Transcript
Adding people to your team as I said can be scary: losing control, letting go of all the day to day. It will be done differently than what you wanted or maybe thought would look like. It is, I think, a self-discovery to start with. What are my strengths and where do I need to complement them? Don’t look at your weaknesses at that point because your weaknesses are your weaknesses. And if you want to really double down on those then good luck, I’ll be very blunt, that’s not gonna work. Double down in your strengths and look for people who have other strengths that you really, really need. Where will you find them?
I would always start with people I know. And I would always start with just asking some questions that I have designed for myself. They might not work for you. They do work for me. So, you know, feel free to copy and, you know, steal with pride. The first question I ask myself is what can I learn from that person? What is it that they can teach me maybe in the way how I do business, how I look at the world, how I look at my potential client base, whatever they might be, but what is there that I can learn from them? Does it enrich me and my business?
If it doesn’t, don’t hire. If it doesn’t give you joy to spend eight, ten, twelve hours a day with that person on a particular project or activity, don’t hire. If you have doubts whether this is going to work out in the long run – and I’m not talking five year commitment, as I said, that’s unrealistic – but if you don’t even know, will this person be on time tomorrow? Can I rely on them delivering this on Friday? Can I rely on them stepping in if I call them 30 minutes early and say, listen, my kid is sick, I can’t come, can you jump in and run the show, run this presentation, client meeting, whatever that might be? The slightest doubt that you don’t think that they will be there for you, don’t hire.
First time hiring, look at people you know, but also be clear about the profile you’re looking for. As I said, define it, sit down there and write something that is really basic. So write your job description. Be clear on what success looks like. How would you collaborate? And then put people to stress tests. I’m a firm believer in putting people into stress tests. You can do this in theory. First, do a little exercise: what would you do if …? How should we go about when …? Why is this not working at …? Do this experiment.
The minute you do it, you will realize that other people also have their blind spots. And they also have areas that they, you know, kind of lean more towards, especially when things get hard, they fall back into a natural kind of core behavior that you might never have seen before. And all of a sudden, when things get hard and stressful, they default back into their natural being. And maybe there are elements and, you know, certain parts of their personality you don’t quite like, or you’ve never discovered, you don’t appreciate, but it is who they are. Their other whole self, just like we might not have the best days all day. And sometimes we come across as maybe more rude or more impatient or more strict than maybe naturally we would want to. But the thing is in those hard moments, you’ll also discover what else is missing on your team. And that’s a very valuable lesson. So if you realize that when it gets hard, everybody shies away from the hard work, then you need somebody who does not shy away from the hard work. So this is what you have on your job description. You have to look at and finding the person to really hire.
The minute you show how vulnerable and authentically fragile you are, that’s the moment you are drawing the right people to you. I don’t know what that is, if that’s a magic or some stars or energy aligning, I don’t know. But the truth is that the minute you say “I don’t know it and I wished I knew more about it, but there are things I just don’t even know where to start”, somebody will have an idea. That somebody could be your friend. It could be a business partner. It could be a client. It could be just a random conversation at the networking event or at a party. Somebody, your partners, somebody will have a little hint, a little idea that you can start elaborating on.
Once you have your first few pupil and you believe that they are the best you can gather around you, and you’re really proud of them, and you’re starting to accomplish, and you’re starting to really make some headway in your ideas and in your planning, and your success is starting to come in, hire more of that. This is where you start leveraging your team. There is a saying: A-players hire A-players, B-players hire C-players. So be careful who you put on your team and ask them for recommendations, be okay to remove yourself from your process.
You will probably have established certain rules of engagement in the first place. Some people call it company values and mission statement, maybe a manifesto, whatever you want to call it, right, rules of the game. There is something you will have established and it will hold true. And the people you hire obviously will also comply with those. And I know comply is a bad word, but people subscribe to something that you stand for and that your business stands for. So the minute that you do it, let go. Because they will do it and with the best interest and intentions at heart. They might also screw up every now and then, then you will have ideas for solving that. But in general, remove yourself from that process once your team is big enough and has proven itself and start focusing on areas that matter to you. Don’t be the one who thinks they have to interview and process through every single candidate. That’s not most valuable that you can contribute. And it’s certainly not something that you have time for.
So this is when you really start realizing how effective and important it is to let go and free yourself up and protect the little space that you will have for the more important stuff. Maybe it is about seeking your investors. Maybe it is about growing your products. Maybe it is about enhancing your customer experience. There will be other more important things to do than to really, you know, go through the granularities of an interviewing process or, you know, telling your team how to do it. You do this once you maybe do it twice, maybe a third time if it’s super junior people, but then let go and let them do it because again, A-players will hire A-players. So you should be comfortable with that.
