The Lincoln Forum: Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg, and the Civil War by John Y. Simon, Harold Holzer and William D. Pederson). Lincoln appointed one of the best and brightest cabinets in U.S. history (individuals who were also some of his greatest political rivals) because he was focused on his mission, not on appointing people who he would outshine and make him look good.

Lastly, Lincoln had a willingness to learn. It is well documented that Lincoln was an avid reader and that he read most, if not all, of the books in the Library of Congress on military strategy because he knew that military strategy was central to his mission (preserving the Union) and he knew very little about the subject. Lincoln often sought and used feedback, asked questions, sought the input of people from numerous, often different and “off the wall”, perspectives, and learned from his mistakes. He didn’t object when people disagreed with him.

Interestingly, a willingness to learn is often very closely tied to tenacity and being humble. Tenacity, at its core, means doing whatever it takes to be successful and often you have to learn what that is. Being humble recognizes that you do not know everything and you are willing to try new approaches and learn from others to be successful.

I’ll close my discussion of Abraham Lincoln with what Leo Tolstoy; the great Russian author said of him, “He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.”

Now, how do you go about hiring someone with these attributes/attitudes? I admit it’s not easy and that it will require you, as a leader, to possess these same attributes and attitudes.

If you look at Lincoln’s “resume” at the beginning of this post, you will see hints at his unwillingness to quit, but often, you will need to interview the candidate with these attitudes/attributes in mind or put them through a battery of “personality assessments”. Regardless, it will take digging and work on your part.

Here are a sample of some possible interview questions:

1.     Describe your most challenging assignment, and how you met the challenge.

2.     Describe a situation that did not turn out as you planned.  What was your reaction? What did you learn from it?

3.     Describe a situation at work where someone created a problem for you.  What did you do to resolve it?

4.     Tell me about the biggest failure in your life. What was your reaction? What did you learn from it?

5.     Tell me about the biggest success in your life. Was it difficult? How did you go about achieving it? What setbacks did you need to overcome to achieve this success?

6.     What is your philosophy of sharing credit for a success? What is your philosophy of sharing blame for a failure? Give me an example of when you put these philosophies into practice.

7.     What new knowledge and skills did you learn from your last job? How did you learn them?

8.     Tell me about a time when you took on a role or project that you knew nothing about. What did you do?

9.     If you had to build a team, what types of people would you ask to be on that team?

10.  How do you deal with people who have a different opinion than yours on how to complete a project?

Use these types of questions to gain an understanding of the person you are interviewing so that you will be able to determine if they are tenacious, humble and willing to learn. In our often risk averse world, it is sometimes worth it to overlook an occasional “failure” and focus on what the candidate learned from the experience. Often, what the candidate learned in their “failure”, their willingness to keep on trying and never give up and their willingness to give credit to others will be much more valuable to you than what someone with a “perfect” career has learned and experienced. Who knows, you might hire the next Abraham Lincoln.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

A Great Leader Builds A Great Team—Part 1, Intelligent Hiring

By George McQuain

Throughout my career, I have noticed an interesting pattern. I have observed that great leaders have surrounded themselves with great people, while mediocre leaders have not. This observation poses an interesting “chicken or the egg” question: Do great leaders create great teams or do great teams create great leaders?

Actually, this question, in my opinion, is not an “either/or” question, it is an “and” observation that should be restated as “Great leaders create great teams and great teams create great leaders”.

Over the next several posts, we will look at specific steps you can take to build a great team through intelligent hiring and by challenging your team members to individual greatness.

A fundamental responsibility of management is hiring people. Unfortunately, many managers approach this fundamental responsibility in a very haphazard manner and delegate much of the process to the folks in Human Resources (“HR”). Managers who fall into this camp define the person they want to hire in terms of specific skills and years of experience (often industry specific) and have HR screen out people who don’t fit those criterion exactly.  Then, with a final pool of candidates, this manager will conduct an interview with minimum preparation and make a decision based upon their gut reaction to the person they interviewed. They are just too busy to do otherwise.

Why do I say these things? Because that is what I’ve observed during my career (which includes reading a large number of job postings) and that is what a number of studies tell us.

Studies have consistently shown that people get hired based upon their looks and not the quality of their resume or the quality of their interviews. Other studies have shown that the decision to hire or not to hire is typically made in the first 13 minutes of the interview. Finally, studies have shown that most people are hired based upon there “skills as demonstrated by past positions”, while in 85% of the cases, success is based upon attributes and attitudes and not specific skills.

Bottom line, many managers just don’t put the time and effort into hiring the best people for the job. Would you purchase a $50,000 piece of equipment based on spending 13 minutes looking at pictures of the machine? Of course you wouldn’t. Hiring the right people is a much, much, much more important decision than purchasing a machine. Do your homework. Put effort into the process. Improve your odds at hiring a great employee.

Here’s an approach I recommend:

1.     Define search criterion differently. In addition to specific skills, look for personal attributes and attitudes that will lead to success in the position you are filling.  Customize these to the position and the team this person will be on. Examples of these “Success Factors” might be:

a.     Love of customers and serving them

b.    Ability to work on a team

c.     Ability to work remotely

d.    Honesty and integrity

e.     Communication skills

f.     Leadership skills

g.    Ability to set goals

h.     Ability to make a decision

i.      Ability to solve and eliminate problems

j.      Ability to deal with different and/or difficult people

2.     Write screening questions that an HR screener can ask or look for in resumes that will show evidence that the person has the personal attributes and/or attitudes that will lead to success on the job and in your organization. Most screeners look for skills and experience. Expand the screener’s vision.

3.     Write specific, success factor related situational interview questions that, properly answered, will indicate that the candidate has the success factors needed for the position. I suggest writing at least one situational question for each success factor. For example, if the ability to set and accomplish goals is an important success factor, you might want to ask “Tell me about a time when you set a goal for yourself. Also, tell me about what you did to ensure that you accomplished it.” If a high level of honesty and integrity is expected, you might ask “Tell me about a time when the person you reported to asked you to do something that went against your personal morals. How did you handle that situation?”

4.     Ask all of your final candidates all of the interview questions you have written and take detailed notes on their answers. I personally prefer to not let the candidates ask me questions until I have finished asking them all my questions. I tell them this up front as part of my interview “rules”. I do this so they won’t be able to adjust their answers to fit what they think I want to hear.

5.     Consider asking candidates that need specific technical skills to take skills tests or to demonstrate the skills for you. A good on-line testing resource for this is www.brainbench.com. Or, if you are hiring a salesperson or someone that needs to do presentations, you might want to consider asking them to do a presentation for you on “why they are the best candidate for the position.” Use your imagination to come up with "tests" that will demonstrate firsthand the skills you are looking for.

6.     After you have interviewed all the candidates, review your notes and test results and try to honestly pick the best one based upon what you have learned about them. Look at how they think, what issues they have grappled with, how they learn and apply their learning to their lives.

7.     Make an offer to the best candidate.

Another resource you may want to investigate is the VIA Survey of Character Strengths. The VIA Survey provides an assessment that identifies and ranks a person’s top 24 character strengths. This tool can be found at https://viame.org/www/en-us/getyourviameprofile.aspx. 

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Part 2 of this blog will look at one personal characteristic that I think is often overlooked in hiring. Part 3 will address what it means to challenge your team members to be individually great.