EntreLeadership - How to Avoid Terrible Hiring Decisions and Hire Impact Players with Liz Wiseman

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, starts this episode with a leadership roundtable. He’s joined by Executive Vice President of EntreLeadership Daniel Ramsey, Senior Executive Director of Human Resources Armando Lopez, and Director of Recruiting Jeremy Hezlep. They share times when they made terrible hiring decisions and what they do now to avoid repeating those mistakes. Later in the episode, George talks to Liz Wiseman, a bestselling author and the CEO of The Wiseman Group. She unpacks the practices of impact players and how to get them on your team. You’ll learn: •      Terrible hiring mistakes to avoid •      The difference between top performers and average team members •      How top performers handle problems •      The kind of person everyone wants on their team Sign up for The EntreLeadership Podcast takeaways—a weekly email where you’ll get three tangible takeaways and a tactical action step related to that week's episode: https://bit.ly/podcast-takeaways Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      12 Components to a Good Hire: https://bit.ly/3qx7DAw •      Give us your feedback by leaving a voicemail at 844.944.1070 or emailing [e-mail] •      Impact Players by Liz Wiseman: https://amzn.to/3McZefP •      Sign up for your 30-day free trial of EntreLeadership Elite: https://bit.ly/3QQ0E1l Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere with the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices: https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, we've got a leadership roundtable sharing stories of terrible hiring decisions. And then we're going to show you how to do it the right way, how to get impact players on your team. Welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast from the Ramsey Network, where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. I want to say a quick thanks to all of you who have left us a voicemail with some feedback on these new segments we've been trying. Some of you really like it. I just want to let you guys know. I think it's great. And some of you, not so much.

I have to say, I thought I was going to like it and I actually did not. Either way, we want to keep that feedback coming. It is so helpful for our team to create segments that help you guys out. So today we're going to try out another new segment, and this time it's a leadership roundtable. I'll be joined by Daniel Ramsey, our EVP of Entree Leadership, Armando Lopez, our Senior Executive Director of H.R., and Jeremy Haslip, our Director of Recruiting. And they're going to be vulnerable and share some stories about a time they made a terrible hiring decision and what they would do differently now to avoid repeating that mistake. Let's get to it. Gentlemen, welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast. Great to have you all.

Thanks for having us. This might be a world record to have a four-person roundtable here. Very exciting. Yeah. We took our top dogs to talk about hiring today, and we thought you all would be willing to share some of your failures and mistakes when it came to hiring. Are you willing to be vulnerable with us today? Yeah. I don't think you meant top dogs. I think we took the people that had the most stories to tell. Which is you. Obama has made a lot of mistakes. He's seen somebody. I don't like that you look straight at me. You look straight at me when you said it's a personal attack. Well, we have a, you know, some would say a complicated and long hiring process here at Ramsey, and it's for a very good reason.

We are notoriously known for 12 components for a good hire, and we won't go through all of those today, but there's a reason each one of those 12 exists, and it comes from mistakes that we've made over 30 years, many of them, Dave, in the early days, figuring this out. And I wanted you guys to share some of those stories that you've experienced. I'll jump in and say that one of my biggest mistakes that I had personally whenever I first started leading people years ago was I remember specifically having a couple that was moving from the West Coast. And we all got together and we're talking. We had a dinner together. And I picked up on the fact that he was way more excited than she was, but really didn't

give an opportunity for her to talk about, his wife to really talk about what it was going to be like. It didn't dive into the fact that they were moving with their first child on the way, away from all their family. And Jeremy, that was during the spousal, isn't it? That's when you picked it up. Yep, absolutely. And I learned a lot that day because, sure enough, they got here. They're about six months in, and miserable.

Had no plan of how to connect. And it was such a brutal experience. And you felt so bad for him. And I realized, man, we could have uncovered that. I could have asked some questions because they didn't know. And the guy was just excited. And she was trying to follow his lead. But really, I learned a ton from that.

experience. Yeah. Honestly, Jeremy, like, in the last year, I think I've made the mistake probably three or four times. I've made a hiring in? That's right. They moved back home. They left, you know, within 18 months and they moved back home.

