Prepare to have your traditional hiring notions challenged and be equipped with an innovative approach that could transform your team into a powerhouse. We're not just talking about filling roles; we're talking about strategizing for growth and excellence.
During our dynamic exchange, we dissect the pivotal moments that define a job's success and the types of individuals who thrive under such pressure. Imagine being buried in concrete—now, who would you want by your side? It's about the candidates who face their limitations head-on, ready to learn and conquer. Join us as we reveal how to spot the potential superstars that will not merely occupy a spot on your roster but actively push your organization to new heights.
Prepare to have your traditional hiring notions challenged and be equipped with an innovative approach that could transform your team into a powerhouse. We're not just talking about filling roles; we're talking about strategizing for growth and excellence.
During our dynamic exchange, we dissect the pivotal moments that define a job's success and the types of individuals who thrive under such pressure. Imagine being buried in concrete—now, who would you want by your side? It's about the candidates who face their limitations head-on, ready to learn and conquer. Join us as we reveal how to spot the potential superstars that will not merely occupy a spot on your roster but actively push your organization to new heights.
📖 To access Travis' complete book list, visit his storehere
Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with Dave Nerty, our special guest for all of season five. He's as regular as the furniture at this point, and we've got lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. And our point for today is stop hiring for lack of weaknesses rather than strengths. And that's brought to you by Seed Planning Group, and Seed is a fee-only fiduciary, a wealth management firm that helps people overcome the challenges that are keeping them from finding personal fulfillment. You can find more information about them at seedpgcom. All right, dave, we're getting after it. Stop hiring for lack of weaknesses rather than strengths.
Speaker 1:
This is something that we talk about all the time, because we're always hiring and you know hiring managers make mistakes all the time. Because we're always hiring and you know hiring managers make mistakes all the time. Right, especially, I don't. I think it's different. You can be in a corporate hiring position where you're writing a check out of somebody else's checkbook, or you can be in a small business where you're writing a check and you actually see the money leave the company. You know when you hire somebody and and you're expecting if that when the company. You know when you hire somebody and and you're expecting if that, when that money goes, you know, into somebody else's bank account, you get some kind of benefit for it, right, some kind of you move the needle with that person that you've hired. And so I think it is. There is a big difference between, um, when a small business hires somebody versus a giant corporation hiring somebody. But, that being said, I think the mistakes are made in both situations.
Speaker 1:
Where you have a position open and you're desperate to fill the position, so you go and you hire somebody to fill the position and you think you're doing a good job because you go online and you get the monster resumes and all that kind of stuff and you filter. So you look to make sure that they have the right pedigree, the right degree, you know, the right experience, the right credentials, all that other stuff Right. And you look at the person and you're like um, this is a such a well-rounded person. You know they check all the boxes Perfect, we're going person. You know they check all the boxes, perfect, we're gonna hire them. Safe, safe hire. Versus that person who walks in and they are absolutely dynamite in an area that's really going to move the ball bar or move the ball forward. But maybe they're missing a particular component, maybe there's a weakness that doesn't fit your hiring metrics. And so you're like, yeah, you know, we're going to go with the well-rounded, safe version, because this other guy doesn't necessarily match up, he doesn't check all the boxes, thinking that you know, if we're good at everything, or at least not bad at everything, we're going to be pretty serviceable.
Speaker 1:
We've learned the hard way. I think that we need to be hiring people who can be superstars, and everybody's going to have some weaknesses. No-transcript, it's a, it's a surface level knowledge, probably Right. So it's like you can be okay or adequate or serviceable. But how deep can you go? Right? How great can you become at any one thing? And I don't know, the, the just.
Speaker 1:
The longer that we've gone, the more I.
Speaker 1:
We've kind of migrated to the point where people are going to have weaknesses.
