In-jokes happen in great teams, and every time I’ve been on a retreat with a LEAD 365 group, I wonder what the in-joke will be. Remember corn hole? Frozen chicken anyone? Our most recent group had a running joke about what is, and what is not, a condiment. From the outside, these make no sense. But each of you know what I’m talking about if you were there. And these kinds of shared jokes and memories do a great deal to foster a sense of team.
A few weeks ago Jeff and I brought a current LEAD 365 cohort to the Barothy Lodge for the Building a Great Team Retreat. I hope you have good memories of the retreat from your time with us. (Anyone want to do another Blind Trust Walk?) It still amazes me how much deeper relationships can get—and how quickly—on a team building retreat like this.
Let’s revisit the DoKnowBe Tree for a moment: The purpose portion of the tree represents what organizational leaders need to do to be effective. This varies a great deal depending on the industry, size of the organization, and so on, but there are three things in particular that every leader needs to do, and develop a great team is one of those three. (The other two, if you’re interested, are create clarity around purpose, vision, and values; and build structure for the organization).
In the next few posts, I’m going to explore how to build a great team. There are four parts:
- Get the right people on the bus (and in the right seats)
- Get the wrong people off the bus
- Develop them as individuals
- Develop the team
Get the right people on the bus
Imagine that you are going to an interview. You’re dressed up, portfolio and resume in hand, maybe a little nervous. You get to the lobby, introduce yourself, and are asked to wait. You take a seat. There are other people sitting with you, dressed just as well, looking just as nervous. Some reread their resumes, some chat, some check their phones. Finally, twenty minutes after your interview was supposed to start, a middle-aged woman pops her head into the lobby. “I’m so sorry,” she says to all of you. “Something urgent came up and we’re still about ten minutes away from being able to start the interviews.” You smile at her and murmur that it’s all right. A few others do the same, while some of the people waiting with you are obviously annoyed.
Several minutes later, someone else comes into the lobby. He asks you and a few others to join him for an interview, while telling the rest of the group that their interviews will not go ahead. The difference? You and the others standing to join the man for the interview were the ones who smiled and were gracious when told that the interview would start late. The people not invited into the formal interview had expressed annoyance or frustration. The delay was actually the first part of the interview for an intensely customer-service oriented company. They only want people who can naturally roll with whatever inconvenience might come their way and still respond positively.
I’ve heard this story before, but despite many Google searches, I can’t verify if this is real or not. I love to think that it is. What better way to see someone’s natural tendencies and how they’ll really act with frustrated customers than to put them in a frustrating situation?
There are a few different aspects to interviewing well. One is to make sure the candidate has the technical abilities necessary for the job, but much more important is to see if the candidate will be a good cultural fit for the company. A brilliant jerk might do some great things for your organization, but she will do a great deal more harm. It’s easier to teach someone the skill they need to do a job (provided that they have the foundation to learn that skills) than to change their personalities to fit a culture. Both are necessary, but we say that the cultural fit is the most important.
So how do you interview for cultural fit? Ask BE questions—questions that reveal the root system of the candidate. Here’s a short list of BE questions to get you thinking:
- What is your greatest accomplishment?
- Would you rather be late to a meeting and fully prepared, or on time and not quite prepared, and why?
- What was your favorite thing to do as a kid?
- Who is someone you think is a great leader, and why?
- What do you love to do so much that you lost track of time when doing it?
- What is your biggest pet peeve at work?
These kinds of questions let the candidate reveal their root system to you. If during the interview process you get a sense that the person won’t fit well in your company, be careful. No one wants to work with a brilliant jerk, and remember, culture is a reflection of what is encouraged in an organization and also of what is accepted. Hiring a bad cultural fit can send a message about what you are willing to accept, which has an impact on corporate culture.
In my next few posts, I’ll share more about the three other parts of building a great team: Getting the wrong people off the bus, developing individuals, and developing the team. Until then, perhaps think about your hiring practices. Are you getting the people who reinforce your organization’s culture, or people who work against it? What might you need to change in order to get the right people on the bus.
Meredith
Image by Dan4th. Used under CC by 2.0 license.
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