So that we hired them from out of town and they just really weren't committed to the move in various ways. So, you know, they had fine reasons for leaving. But ultimately, what it was was they weren't committed to the move. They didn't plug in community. They didn't find community or they didn't put enough intentionality in the community. they didn't really plant their roots here in Nashville. And so that caused them to ultimately go back.

And so typically when a big life event happens in someone's life too, it really shakes them and they lean back on the people they trust whether they need help with child care or whether they just need good friends around them. And so, man, that's one thing I've been hitting really hard in the interview process is, hey, what are you going to do to find community? What is child care going to look like for you? Are you excited about this town and the culture, the unique culture, that Nashville has or whatever town you're from, for those listening.

That's good. And the spousal is the spousal dinner. That's one of the final pieces of the interview process. And like you're saying, it's important that we have that. And people go, that's weird. Why do you have to bring my wife into this man or my husband? But it's very important to get the spouse on board because your job affects your family and affects your life. And so it's a super important piece of the process. And even then, you have to dig in. Yeah. And people think of like a spotlight on their spouse, like trying to dive into skill. And that's not what that's like at all. But giving them the opportunity to talk to us is so big.

No, we're not interviewing the spouse. No, exactly. It's more of an opportunity for us just to lay out, like, hey, here's who we are. What questions do you have? We want to involve you in the process. We're not interviewing the spouse. I'll tell you, it's so cool to see the alignment when they're both excited, not only about the company the spouse is about to join,

but also the city they're moving to, if there's a move involved. And the intentionality, how are you going to make friends? Like, do they, have they made friends before or have they lived in the same town for a long time? So it sounds silly, but those are the simple things that people don't think about sometimes. Yeah, getting plugged into a community as an adult is hard. Deloni talks about this all the time. Making friends is hard. Finding people to babysit your kids is hard.

Finding, like, being comfortable with the school districts and all that. Those are important that matter so much to families. So on top of the spousal, part of this is can they do the job? And sometimes that's hard to decipher in the interview. process, right? Has that been a pain point for you guys as you've been interviewing? It's been a pain point for me. So Daniel said I've made a lot of mistakes earlier, and so this is true. That was a joke. I probably made more. Now, some of the worst hiring mistakes I've made is when we were not clear about what we wanted that person to do when they got here because that person

didn't know, right? So they didn't know exactly what was going to be expected of them. And then typically less than a year, they realized, I can't do the job you hired me to do. Or we, or we, we realize you can't do the job we hired you to do. So there's a little bit of both sides own it, right? So on our side, we own, did we actually do a good job of assessing their skills, right? Did we think they could actually do it? On the other side, it's on the candidate being able to opt out if needed, right, being able to say, I can't do this. I can't do what you would need for this role. I mean, I remember a time where we hired somebody intentionally, we knew that they didn't have the skills to do the job, but they were close. some experience that actually would line up.

And our commitment originally was that we, that leader who hired that person would dive in and spend a lot of time helping to catch that person up. And then that leader ended up getting so busy that they never had time. So when that person ended up moving, they said they were super frustrated because, hey, I signed up knowing I couldn't do this, but I never felt like I had the support along the way. Those are the types of things that for us who do this all the time. It's super frustrating because you know.

going into it, but we also have to recognize that we have a series of things that we have to commit to and then deliver as well. There was one time I was interviewing someone. They were a leader, actually. They were leading part of our team and really excited. This person was so nice. They were sociable. They were fun.

And when they got in the door, they could not do the job. They just didn't have the ability to really drive the lane and lead the team the way they thought they could. They may have done, they may have had success at other places, and they could talk to talk. They didn't have the self-awareness of what it was going to take to pull off. And so I truly believe that they thought they had what it took. But when they got here, they definitely realized they didn't. And that was hard. We probably, it was probably nine months before we ended up parting ways.

And it was just hard for everyone involved. Love the guy. He was great, but he wasn't great at the job. And so the team suffered. His stress was way too high. And so it was a lose-lose. And I wish on the front end I would have done a better job of really digging in, giving more specific examples of what the job entails,

and giving him scenarios to see, hey, how would you do this or how would you do that, and seeing how he responds. That would have saved his family and us and our team so much pain, so much trouble. Yeah. I don't know about you, Daniel, but those are some of the hardest exits for me to do is because we could have perhaps by digging deeper, by giving scenarios, by role-playing some of the actual work, we might have been able to prevent that. Exactly. I think that's also one of the reason we're so intentional now about doing a separate skills interview, where it's a group of people, and oftentimes it's not a leader now. We're talking about a senior level person who's actually a maker in that role is sitting there helping to assess their skill. I think that's so huge because that gives the opportunity to not feel like you have to cover a whole bunch of different things at once. I'm going to spend this hour and just dive straight into their skill.

