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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with our season five co-host, dave Nurchi, and this podcast is all about inspirations that we've found in different books. Each season is a different book. This season happens to be the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. We take our observations from the book, do our own kind of book report, but, instead of just regurgitating the book, talk about how we've used those inspirations in our own business, what our takeaways are if we haven't used them, what our thoughts on it is, and then sometimes we actually implement in real time as we're going. A little bit of background Dave's the Chief Operating Officer for Seed Planning Group. I'm the Chief Executive Officer for Seed Planning Group, so we are literally living this every single day, trying to have a better company, be better persons, be better professionals and hopefully trying to inspire some people who are listening to this call. And our takeaway that we're going to cover today is screening for the right kind of manager. Does the manager view the world through a me prism or a team prism? Basically, do they use the word I? Do they use the word me, unless they're just trying to explain their shortcomings, and we really shouldn't count on people to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1:
And before we get too far in, we have to talk about our sponsor for today, which is NQR Media Inc. That's the parent company of this podcast and this is where we unapologetically bring to you things that need to be talked about. So nqrmediacom, or look for NQR, wherever you find content, and you'll find all of our other productions. We have Ditch the Suits, one Big Thing Podcast, and then Cutthroat Planning, cutthroat College Planning. See, I tried to get it right all the way to the end, just missed it by one word cutthroat college planning, podcast, mouthful there, all right.
Speaker 1:
So, dave, back to us. Let's talk about our book and what we're working on the whole me prism. Let's just talk about being humble man. Let's just like we hammer humbleness on this show. But let's I mean we're back there right now. That's what this is about. You're, you're hiring somebody to come in and work for our company and, dave, you do a lot of the screening. You do a lot of the pre-interviews. I used to do it turned it over to you. You kind of run that with our senior managers. What are you looking for when you're looking for somebody? In general, I don't even think this has to be a manager. I think this could be anybody.
Speaker 2:
But what are you looking for? It's, it's not what you think you'd be looking for, right? I think a lot of this. This goes out to the whole interview process, right? Your whole recruiting process. How do you, what do you do? What is it? From start to finish? And A lot of companies, a lot of hiring managers or recruiters, they're looking at that piece of paper, right? They're looking at that resume and does it check these boxes? Do they have these skills written down and what degree do they have? And all that. There's some importance to some of the stuff on there, but I see that more as these are good questions to bring up, right, tell me about this experience and really the behavioral type of questions that you could actually understand who this person is, and not just what they've accomplished and put on a piece of paper. So it's that whole process of I want to understand who this person is. It's that whole process of I want to understand who this person is. Would I want to eat dinner with them or invite?
Speaker 2:
them over to my house or spend time with them and learn about what they have to say and what they can do, Not just. Oh, I love the school you went to or the degree you have. That sounds great. Let me bring you in.
Speaker 1:
This is like the confessions of a recovering recruiter.
Speaker 2:
It's like.
Speaker 1:
This is what my confessions of a recovering recruiter it's like you know this stuff, this is, this is what my life's been like.
Speaker 1:
But so you meet people, and you meet qualified people and they come in and they they've done their job, they looked at the website. So I love it when somebody looks at the website and they come in and go yeah, I'd love to work for a company like yours. I love this fiduciary stuff and you're like fiduciary, like fiduciary, and they're like, yeah, and your fee base, it's like no, we're fee only. And you know, I mean like it's like you did you really? You look quick enough, yeah, but you didn't look quick enough to figure it out. Even even marketing. People market me all the time. I get emails all the time to, and they're like, yeah, you know, we were really impressed with your firm, xyz, and I'm like you obviously didn't look that close. Yep, um, because if you look that close, you'd understand who I am and how to approach me better, um, but anyway, uh, I think this has to do with all people that we're trying to hire and, um, the whole me prism that you know, to ben's point, where, where the me prism should come up is when I'm talking about how I want to get better and I want to grow.
Speaker 1:
If you want to get better, you want to grow. You can talk about you all you want. I'm in on that, as long as you're not beating yourself up. I don't want to sit here and listen to somebody abuse themselves and make it sound like they're depressed and all that kind of stuff. But what I do want to hear about is I'm looking for an opportunity, and the opportunity that I want is I want to be in a situation where people around me are going to challenge me to grow. You know I want to get up early in the morning and show up to work and have other people at the office around me, right?
Speaker 1:
So, even though it's about what I want, the prism is about a better work environment, right. So, so is, even though it's about what I want, the prism is about a better work environment, right, right. And so when you're, when you're talking to employees or employees if you're out there, you know if people are out there and they're applying for a job, you need to make it about the organization. You have to show that you're going to buy into a mission, that it's not just about how you can climb the ladder and how you can move on. You want an opportunity to be able to participate or you want an opportunity to do it better than you did it last time, because that's about the organization, right? So I just, you know, I don't know. I'd like to dwell a little bit on the me prism a little bit. What like, what kind of you got any stories about maybe some situations where somebody failed the me prism a little bit? What like, what kind of you got any uh stories about maybe some situations where somebody failed the me prism?
