Hiring, Firing and Board Meltdowns

Hiring, Firing, and Board Meltdowns(videocast)
Bill Hybels, Patrick Lencioni, Henry Cloud, David Ireland, Carly Fiorina

- When hiring. Cultural fit matters. What 2-3 behavioral things are high value on your team? Be clear about competencies
- Spend extended time out of the interview environment with a candidate, take them shopping. Ask what would others say about you? Ask the same question three times over the course of an interview. Ask how do you like to be managed? How will you challenge us? How will that affect our team? Ask questions about their answers. Have substantive conversations up front about why we are hiring, what we hope to accomplish by this role. Trust the process.
- A leadership team (board) should establish their own sets of values, behaviors, covenants at a retreat setting, not in their board meetings. The ongoing meetings are for making decisions. Conclude meetings with checking in to see how the team did keeping the established guidelines they’ve agreed to. One presenter suggested that people on “the board” need to have influence, affluence and a specific skill. How does the affluence trait transfer to leadership teams vs. boards. There should be term limits to balance new life with experience and to prevent leader exhaustion.
- There’s a balance in the team around the table. The team should include all the necessary ingredients but not duplication. But, there should be some level of immunity to cover when needed if someone is “sick” or missing.
- When a team member is underperforming we should consider the following before letting them go. Retraining, Repositioning, Retiring. Consider working with an A, B, C system, this can give clarity but the grading cannot replace ongoing communication. “The kindest form of management is the truth”
- Consider having two people involved with evaluation of staff to ensure that a fuller picture is presented to the person.