Yeah. Someone from HR interviewing a developer, they may not know the ins and outs of code, naturally. So to have someone who does understand codes sit with them and assess that, that can avoid a whole lot of pain down the road. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's huge. So as part of all of these mistakes, you know, hopefully over time you get better and you make less of them and you make better hiring decisions. But that also means it takes longer. So, you know, a lot of leaders feel like there's a sunk cost fallacy.

Well, it took so long to hire them. Now I don't want to get rid of this person. How do you deal with that level of kind of regret? or we spent so much time in this and now we've got to, it's all wasted. Yeah. I think the worst part about hiring someone that can't do the job is keeping someone that can't do the job. That's even more expensive.

Yeah. In the long run, that costs you, that cost you a lot more, right? The team can see, hey, you brought this person in and they can't really do it. And the longer you keep them, it just degrades everyone, everyone involved. Have there been moments recently where you guys have caught something midway because of these principles and values we have around hiring where you went, okay, they took the personality assessment or we saw the references and we had to cut it. We don't make decisions based off of just that personality. We use the disc. That's used as a tool, but we never use that for only

the hiring purposes. It's a multifaceted decision. Right. That's something to help go alongside as we're talking to somebody about it. But all the time, we have intentionality around each step of the process. And when you know what you're going to cover and it builds off of something else. We're actually, we've recently rolled out a new interview process that does that more than ever before that requires every leader to prepare ahead of time, helps, we give them actually structured guides, interview guides, and then also require them to fill out evaluation. So that way, it is building on each other through the whole thing. That helps eliminate a lot of redundancy, because one of the biggest things that candidates walking through any hiring process

to get frustrated with is they say things like, well, I had the same interview over and over and over. You asked to be the same thing that this person did. We didn't uncover anything new if you asked the same question unless there's a specific reason for it. But normally it's because you just didn't know there wasn't a process. So us changing our process and laying it out, you can have a lot of steps, but that doesn't mean it has to take a long time. Right. And we don't cut out the stuff. So we keep the same number of steps.

The process is there for a reason, right? And so it helps us hire the best quality people. And when you start short-changing the process, you end up with mistakes. You can go faster through a process if you're more intentional. So just because the process has a lot of steps doesn't mean it goes so, so slow. You know, if we have a candidate that we're really excited about and it seems like a slam dunk, we don't skip steps. We just speed it up and say, hey, guys, let's make this a priority.

Let's get the right people in the interview process and let's line up that schedule. So we make it happen quickly. So we do make hires quickly, oftentimes. It's for the ones that we have some yellow flags or some things we need to really dig into and lean into more, that the process tends to we spend more time on each step. Yeah. And Daniel, that's a great point. So thanks for making that point because we do, we can move faster. And when it's a referral and we already know something about it, someone's worked side by side with that person and can speak on their behalf to the work they've done, that goes a lot faster, right?

Like we already, we have someone internally that can say, oh, I know how they work. I know how they deal with other colleagues. I know how they collaborate. I know how they. So all of those things helps us to speed up the process. I've heard Dave Ramsey say, marriage is grand, divorce is 50 grand. And I feel like the same applies in hiring. When you go, hiring is expensive, but when you hire the wrong person, it can be even more

expensive. As we know, onboarding and all the time spent and all the leaders and team involved. And so we want to do this with a lot of. of intentionality to avoid these mistakes because it's way more expensive than going. While I needed a warm body in the door, let's just get someone in, we'll deal with it later. That can be a huge problem. Yep, agreed. I think to give, I'll give Daniel a shout out here because on Monday with our recruiting team,

we were talking about pain points and just uncovering what are problems. And one of the things is a lot of hiring leaders at a certain level, the higher they get. Sometimes they're busy and it's hard to get on their calendar for schedules or it's hard to get feedback. And one of the, the two names that they said were the best in the building was Daniel Ramsey and Herb Jenkins. They both happened to be more numbers too. I didn't, I didn't know I had that reputation. My ego just grew a little bit. But I don't let me do that. But I think that it's because they're very intentional of knowing their business and knowing the impact that it can have. And so they make themselves available and also have a high level of understanding why are we hiring this position.

