- No.
I wish I could embarrass them.
My kids are like super secure in who they are.
And I know they're three and four but I can't.
I mean I can't even scare them anymore.
They're like little dudes.
They went from being toddlers to being little men.
(upbeat music)
What to look for in high-performing teams?
If you have no trust in your team,
I get it.
I get it, that's where you're at today.
Maybe you don't feel like they take any initiative whatsoever
to step up and say like oh this is what we need to work on or
you feel like you're always micromanaging them and because
of the lack of trust you're like hey I need to report.
I need you to show me this.
I need you to put everything in here whatever it is I get the
pain and the frustration, right?
But I also know that if you do it right you can have a team
that you're crazy proud of, that are bringing to you more ideas
about solutions to the problems that you didn't even know
existed that they proactively took on.
And you're like you really get
to a point where your editing, right?
They're doing the work, they're executing the delivery on the
customer, whatever you promised the market they're doing for you
and you just edit, you tweak.
You're like yeah, let's do that.
Oh we don't have budget for this.
Let's hold off for now we'll do it in Q3 but great
suggestions and it just changes the dynamic of how
you grow the business.
That is the opportunity, you know,
I really learned this before I built my company Spheric because
I kept trying to build these little companies.
And I called them projects.
They were never incorporated but it was a consultancy.
I mean I built a business was called WTF,
whatthefuture.com and I won't get in the back story of what it
was about but the truth is I started with a guy that was
half interested and there was no team.
There was no like shared mission.
There was no testing them, recruiting,
finding out if we're a good fit together.
It was just like oh you can do this work let's do something
together and that never builds a strong team and what I see a lot
of time with companies and clients that I coach is that
they started with that approach and then all of a sudden they
grow and now they've got to deal with this infrastructure.
The way they manage the team, the way that their team
collaborates is not mature.
It's not a high performing team so I want to share with you guys
today is my thoughts on
six different characteristics that
I look for when hiring.
I've been doing this now for over 20 years building and
scaling companies and to me these are the nonnegotiables.
If the core team doesn't have this then I can't have them part
of the team because I know that A players want to work with
other A players. They don't want a C.
They're not gonna accept somebody coming in the business
and not meeting them at their level, right?
They want to be inspired by working with people that teach
them new things, right?
So the first thing is you want somebody takes initiative.
Somebody that doesn't wait to be told what to do.
In the world there's two types of people.
There are people that need a to-do list and there people that
create to-do list and to me somebody that takes initiative,
knows how to create a to-do list somebody that's like oh here's
the challenge we need more customers,
here's our current marketing program.
What can we do?
Boom, they come up with an idea, right?
They take initiative.
They don't sit back and be like nobody asked me to do anything
so I'm just gonna sit here.
No, they don't do that.
They show up ready to go.
That's the way they work.
They cannot do nothing so one is they take initiative.
Number two is there a desire for excellence.
They have a pursuit of excellence.
Excellent means world-class.
When I talk to and entrepreneur one of the questions I ask them,
do you want to build a world-class company?
'Cause if you don't I can't help you.
That's not my style, that's not how I roll.
I want to work with entrepreneurs that have a desire
for excellence.
It's the same for my team.
I want to make sure that the people even in their own life,
whatever their passions are,
they have a pursuit for that passion.
Even if during the day they work with me on a specific project
I want to know that they in the way they approach life has a
strive for excellence.
You need that desire.
That's not something you can coach.
It's either natively there or it's not.
So that's number two.
Three is a bias for solution.
You know, you can, it's really simple.
You can talk to somebody and be like hey this is what's going on
in my life, see how they react.
See if they default to oh that sounds like this problem
problem, problem, problem.
Again, there's two types of people the world.
There's people that default to solutions like oh that's sounds
challenging you could do X, Y,
and Z or they're like wow that's challenging did you know
that this could probably happen or this problem could probably
happen or if you don't fix that this probably.
Look I want people that come to me with solutions.
I want solutions people.
I do not need problem people.
I need people that get excited by the opportunity to create an
outcome, to create a solution.
