💎 The Corner Office #2 - Recruiting & Coaching

Read time: 8 minutes

Hey y’all,

Welcome back to The Corner Office. Here we are at issue 2, already aiming to expand our horizons. If you find value in this edition, please share it with someone who might appreciate it as well.

Somewhere along the line, my approach to management evolved to be more proactive. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment, but there was a definite shift where proactive decisions began to outnumber the reactive ones. This week’s Corner Office Insights are takes from a ‘proactive’ angle on two pivotal aspects of sustainable success to which I’ve not yet applied the filter of proactivity: hiring and feedback.

This week’s Corner Office Insights come from Dave Kline’s (Founder of MGMT Accelerator) appearance on Unleashed hosted by Jeff Tetz.

 Insight of the Week  

This is a wild statistic. In the search to find its source (CEB Global is cited as the research org, but the original link is dead) I was amazed by the variety of advice to avoid being in that 60%. I’ll bet 99% of people think they are in the 40% that will succeed. We know that isn’t true. Next time you take a new management role, assume you’re in the 60%. Then hunt for all the reasons why and solve for them.

Recruiting (vs. hiring)

This weekend, I discussed these insights with a friend who believed that prioritizing values in hiring was only crucial at the top levels of an organization. I disagree. My own experiences have taught me the hard way that aligning with values is more important than skill matching. Sure, skills matter, but I've found that a candidate aligned with our core values, even if less skilled, is a better long-term asset. They adapt and grow with the business, proving invaluable over time.

Have you codified your team values? Hit reply and tell me what values drive your team, and how your last hire measures up.

Over the course of this year, I've encountered an intriguing idea: CEOs (and company leadership) as 'collectors of people’. The gist? High-impact teams often have a small core of super-contributors – the 5% driving 90% of results. This means being on the lookout for individuals who not only fit your culture but possess in-demand skills, and then fostering a relationship with them. When the time comes to expand your team, these cultivated connections become your recruitment goldmine. Still on your way to the executive suite? As a developing manager, you can still do this within your own organization. Identifying top talent from other teams and departments that you can build relationships with so that when you do reach the corner office, you’ll have a deep bench of potential recruits. A litmus test for leadership I would use in this context: how many of your current colleagues would follow you to a new venture? It’s a powerful reflection of your leadership impact and team dynamics.

I have made plenty of hiring mistakes in my career. The constant question: Did I gather the wrong data, or did I misinterpret what I had? Perfecting the art of recruitment has been (and still is!) a formidable challenge. Experimentation is a concept I don’t hesitate to implement in technology and process, but somehow that’s never translated to my approach with human capital. And it's clear, of all the errors I've made as a leader, missteps in hiring have had the most significant impact.

Coaching (vs. feedback)

This.

The difference? When we give feedback, the receiver may be unaware of the performance gap and doesn’t necessarily want to improve it. Coaching, on the other hand, involves a mutual agreement on both the goal (e.g. a team member wants to be promoted to a senior position) and the gaps that need addressing to achieve that goal. It's a holistic approach that blends training, mentorship, and advice with practical, on-the-job application. Feedback, in this context, becomes an integral part of a consciously crafted improvement plan.

Drawing from my background in psychology, I find this concept particularly intriguing. The 'lizard brain' is your limbic cortex, the little alarm system in your brain that operates your primal fight or flight responses. Why 'lizard brain'? Because that's pretty much the capacity of a lizard’s thinking power, and sadly, sometimes ours too.

Understanding the role of our 'lizard brain' in shaping our reactions, particularly to unexpected events, highlights the importance of creating predictable and structured environments. Creating a ritual around giving feedback can be transformative. It also plays into millions of years of evolutionary instinct. There's no one-size-fits-all method. Maybe you give feedback spontaneously or maybe you do it during weekly check-ins. What matters is that you build it into a broader, predictable, and shared framework. And whatever it is, make it consistent. Make it so that when feedback time rolls around, your team's lizard brains are sitting in lounge chairs, sipping piña coladas, not gearing up for a gladiator fight.

Integrating this into your coaching is like adding rocket fuel to your strategy. You're not just feeding back; you're building an empire of cool, collected, growth-oriented minds. It's about creating an environment where feedback is expected, understood, and valued as part of a larger development strategy, rather than feared as punishment.

How to set SMART objectives is table stakes. How to actually achieve those objectives is the real challenge. I have been guilty of not aligning on the methodology of achieving objectives, thinking my team would magically understand the 'how’. That’s a recipe for misalignment and underperformance. Turns out, coaching is as much about giving feedback as it is about setting expectations.

To master this, start talking about not just the ‘what’ but also the ‘how’. Let’s face it, tools processes, and methodologies aren’t just fancy buzzwords: they’re your secret sauce to getting shit done. This not only sets a clear path to success, as based on past experiences, but also opens the door to innovative approaches. You’re probably the boss because once upon a time you did your job really well. You don’t want your team to merely replicate your methods, you want them to improve on them. With an ‘aligned how’ you give your team the best chance at achieving their objectives while improving their skill set.

Managers often have a knee-jerk reaction to a failed initiative and jump in without pausing and taking a breath. I have come to conversations like these, armed with half-baked stories in my head about why things flopped, often based on little or no information or context. Have you? But hold on, did you check if you're even on the same page? What if your standards are worlds apart? The first step should always be to align your starting points – it's like setting the GPS before a road trip.

Then dig into the 'why', a surefire way to uncover some gems. I’m a big fan of the '5 Whys' – it’s like the Swiss Army knife of problem-solving tools. Simple yet effective. Children (the most famous askers of ‘why'?’) are often wonderful reminders of how simple life can be, if we were only to choose simplicity over complexity. ‘Why?’ is the simplest of questions that yields amazing output. You can gauge your team member’s understanding and control over their domain. You might even discover they saw failure on the horizon but kept quiet. Why didn’t they wave a red flag? That’s a question worth asking.

So when things go wrong: first, ask if it met their expectation, if not then ask why. Here's a tip: apply this approach to both positive and negative feedback. You don’t want to accidentally train the lizard brain to associate a certain tone only with negative feedback. Keep it balanced – it's about learning, not just pointing fingers.

Tiny thought

“Out of every one-hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”

- Heraclitus

Keep your stick on the ice,

Jess

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