If you know that and you know the impact, then you really are motivated to hire and to move through the process quickly. Well, one of the top character qualities I see in Daniel is discernment. And I think that is one of the key things you have to have in the interview process is discerning where the yellow flag, green flags, red flags are, where to dig in, and where to

move on. And that can be a huge part of this process. It's not something you can necessarily just learn quickly. Hey, can I take a stand on something? Please. On that note, if you're trying to discern someone, you're trying to discern, look into, is this a good fit and really get a strong feel? It is almost impossible to do that

virtually. Get them in the office, see them face to face, watch their, look them in the eyes. If at all possible, you have got to do that because doing interviews only over the computer is just there's so much fakeness that can be lost and missed. But if you're trying to discern if they're their right fit and really going to be part of your culture, look at them in the eyes, watch the way they react to their questions, see how they interact with your team when you bring them into your office. You can pick up on so many nonverbal cues, right? To your point, you can pick up on things. Are they excited? Are they at the edge of their seat, right? Are they leaning back? So all of those things that can be hidden in a Zoom. Yeah, so we do, we interview a lot of people from out of

state or not in Nashville. And we do our initial calls over the phone or over Zoom, but we always have people come in person to be at our office before we make any decision. You know, we actually recently changed the our initial HR screen from being a phone screen to Zoom. Because I think there's different levels up. From a phone to Zoom, you now can read it's better. And then go in person. But any opportunity that we have to bring on site, and this specifically for the people who aren't around. The local people, you know, I'm, I always have a strong preference that we do as few phone calls as possible, but as many, like, get them in the office. Agreed. Let's sit down. Let's talk to If they really care this much about working here, they're going to make time in their schedule.

And, you know, I know I care about hiring them, too, so I'm going to make time as well. So based on all of your failures, maybe in the past, with hiring mistakes, what's the top tip? Each of you would give a leader out there who's struggling to find the right people with their right fit, you know, culture fit, skills fit, all of that. Today's day and age, I think it'll go against the norm, but I would say take your time. Don't rush it. Take your time. That's good. I would say know specifically what it is that you, the characteristics and the skills, what you want to hire. Do you know what winning looks like?

Because if you don't know what that looks like, you'll miss an opportunity when you're talking to somebody. You'll have somebody who's fantastic for it and you won't even know. Or you'll think they're awesome, but you never invested the time to know the skill in what you're looking for. So you don't know that that didn't line up. And that's one of the keys of creating KRAs, which is part of our hiring process. You have to have that. Key results are solid. A solid job description, KRA's build out.

That's right. The piece of advice I would give is don't let your desperation, your need for someone in the role, to help you overlook red flags. If you see a red flag, you need to deal with it and really dig into it. Don't let your desperation get in the way of you making a bad hire. So much wisdom here, guys. Love to have anyone. Love the way you guys intentionally are hiring the right people so that we can have the impact we need to have. Thank you guys so much.

Thanks for having us. Appreciate those guys being on and sharing some stories with us today. So what did you think of that new segment? Did you like it? Did you not like it? Call and leave us a voicemail and let us know. 844-944-1070. That's 844-944-1070.

All right, coming up next, we're going to have a conversation about how to get impact players on your team. It's coming up right after this. All right, welcome back. Our next guest is Liz Wiseman, CEO of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm. She's also an executive advisor who teaches leadership around the world and a best-selling author of multiple books, multipliers, The Multipler Effect, Rookie Smarts, and her latest impact players.