Speaker 1:
We've kind of migrated to the point where people are going to have weaknesses and if you pick on people for their weaknesses and you, you disqualify them for weaknesses instead of trying to figure out how to play to somebody's strengths, you end up probably with a fairly mediocre, if not below average, team because, let's face it, the, the, the guys who really win, you know, in any sports team, aren't the ones that are best at everything everything or aren't the ones that are serviceable at everything. They're the ones who are best at something, right, like one guy hits home runs like crazy. One guy can steal bases. One guy can pitch. One guy can you know field like a champion? Right, and so it's the team's job, or the company's job, or the leader's job to get the right people in the right positions. But you do want strength, right. You want to hire for people who can come in and dominate in a place and bring maximum value, not people who, like, are just going to blend in with everybody else, no matter what they're doing.
Speaker 2:
Right, and that that's the whole team concept. Right, you're building a team where strengths can be put at the forefront and and you're minimizing the exposure of the weaknesses. Everyone has them, like you mentioned, and one of my favorite aha moments at Seed so far is when I got more involved in the recruiting process was really understanding that you're hiring the person, not the paper and the resume that's put in front of you. You're filtering through all this stuff and it looks great. Like you said, they check the boxes, they went to this school or have this major, and what does all that mean? How relevant is a resume? Over time, as you're developing, most skills can be taught when you enter a job. Job, it's that person and their attitude and how they fit with your company, your, your team, your environment, everything you've created there. And I, I like the. I like the point on the team, because what I immediately started thinking of was you look at the nfl. Right, the draft is coming up soon. Right, that you see it everywhere.
Speaker 2:
Everyone's talking about the draft and who's going to be the steal in the draft, the sleeper, who's going to be the bust, and how does that happen? Quarterbacks it happens a lot, right? All these guys are so talented, they all have strengths, or else they wouldn't have come this far, and they have weaknesses. The ones who do really well are, I would say, if you really studied it, the ones that go on, teams that expose their strengths and and and focus on that. Right, it was Tom Brady, right Arguably the the goat, right you. It's hard to argue against that. With all the success he had, did he have the strongest arm? Probably not.
Speaker 1:
Was he? Come on man, yeah, one good year thrown deep Because life. Come on man. Yeah, one good year thrown deep because the guy he could run down the field and wait for the ball to come down, otherwise he I don't know.
Speaker 2:
I just don't recall him ever really throwing exactly yeah, and he definitely wasn't the most athletic right. He threw deep to evans he would just drop it.
Speaker 1:
So I don't you know. I don't know what happened there, but anyway, sorry no, so that's.
Speaker 2:
It's just a great point of if you're just focusing on well, he doesn't have this, she doesn't have that, like well, who's looking at the wrong stuff?
Speaker 1:
who's the crandall? Was it crandall in the book? The sales guy he hires. He goes out and hires the best sales guy ever. Yeah, and he goes to hire the guy and and the one guy calls up and says you know you shouldn't hire him. And he's like why? And he's like you know you shouldn't hire him. And he's like why? And he's like you know, because he tells everybody they should fucking quit if they don't want to get on the on the right page. Yep, and he's the most brilliant sales guy out there that anybody can hire. And we don't want to hire him because his bedside manner sucks Right.
Speaker 1:
And it's like are you running a company and trying to be world-class in sales or are you trying to be everybody's friend and not have anybody cry because their feelings are hurt because they show up to work and we're sloppy, right, you know, and you got to make that decision sometimes. So the question there is is you know, do I want world-class? And somebody could say well, you know, you can get. There's plenty of ways you can get world-class sales without that edge. No, there's not. The argument here is that the world isn't perfect and people are going to walk in and the person who's going to make you great at sales is probably not the person that you're going to invite to give somebody really bad news, because they're going to come in with a hammer when somebody needs a gentle pat on the back, because that's the personality type.
