Building an exceptional team #1

Today we will cover the first ingredient:

#1 THE RIGHT PERSON AT THE RIGHT PLACE WITH THE RIGHT SUPPORT SYSTEM

Whether you are dealing with existing team members or recruiting new ones, making sure that they are fully fit for the role should be one of your first concerns.

More often than one would ever want to admit it, highly frustrated individuals either leave their position after a few months because they are not satisfied with what the job turned out to be OR spend almost their entire working hours expressing their lack of fulfilment in passive aggressive ways that sooner or later will completely derail the effective implementation of your team processes, undermining its morale and the overall business performance.

This is very often a recruitment issue, but how can it occur?

What I have noticed having recruited hundreds of team members is that some people are just better at interviews than others.

Worse, sometimes the right candidates are supposed to be bad in interviews, but we simply forget to adjust our filters and solely focus on whether or not the candidate successfully passed the many tests and traps we had crafted and laid on his or her way.

When this is not this error, we will often base our decision on our emotional or intellectual connection with the candidate, completely omitting to put ourselves in the shoes of the person(s) who will have to spend most of the time with this potential recruit and might have radically opposed filters.

Finally, 99% of our decisions are based on automated subconscious processes. As such they are much more emotionally driven than what we tend to believe and is far from rational as we deem it to be. 13 biases have been identified to enter in the hiring decision process, so gaining total objectivity is simply impossible and doom to fail…

Awesome, so what are you proposing?

Well, unless you are a seasoned recruiter, shrink or psychic, you might want to rely on other techniques than just your personal judgment. Even if you were, your skills would hardly be transferable immediately so other solutions are likely required if you rely on other team members to proceed with the same tasks.

First off, ensure that the job description is as accurately describing the position as possible. An excellent bluffer or actor will seldom actively pitch for a position he knows he will not be interested in unless the salary is very attractive.

For the above reason, advertise the job below what you are eventually ready to pay, but on par with the market low to average price.

Try and identify the psychological type of candidate required using the categories of a personality test you or your company are familiar with, such as Myers-Briggs. Most are using a four-dimensional filter inspired by Carl Jung’s psychological types (who had himself based it on the four elements of the zodiac). This will likely bring much more focus to your recruitment process. Should the candidate react to his environment and draw conclusions or try and influence his environment whatever the opposition? Should the candidate be good at fixing issues, happy handling repetitive tasks, elaborating mental processes, showing empathy or develop inspiring and visionary objectives? The clearer you can be on what is truly expected from the candidate the easier the fit will be.

Try and understand what the current team composition is and whether or not existing lack of balance could be further amplified by the new recruit… try and focus on what you lack of rather than the plenty you already have.

Finally, either adjust your interview time to test whether or not the fit is good. Or find a faster way to get your intuition validated hiring a consultant, like myself.

The budget and speed factors

Also note that this will come back being much cheaper and faster than inviting all candidates to pass a test.

This approach is also likely to diminish your churn and reducing failed re-recruitment costs.

And is much more actionable on the long run thanks to the below.

Finally, ensuring a smooth landing within the team

Even the best candidates can struggle to integrate, and the first few months are often critical to securing a long-term recruitment, leaving a long lasting first impression. Making sure they are successfully equipped and supported to excel in their daily missions is consequently critical to limiting unnecessary early departures and additional recruitment costs.

Helping you to understand the type of attention and support system a new recruit needs will help you implementing the right managerial approach so that you avoid starting from the wrong foot and immediately develop strong bonds.

Why me?

Realizing this– learning the art of leadership, finding and mastering the tools that help put together such teams–have taken me decades.

I was lucky enough to start managing teams at the age of 24, fail many times so that I could go back to the drawing board and learn some more, be responsible for smaller and much bigger teams in ten different countries so that I can delineate what is universal, a challenge of scale or simply cultural.

Today, what is truly motivating me is to be able to share this with you and assist you in your efforts to improve and become a better unit.

I have been blessed with winning almost every ambition I have set with my teams and have realized that my true calling is not to be at the forefront, but standing behind or beside others so that I can share my gifts and experience with those who truly need to experience this power.

Next ingredient

In the second chapter of this series, we’ll review how adjusting our communication style to each and every team member’s allows for all needs to be met and greater performance to arise.