Now, here at Entry Leadership, we want you to have team members that are dialed in and helping your company make an impact. And Liz calls these Impact Players, and she's going to unpack the practices of these impact players and show you how to get them on your team. Let's get to it. Liz, it's such a pleasure to have you on the Entree Leadership podcast. How are you? I'm great. And George, thanks for having me. I'm really looking forward to this. Well, we are big fans of yours and your book Impact Players, and that's what we're diving into today, because a lot of business owners listening out there, they're going, well, yeah, Liz, I want impact players on my team, of course. And so I want you to first cover the difference between

a contributor and an impact player. Well, a contributor is someone, it's not a low performer. It's someone who's doing a fine job. You know, smart, capable, hardworking, doing a fine job versus an impact player is someone who is not just doing a solid job, someone who's making an extraordinary impact and delivering work of inordinate value and really making a difference. And, you know, simply put, I see it as fundamentally the difference between a position holder in an organization and a difference maker. Yeah, that's a great filter as you look around your team and go, who's really making a difference and who just has the title and they're skating by, they're doing.

and fine. And we all want those impact players. Now, at Entree leadership, we always talk about leadership as influence. So would you say that these impact players always have influence in the workplace? Well, they have to because these impact players come from all levels and all positions and all functions. And they're these type of leaders who just act like leaders. And, you know, they're seen as leaders. And I think the reason why they're seen as leaders, regardless of where they sit in the organization is because they see themselves as leaders, which means you have to subscribe to a model of leadership where leadership is about influence, whereas management is about power and authority. And, you know, it's about someone who's willing to take charge. But they see that

it's like a job to be done, not a forever job, meaning they're willing to step up and take the lead but there is willing to step back and follow others. And it's funny, I studied leadership for a living and a bit of an expert on leadership. But what I've really come to see is our power as leaders comes not from taking charge and stepping up and leading. It's this willingness to step back and follow others with the same energy and commitment and zeal with which. we lead others. And actually, I think our power comes not from stepping up. Our power and influence

comes from being willing to step back and treat other people like leaders. Yeah, that's empowering your team and kind of getting out of the way and being able to replace yourself. That's a huge part of this. And that's actually one of the practices of impact players that you lay out in the book. And so I want to cover, I'm going to just go through all five and we're going to unpack them real quick for the listeners. So number one, do the job that's needed. Number two, step up and step back, like you mentioned. Number three, finish stronger. Number four, ask and adjust.

And number five, make work light. Those are very interesting. So let's jump into the first one here. Do the job what's needed. Is that what it sounds like? Can they actually accomplish their KRA? Well, this is how the impact players handle the messy problems of the workplace. You know, the problems that don't have owners at.

It's not this department's job. It's not that department's job. your job, it's not his job. It's an important piece of work, but it's nobody's job. And in these situations, the ordinary contributor, they do their job, they do their piece. And you know what's fascinating is managers talked about these ordinary contributors as people who did their job brilliantly. Like, well, isn't that what you want? But the impact players are doing the job that needs to be done. meaning they don't limit themselves to their position in the organization, their job description. They kind of treat their job description as a starting point, or a base camp, like, hey,

here's where I hang out, so that when there's a problem up mountain, I'm in position to go there and be helpful. Yeah. They're a little rangy with their job. It sounds like they're not above any type of work. They're there to problem solve and to serve. and to serve the team. And if that looks a little different for that day and no one's owning something,

they're just going to jump onto it because that's what leaders do. I love this. They're not above anything and they're not below anything. Meaning, like, hey, if there's a piece of work to be done and it's, you know, above your pay grade,

you still go do it. You don't wait for the promotion. You don't wait for permission. You do what needs to be done. So we've got that covered, do the job that's needed, and then you mentioned this earlier. Number two, step up and step back. This is what we find that impact players do differently than others when it comes to unclear roles, where there's a leadership vacuum.

There's like a void, and we've encountered these positions all the time, where you're in a meeting, and you know you need to be collaborating, and you know you need everyone there at the table, but you're not sure who's in charge. or when you encounter the ambient problems of the workplace. And by ambient problems, I mean the leaky faucets. Like, you know, here's this business process. It's clunky. We all hate it.

It's cumbersome. But you know what? It's not quite bad enough that you have to fix it today. You learn to live with it. Squeaky wheels, you know, leaky faucets. In these situations, you need somebody to decide to do something about it and someone to decide to just step in and take the lead. And that's what we find the ordinary contributor.

