Creating and Changing Your Team's DNA
David Schmitt
Executive Coach & Leadership Trainer | Team and Relationship Coach | Digital Banking | Course Creator
Do you wonder what the consistent failure point is with teams that on paper have the best talent yet never make it to that championship game? Every year the experts drool over talent and predict their success. Yet year after year they fail. Simple to understand why when you examine their DNA.
There are overall givers and takers in the universe of human DNA traits. Looking for the giving DNA in your interviews is foundational to building a high-performing team for the long run. A talent rarely overcomes dysfunctional selfishness. Warren Buffet summarizes the point the best. “Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you."
Long-term high-performing teams consist of people that are primarily motivated by adding value to others. Making a difference to others comes first. Staff your team with people who have:
1) Integrity: Honest with self and others, humble/realistic about their own qualities and faults and having a team-first attitude
2) Intelligence: Aptitude to learn and apply skills quickly in their field of interest and understand how they relate to the team's success
3) Energy: Strong work ethic which means they work harder than most, especially when circumstances become tough. Hard work beats talent when talent does not work hard.
Do not compromise the order of the above sequence in priority. Warren Buffet once said: "Hire for honesty, strong work ethic and intelligence. Ensure they have the first one or the next two will destroy you". Honesty and humility with a team-first attitude will allow the person to grow their value to the team while fulfilling their own goals. All three attributes make us both teachable and valuable.
Character: Honesty and humility with a team-first attitude, all three make us both teachable and valuable.
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. The teams that keep on winning look to Integrity (character) and work ethic first. Often times talented people allow self-significance (pride) to get in the way of achieving team goals. History is littered with them.
Buffet's point is key. Jason, an executive who worked for a computer hardware company proved that when he allowed his manager Margaret to hire someone solely based on talent. They asked all the hard skill talent-type questions during the interview with Rudy. Rudy had great examples in how he consistently overachieved in his previous job. He seemed polite and displayed a great sense of humor. It seemed to be an easy decision, the talent box was checked, the communication box was checked and the professional image box was double-checked. How could we go wrong?
Well, we found out when Jason was hit with a triple play whammy upside his head just 3-weeks later. The only good thing is that Rudy also helped expose an additional dishonest, non-team player. In Rudy's second week, he started spreading rumors about his teammates and his supervisor. Comments made about the company, executives and customers were not only untrue but highly negative. Rudy's teammates were shocked by his lies and negativity...that information came quickly to Jason and Margaret (Rudy's hiring manager).
It seemed Rudy was a professional team agitator. He quickly met his match as the plot thickened and multiplied when Margaret was entangled in Rudy's attacks. After Margaret confronted him about the lies he was telling about her and other executives, she decided to jump into the pit of misery and join the conversation adding her personal opinions of how she could outperform other team leaders, departments and executives.
Both Rudy and Margaret started to collaborate in making themselves the self-proclaimed rulers of the team, consolidating then expanding the lies, rumors and destructive behavior.
This extra dysfunctional behavior gave Jason the justification he needed to begin to purge them both from the team. In the end, both Margaret and Rudy (destructive takers) were confronted with the truth and left to smother under their own weight of their deceit. They both resigned several weeks later. Dishonest selfish people know their time is up when confronted by unwavering leadership devoted to solid time-tested principles.
If you have a core team of honest hardworking people, they will naturally root out destructive people if the leader and the company culture permit such big-picture thinking. In this case, Jason was formally chastised for confronting "soft behavior issues"...kin to being punished for building effective teams and following the company's useless core values. Team core values become useless and act as an agitation when they are not encouraged to be followed. Courageous leaders need to stare down gutless leaders and teams that fear retribution from professional agitators who wake up every morning looking for a team to destroy.
Low character (low integrity) people do not like working with teams with high levels of integrity. They will self-select out of teams that keep the pressure on the core principles addressing character. You see, if Jason would have interviewed these individuals for their character (honesty & team first attitude), he may have discovered their issues. At the very least, the team would have set expectations for future behavior.
Eventually, businesses will fail if they allow talented yet disruptive members to hang around. Wise leaders understand the team is built on a house of cards when that happens and like that house, a simple puff of air will cause catastrophic failure.
Interview Questions for judging Integrity and Character (dig for detail to confirm the integrity of the story):
1. Tell me about a time when you sacrificed your own success for the team?
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2. What are your core value given any situation? Tell me the most challenging times when you were faced with following them?
3. What would cause you to leave a team over value conflicts and why?
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard! Work Ethic --- It takes teams to new levels
Hard Work
Working smarter not harder increases performance for teams largely in maintenance mode. The root word is the key here, "maintain". Teams elevate their performance to new breakthrough levels when they both work smarter and harder.
Every few years Jason would look back on his team's results and while all the stated goals could be checked off, he found himself thinking "what if we had 3 high performing Scotts on the team and not just one?" or what if he had addressed the lower work effort of some sooner? Only two outcomes would be possible. Either the goals would have been achieved with fewer challenges, or new breakthroughs would have been realized.
There is no universal measurement of what defines hard work. Teams usually define that for themselves. Most perceptions of what hard work looks like are developed as we grow up and watch our parents, relatives and peers work. It's not only about how hard we work but more importantly what value we bring to the team at the end of the day. Working hard and being smart are both equally important.
Many people can outperform others in 8 hours of work that others would do in 10 or 12. Hard and smart working people who arrive and leave on time can outperform most of their peers that work 12-hour days. The reverse is also true, people who put in 12 hours a day can actually produce less if they don't work smart. Yet, why do we have the lower performers on our team? Imagine if 80% of your team was filled with high performers? Why do we traditionally not interview for these two traits?
Interview questions for judging hard work:
1. Who set an example for how work was done when you were growing up? What did that look like?
2. Who was your childhood hero and why?
3. Tell me about a time when you had to both work smarter and harder to achieve a goal?
4. On a consistent basis, what does hard work while keeping a work/life balance look like to you?
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