So that is as big.
The other one for me is about transparency.
Now some people talk about trust,
to me it's not about trust.
Transparency is different.
Transparency means look here's what I'm working with,
here's the numbers, here's my project,
here's the team, here's where I feel the challenges are.
They're honest, right?
They're not complaining, they're just being open and transparent
especially amongst the team.
There's no reason to hold things close to the chest.
It may be they, you know I've seen this so many times working
on projcts and I'm like hey what are your tasks?
What are your to-do list look like?
And they're like oh, well I'm working on this.
It's like no, can I just see it?
I just want to know.
I want to know is my team over capacity.
And they get to this point where they're like holding back and
I'm like what are you holding back from?
If you, if we don't have the trust,
if you're not willing to be transparent with me then that's
a thing we need to solve.
Because at the end of the day we're an organization,
we're a company, we have a mission.
We want to deliver for our customers and the more
information that's available, I run an open book company.
I'm not saying that everybody
should know everybody's salaries.
What I'm saying everybody should understand how the business
makes money and that transparency starts with the
leader and you want to hire people that also share in that
desire, right?
You want them, that their default state is to share
information not hold it close to the chest.
The next one is sense of urgency.
Alright, there's nothing that will frustrate me more than to
be like oh what's the problem,
this is solution, great.
What are we gonna do about it?
It's like where is the excitement to
knock it out of the park?
Where is that excitement to jump out of bed to get it done?
That sense of urgency is not again something you
can teach people.
They either have it.
They either find challenges and they step up or they look at
problems and they just sit there like a deer in the headlight.
And it's like what did you think would happen with this problem?
Do you think you're just gonna resolve itself?
They have no sense of urgency.
There's ways the test for this but at the end of the day these
are the characteristics that I think are super important.
The last one I want to share with you is customer empathy.
If people don't want to love and the customer that's why look at
it when I think of my businesses that I'm involved and I always
ask my team can you please love on the customer?
At the end of the day the purpose of a business is to
create a customer that creates a customer.
It's to create, deliver and capture value for customer.
There is no business without a customer, right?
A profitable customer I might add but you want teammates that
have empathy for the customer than just love on them.
I have an incredible person on my team, Stephanie.
If you guys ever had the privilege of interacting with
her she's incredible.
That is, when I think of like the best example of customer
I think of Stephanie.
I mean the other day I was looking at feedback form for an
event we did in Toronto and in the feedback form is like what
was best for the event?
The fact that Stephanie hugged everybody that came in the room
for the event and I'm sitting there going I was in the green
room I'm going did she really hug every person that came?
There's 100+ people at this event and I messaged her I was
like Stephanie is it possible that you hugged everybody that
came in the room? She's like yes, why?
And I was like that's crazy that's what I'm talking about.
Can I coach somebody to do that?
I don't think, I don't think it's legal to ask my team
to hug my customers.
I think there's there's probably some HR violations there but she
did it and and it was appreciated and I think that
that's what you want is you want people again that take
initiative, right?
That are not gonna stand by,
they're willing to take initiative.
They desire for excellence, they want to create world-class.
They want to pursue the next level always.
They have a bias for solution that when they see a problem,
they default to solution not more problems
they are transparent.
They're open, they don't hold their cards
close to their chest.
They over-share so that there's more information for the rest of
the team to make better decisions.
They have a sense of urgency when they approach problems.
They don't sit back, wait for somebody else to deal with it.
They're the first ones there.
They're urgent about addressing problems and then finally they
have customer empathy.
They care about the customer.
They want to love on the customer.
Those are the characteristics of high-performing teams that are
probably totally different than what you're doing or how you're
hiring right now.
The good news is if you have those people,
find more people like them.
Ask them.
Birds of a feather flock together.
If you have great people on your team you know them I was or
transitioning the other people off finding those great people
and say how can we find more people like you because you
embody what I want to do or how I want work and who I want to
work with in my company.
So as per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger
life and build a better team in this week's video,
I'll see you next Monday.
Have a great day.
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