They're willing leaders, but they're leaders in waiting. They're waiting for someone to come along and call them up to lead. It's got to fall right on their lap. It has to fall on my lap. Someone has to tell me I'm in charge. And I spent 17 years at Oracle as an executive, and I can't even count how many times somebody said, well, like, I'll lead that, but will you send a note?

doubt and tell everyone I'm the boss. Like, I'll be the boss, but you've got to make me the boss. You've got to make people listen to me. Like the impact players, they don't have any time for that. They're like, you know what? This needs to be done. I'll step up and lead. And again, they do this without stepping on toes because they're not just these take charge leaders. They know when to step back, share the leadership, pass the baton. So they're leaders who build this influence because we trust them. We trust them to do the right thing, but we trust them to not always have to be the boss. Nobody likes working for that person. No, and that's positional leadership. And that's a big reason team members are leaving companies is because of leaders who lead that way,

just out of power and out of title. We need those leaders who step up and step back, for sure. So the next one that we lead into is finish stronger. What's that about? Oh, this is about what happens when we deal with another one of the perennial challenges of the modern world. workplace, which is just like unforeseen obstacles, things you couldn't have planned for just drop in your way. Of course, a global pandemic is a pretty good example of this, but it's what do you do when something bigger than you out of your control drops in your path? And what we find is the ordinary contributor, they take responsibility, they take ownership, they get things going, but when something big drops in their way, what they tend to do is they tend to look upward. They look

to senior leaders, they escalate issues, they hand off the problem. In these same cases, what the impact players do differently is they just, they don't only take ownership of things, they maintain ownership. They just stay in charge even when it's bigger than them. So what that means is you can't just go it alone like, okay, I will like, you know, this Herculian effort, I'll get it done by myself, sacrifice myself, like on the altar of this problem, cross the finish line and collapse, they get things done all the way done, but they don't do it solo. They get other people working for them. So maybe simply put,

it's instead of handing it off to the business owner or the senior VP of the organization, they get the business owner or the senior rep involved. And we all know what it's like to have these people inside our organization. It's the person who doesn't hand it back to you, but then they're like, hey, like Liz, I need you on this. Like, we got a problem here. And they're going to fix it, but they're getting you involved too. They're going to pull your influence in. So they not only finish the job, they finish with the whole organization stronger because we've tackled this obstacle. Yeah, it reminds me of those group projects in high school where you just kind of took it all on yourself and then you were really resentful. And so this is a very different approach where

we're inviting other leaders in because we value what they bring to the table. And we wrap them to the problem, and that is influence. When you can get people, get the right people in the room to go, we're going to solve this together, and it's not to my credit, this is a team effort. That's great leadership. And people around them and below them in the organization love following them, but the most senior people do as well, because you think about it, the difference between someone who works for you handing you a problem versus the person who's going to stay in charge but

pull you in. and you love working for that person. You're like, hey, what do you need for me? I got it. You need me to call a customer. You need me to prioritize that. Like, boom, I'm on it because you're on it. You know, it's funny.

One of the things I learned in this research, studying the most valued, valuable contributors of the workplace is that managers really hate managing people. You know, like nobody really wants to manage anymore. And, you know, we love working with these people who are self-managing. And it's a great deal because no one really wants to be managed anymore. People want to lead. I see this very much as your ticket out of micromanagement to have impact players on your team. Like you get to be a leader.

It gives your team their dignity. Yeah. It gives such dignity to the team when you can empower them and not feel like you're over their shoulder because you don't trust them to do the job that you hired them to do. Yeah. I really do. I love this word you used. It is this path for dignity for everyone inside of the organization because people don't want to just be a positional.

People want to make a difference and people want freedom and independence, but not on an independent agenda. It's, I'm going to focus on what's important to this organization and my senior leaders and my clients and my stakeholders. But because I'm pointed at the right. target, I can work independently without managers wondering what am I up to. And that level of trust makes the whole business move faster. And we've seen that time and time again. So your next practice of impact players ask and adjust. Is this around feedback?

It is around feedback. It is what people do when the environment's changing, the market's changing, situations are changing, budgets are changing. when you start with one aim and then something changes the target. What do you do when you're surrounded by change? What we find is that the ordinary contributor tends to stay focused. Okay, here is my target. This was my budget.