Speaker 1:
I used to think that in our industry, part of the reason why the washout rate is so high is because most firms are looking for the perfect individual, because most people are individually siloed, they're working by themselves, and so they kind of work for a firm, but it's their own thing. And so you're asking somebody to be incredible at marketing and networking, incredible at investing, incredible at financial planning, incredible at managing. Incredible CFO, an admin person, paperwork specialist, a legal person They've got to have all these specialties. That are literally all not only different jobs, but they require different personalities and very different dispositions. And you know, I used to think it was a behavioral, technical person, but it's much more complicated than that. You've got people who are you know it takes around by idiots.
Speaker 1:
You know you get the four colors, but then you get all the different variations of the four colors.
Speaker 1:
And then you have personal interests. Right, you get the four colors, but then you got all the different variations of the four colors. And then you have personal interests, right, and so the person who can come in and be your CFO probably is not the right person to have, you know, mentoring people through emotional situations, because it's it's much more of a black and white type of personality, and the person who can come in and do that probably is not going to be the right person to hold down the law on compliance violations. You know, because it's going to be like I'm worried about their feelings if I come down on them too hard, and sometimes you have to come down on somebody because it's sloppy, you know, back to our whole. You know here's the line and you're an ass if you're on that side and you're good if you're on that side and there's only two, two sides that you can be on, not this kind of gray area where I'm going to kind of soften it so that your feelings don't hurt, get hurt.
Speaker 1:
but then you don't know the immediacy of the issue yeah you know, and so I think that in in hit ben's work, he's literally talking about like look, um, you get one or the other. You don't not hire the guy because he's going to offend some people. You take that into account and you say, okay, now, if it was, obviously, if it was a legal problem, that would be different. But honestly, hurting people's feelings is not a legal problem, and that's his point.
Speaker 2:
Right, yeah, and I that really what you're saying there how I'm interpreting that too is really understanding what you're looking for is so important, right. When you're hiring, it is more than just the position. When you just have these generic responsibilities and you see all this stuff on like positions that are out there, right, there's a personality to the position as well, and that is part of the problem in the like you described in financial services is this person's got to be everything and you're going to get surface level of everything, right. If you find that person where the advantage we have is because we work so well as a team, we are finding those pieces, the people that fit into exactly what we're looking for from the strength. Right. If we're looking for someone who's going to be great sitting in front of clients, that's what we're going to focus on. If we're looking for someone who can do more analysis that side of things that's what we're going to look for, and we're going to work on developing the other things over time.
Speaker 1:
Right? Well, you know, it's when I think of it like this what's going to happen when you're sitting down, you're interviewing somebody and you're thinking about, okay, strengths and weaknesses and that kind of stuff, like somebody can check all the box. What's going to happen when you're in whatever position that you're going to be in, and wherever the pressure point is, wherever the big pressure in that job is, when that comes down on you like a truck just backing up and dumping concrete on your head, when that comes for you, how are you going to handle it? Right, and so you have to hire the person that when that truck backs up because it happens to every position, no matter what at some point that person is in a position where they look at it and their strength takes over and they're like, bring it, I'm going to dig myself out of this pile of concrete. Right, Like you can't hold me back, there's nothing you can do. That's going to stop me, because this is what I was made for doing versus the person who goes at the first sight of any tension or pressure. They break, because you know I'm not an expert at that, you know they're, they're, they're, they're getting by by not rocking this task one and we're teaching that, though, like people are actually taught that.
Speaker 1:
Now they come into the job interview saying look, I've got all the boxes checked, I'm this well-rounded person. Look, I'd rather have you come in and say I got to work on this. I don't know how to do this very well, but I'm really good at this thing over there and I'm really willing to learn and be coached on this thing over here. Or I know I need to learn some skills there. I screw up all the time on it, but that's something that I'm working on. Awesome, we can work with that. We can't work where there's I'm perfect at everything, right, or you know. Or again, it's not that somebody comes in and says they're perfect. We're saying hire for strengths, you know, not to avoid weaknesses. So we look at somebody and go well, they're not really strong in anything, but they're not weak at anything, right?
Speaker 2:
okay, so you just say average.
Speaker 1:
You're higher to average and you're going to get average performance when you hire average right.