Speaker 2:
yeah, a lot of times there's, you know, you, I might ask a question or something reference to the, the resume, and to say, you know, tell me about this, um, you know, internship, or maybe it was something that like a project that they had worked on. And if everything that they talk about is, well, this is what I did on the team and or you know, this is, this was my contribution, I did this. Or you know, somebody else dropped the ball on this. And if it's like a blame game or a, well, I picked up the pieces or I, and they really focus on their role in everything and not what the maybe the bigger picture was or what the other team members had done or how everybody contributed. That's usually like one of the kind of the initial red flags or bigger red flags of, well, this is what I did, like I helped us, you know, getting this many clients or bringing this revenue, and this is how I did it.
Speaker 2:
And you know I'm sure there was other parties involved in that right, or different team members, and kind of challenging them on that. What was the process? You know how you did all of this, you handled it and and kind of they're going to either dig themselves a deeper hole of this, continue to talk about how great they are, or there's going to be a place where you could kind of see that transition of yes, this was my role on that, but also here's how the rest of the team kind of played into this and that's what I'll get a lot of. Is it's kind of that? Well, let me run you down my resume, or run down the resume and tell you about all the great things I've accomplished.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we've had plenty of these situations. People come in and they talk about I love the organization, I love the mission. It's a breath of fresh air. And then the very next sentence and we're very open about compensation ranges in the beginning and I'd love to work in and the very next sentence is asking for something far beyond anything that we have even discussed. And it's like wait a second, I thought you were about the mission and now you're. You're, you're coming in the door making demands that that are fundamentally beyond anything that we've talked about to this point.
Speaker 1:
There's a disconnect there. You know what I mean. You had me read the book the ideal team player, which we've covered in this show. I think it was maybe season two and now we make every new hire who comes in the company read the ideal team player and do a book report on it. And the construction guy, the foreman that they were trying to hire they were going to bring them in from a different company to help manage their jobs. They eventually they're about ready to hire him and they eventually decided not to hire the guy and so they had been spent all this time with this senior manager type of guy that they were going to hire this. Very, very. He would have been very influential and he came from an organization where execution was the primary thing. It was all about execution and they can't get any really good references on him. Nobody will give the reference. They just say, yeah, he's really professional or whatever. And when they take him and they drive him around he gets really excited about the bridge that he built.
Speaker 1:
And so they're having the final discussion you know one of the final discussions about hiring the guy and they ask the secretary to come in and give her opinion. I don't know if she's secretary and admin assistant or something. It might be a bigger role in secretary, but it's. It's that type of role. And I ask her what she thinks. She goes well, I didn't want to report this before. So they're thinking it's like sexual harassment or something like that. And she's like he didn't know my name, you know, and. And they start to think about it and like in one of the uh, one of the times when they were driving around they were talking about he just needed to go in and check in with the secretary and and whatnot. And he goes who's that? He didn't know her name and he'd met her a couple of times.
Speaker 1:
So that's somebody that is really inwardly focused. You know, like when you come into an organization and you're trying to say, hey, I want to be a part of your mission, I want to bring the value that I have to this organization, and if the organization is about the people in it and you can't be respectful to the people that you meet walking in the door, I mean, one of the best things you could do if you want to really understand who you're hiring, put the hiring manager at the front desk. The person walks in the door. Do they even know that's the hiring manager? They may not know it. Let the hiring manager take them and sit them down in the interview room and get them coffee and bring them coffee in and see how they treat the hiring interview. This is why people take people to like restaurants and stuff for interviews.
Speaker 1:
They're looking at how do these people treat the staff, you know. Do they treat them? Are they arrogant? Are they rude? Are they disrespectful? Do they pay attention to details? You know, if you go out to lunch, do they buy the most expensive thing on the menu, not saying that you can't, but you know there's a kind of a decorum that you know that's more appropriate, so you forum, that's more appropriate.
Speaker 1:
There's things that I think that you can do, because if we hire somebody that is about them and the mission is all about others, it's really hard to figure out that there is. It's hard to get the results of this person who's all about themselves. It's going to be really hard to get them to produce something that's about others. And you're making the leap of faith. You're pretending that the organization can somehow get them to think outside of themselves, and it's just not going to happen. So that's his point about. You know, don't count on people to do all the right things for the wrong reasons. Just because you're at the organization isn't going to make a me person take care of others.
Speaker 2:
Right, yeah, and the screening for the right kind of manager. Maybe there is a candidate that is the smartest or has the you know smartest meaning like maybe the best skill set that matches up or the most experience, but they're a jerk or something right Like they didn't pass the jackass policy. Yeah, exactly, and that has to trump the rest, right, if that's what's important to you and your organization. You can teach the skills about what the job will entail. You can't teach the person how to act and their character.