They lock on to stuff, which of course seems like this gritty, heroic way of working. But they create this drag for their bosses because the bosses are constant. Like, no, things have changed. Like, that budget's gone. I need you to go this way. We're constantly coddling and moving people. Whereas the impact players, they're not sticking to what they know. They're adapting.

They're asking. They're not just responding to feedback. They're asking for feedback. And, you know, it's not feedback on how am I doing. It's, is my work hitting the target? It's like, probably the simplest way to think about this is like this kind of, way of working where you finish a day of work, you go to bed, you wake up the next morning, and you assume that while you were sleeping, the world changed. Something changed around you. So it's not

just, let me keep doing what I've been doing. It's what's different today or this week or this quarter and how do I keep pointing myself towards what's most relevant right now. Yeah, that adaptability is what keeps many businesses alive. And if you don't do it for too long, you can see, you know, you become the next blockbuster and Toys R Us. Absolutely. There's some great wisdom there. So your last practice here, make work light. This one seems like more of an approach to work.

It's absolutely an approach to work. It's what they do when the burden is heavy, when it's unrelenting demands. We find that the ordinary contributor, they carry their weight on the team. But when things are really tough, they end up adding to the burden of their colleagues or their managers. And, you know, we all know this. Like, we all know colleagues who are talented but taxing. Like, they just make hard work harder. You're like, oh, this should be a two-minute request, but I know it's going to be a two-minute, like, warm up to like a two-hour.

Exactly. It's the people on your calendar who you dread working with versus those that you're like, we have an hour scheduled. And they're probably going to tell me, hey, I've got the answer right here, like five minutes. and we're done. They're a time rebate rather than a tax. And we find these impact players, they just make hard work lighter. And it's sometimes they lend a hand of help. Like, hey, you know what, George, I can see your swamp. What can I take off your plate?

But, you know, that's only so scalable. I can't go around just taking things off other people's plates. I'll end up exhausted. It's that they're easy to work with. They're like, hey, you know what, here's a report. and I just summarize the key points. They're concise, they're direct, they don't do drama, politics, they push away the phantom work, and they just focus on the real work.

And it's one of my favorite things in the researchers. I always find something interesting. Like, they're just fun. They're just people who you enjoy working with because they can be lighthearted and laugh their way through difficult things without losing the gravitas of the moment or the work. Yeah, that's huge. And we all want to be around people like that. And we have luckily a lot of those here at Ramsey.

But for these small business owners listening, they're going, all right, I want to hire these types of people, Liz. What kinds of questions can I be asking in the interview process to figure out the green flags, red flags? Is this going to be an impact player? Yeah. Well, I think you have to look,

I mean, you can look for the behavior of the impact player. and use some behavioral-based interviewing techniques. But what's most powerful is to look for the mindsets behind the behavior. Because the mindset you're looking for are people with a proactive personality, people with an outward orientation who aren't like looking at self, their own experience. They're looking at, well, what's hard for the people around me? What's important to the people around me?

And they're people who then make that important to them. So you're looking for someone with an empathetic personality. You're looking for someone with a service orientation. Yeah. Someone who sees their work. Like, I'm here to serve my client, my boss, my colleagues. And, of course, in serving, they end up pretty well served by the organization. Like, you can imagine these are people who are well recognized, well compensated.

One of the hallmarks of Entree leadership is our 12 components of a good hire in our hiring process. And one of those is passion. Do they light up when they're talking about this role in the process? Is there a connection you found between passion and impact players? Well, there is, and it's a little bit counterintuitive because they work with passion, but not necessarily on their passion. And I think this is a really important distinction for kind of this moment in time where and a lot of people are told, hey, follow your passion and you'll never work a day in your life.

And, you know, what happens is you get people who are following their passion inside an organization and suddenly they're following their passion. You're like, well, actually, it's not quite what we do here. And what we find is that they figure out what's important inside the organization and they make it important to them. And then they work passionately on it with energy, with conviction. And often they become passionate about. the work, but they're not people like, hey, this is like my personal passion. Like, this is what I want to work on.

That's big. It is. And, you know, I have to admit, I joined the workforce, like, looking for a place that would let me work on what I was passionate about. And, you know, for me, it was this job interview where the boss was like, hey, great, Liz, like, we think you're great. But actually, your boss has a different problem. And what would be terrific is if you could help her solve this problem, I would.

I wanted to teach leadership. They needed someone to teach technology to a bunch of technologists around the world. And I'm like, I don't want that job. That's not the thing I care about. But like, what I could hear him saying was Liz. I mean, he didn't really say this, but what he was implying was, Liz, look around here and figure out what's going on and what's important, what's on the critical path and make yourself useful. And I'm like, oh, it's not the job I want, but man, that is the job that needs to be done. And I went and did it.

Turned out I became passionate about it. And suddenly, opportunity after opportunity after opportunity and promotion and compensation, all these things follow because I was willing to point myself to what matters. And it's not how I entered the workforce. I fortunately got some good coaching. Yeah, you can definitely fast forward your career here if you align your passion with the mission and vision of the organization you're working for. That's what we're talking about here. It's awesome. Oh, and these people are so valuable.

I want to know, is it possible to have too many impact players on the team? Do you want a stable of 100% impact players or is there a place for those contributors? Well, I think if you think about it as two types of people, yeah, you probably don't want. a whole team of impact players. If you think about it like a superstar, yeah, maybe you don't want an entire team of superstars. They may not work well together in basketball. Such a great example of this. But if you think about it a little differently, you think about it as a mindset or a mode of working, I do think you want an entire team of impact players. You want an entire team of people, some who are maybe out on the, you know, sort of on the stage and some that are behind the scenes,

but you want everyone thinking and working this way. How do I do the job that needs to be done? How do I step up and lead, but also follow others? How do I get things across the finish line? This way of working is something that anyone from any position can work this way. So, yeah, I think you can have a team of people who are, stuck working in this high-impact mentality. Yeah, that's a great call-out that impact players aren't always at the highest position of the

company. This can be, you know, someone on the administrative side or sales or marketing, and you want impact players in every area of your business, regardless of their position and how much spotlight they have. And so that brings me on my final question, Liz, is it possible to move from being a contributor to an impact player? Or, you know, are impact players born, or are they kind of created over time? Can you coach that? Man, we have seen a few people in the research who just show up this way regardless of where they work. And it's funny, George, when I was doing the research, I had this aha moment. I'm like, wow, maybe instead of writing a book, I should start a company and just hire these 170 people that I just research.

Because they kind of always work this way, regardless of culture, mission, leadership. most people can work this way and want to work this way, but they need a supportive environment. They need the right kind of leadership. And, you know, maybe the simplest way to look at it is if you want a team of impact players, well, be the kind of leader that they deserve. You know, you want to be the kind of leader that creates an environment where it's safe to step up and lead. It's safe to hold on to ownership. It's safe.

to be ranging and do what needs to be done. It's safe to be changing and adapting rather than sticking to what you know. It's safe to be lighthearted and fun. But you also want to be a leader who creates enough stretch where it's actually not okay to just do your job. It's not okay to just do what you've always been done. And I find that most people with the right kind of leadership are going to move this way. and maybe with just permission. Like, hey, this is how I want you to work. Like, go for it. Yeah, impact players want to work under really great leaders.

So I love kind of turning the mirror back on ourselves and saying, hey, where do we need to work on our leadership in order to be that leader they deserve? That's a great reminder. Well, Liz, I love what you and your organization are doing through all of your research to help so many companies or organizations out there, hire those impact players and make an impact in the world.

world. So thank you for what you do. Love your book impact players. We'll make sure everyone grabs a copy. Thanks for being with us. Thank you, George. Big thanks to Liz for joining us on today's episode. Well, folks, we are ramping up for Entree Leadership Summit 2023. And if you haven't heard, we've got some big news. Malcolm Gladwell has officially joined the lineup. Malcolm is a five-time New York Times best-selling author and one of foreign policy's top global thinkers. So if you want to hear Malcolm and the rest of our incredible lineup, speakers like Dr. Jordan Peterson, Dr. Amy Cuddy, Dave Ramsey, and so many more, then you've got to get your tickets now.

It's all happening in Nashville, Tennessee, May 30th through June 2nd. So go to Entreeleadership.com slash summit to secure your spot. If you enjoyed today's episode of the show, follow or subscribe and leave us a review wherever you're listening. Do us one better and share this episode with your team, with your friends, or on social media. As always, you can follow us on social at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison,

and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.