Allen Hauge
Group Chairman
Vistage International

I sat with a group of consultants waiting for a training session to begin.  The presenter, instead of clicking to his first PowerPoint slide and beginning to drone, turned to us and said, “I would like each of you to put your right hand up in the air as high as it will go.”  He then waited as we obediently raised our hands high.

“Do you have your hands raised as high as they will go?”  the speaker asked

We all nodded.

“Great!” he said.  “Now, I want you to raise your right hand a little higher.”

Every hand in the room went up at least another inch or two.

Performance Principle: Most people are not giving everything they can give to their efforts.  In some situations, 80% effort is ok – it is enough to achieve the results you need, and there is no need to kill yourself to do more.  However, A-players know when and where to stretch beyond merely acceptable performance to efforts that make them stand out from the pack and create distinctive value.  Here are a few situations where you and your people can likely stand out and create more value by stretching just a little bit higher:

Understand that business is about relationships.  You can’t get anything done if people don’t like being around you.  Human beings instinctively group themselves as “us” and “them.”  When highly effective people come into a new group, they understand that they must win the right to be heard and respected by the existing members of the group.  Without an awareness of such basic human dynamics, otherwise knowledgeable and skilled people spin their wheels.  Then they blame their lack of results on “those people” who wouldn’t listen to their great ideas.

Seek to understand rather than seek to be understood.  Some people feel they must demonstrate how knowledgeable they are by talking about their own ideas and making sure that everyone in the group understands how smart their strategies are.  However, people who are great at leading and facilitating teams don’t do this.  Instead, they emphasize listening to and understanding what others in the group want to achieve.  A-players are confident but not cocky.  They know they have the knowledge and skills to get the job done. So they put their focus on understanding what success looks like to the people around them, knowing that the easiest way to get ahead is to help others succeed.

Complete the last 20% well.  Architects will tell you that they often spend 20% of their time on the first 80% of a project – and then spend 80% of their time on the last 20% of a project.  Most people are bored of a project by the last 20%, and they want to move onto other things.  However, customers are far from bored during the last stage of projects.  That is when they get (or at least are supposed to get) the results for which they paid.  A-players understand the importance of last impressions and make sure they finish projects well.  That differentiates them from the majority of people who end projects with a whimper.  It also creates satisfied customers who become repeat clients and enthusiastic referral sources.

Think, don’t just do.  Last night I emailed my web designer Kym Costanzo a request for a small update to the website for my new book.  She emailed me back and said, “I made the update you requested but was thinking that there might be a better way to do this. Here’s my idea, let me know what you think.”  This is why I am a fan of Kym and her business (www.thewebscaper.com).  She thinks about what I ask her to do while she does it, and she often comes back to me with better ways to accomplish my goals.  Like most of you, I am busy.  I neither know nor care about the subtleties of website design and management.  I know what I want to achieve – I want someone who has smart ideas and great execution about getting there.  This is true of every job and service in every business. 

Plan, Execute, and Follow Up.  Business people spend a huge amount of time in meetings, and A-players know how to use them to move the ball forward.  I assume most people know the steps to actually get results out of meetings, but I can ensure you that a minority of people actually follow them.  Prepare by determining what you want to achieve.  Create an agenda that focuses on this goal.  Send the agenda out before the meeting, ask for changes and updates to it before the session starts.  In the meeting, follow the agenda.  Ask for commitments:  Who is going to do this?  By when?  Have someone write these commitments down and email them to all participants within 24 hours of the meeting’s completion. Hold people accountable to their commitments.  Follow these steps and watch the productivity of said meetings improve.

Conclusion:  Success is defined by spending your time on activities and efforts that have meaning and value.  Don’t try to reach a little higher on everything in your life – you won’t make progress.  Identify the priorities for your life and your business, and then push yourself and your people to reach a little higher in those areas.  You will become more valuable and stand out in the process.

This is no way to run an interview.  If you are falling into some of these traps, then consider adding some or all of the steps below to reduce hiring mistakes:

1. Determine an A-Player Profile. In my new book How to Hire A-Players, I ask the question: would you know an A-player if you met one? How so? What would tell you that an individual you currently employee or that someone you are interviewing is an A-player? I know this sounds obvious, but you would be surprised at the lack of clarity within companies about the profile of an ideal candidate. If you don’t know exactly who you are looking for, you and your team will be slow to agree upon and actively pursue the right people.

2. Look for overall patterns of accomplishment. The best way to reduce hiring mistakes in an interview is to get a very clear picture of someone’s overall pattern of accomplishments in their life and career. Then, compare that pattern to your A-Player Profile for the role. Unlike mutual funds, with people past performance is the best indicator of future results.

3. Ask initial screening questions to weed out unqualified people. For example, some roles require that applicants have certain software expertise or industry experience. If you can’t determine this from the resume, ask about these abilities early in a phone screen. If someone does not meet these minimum criteria, they are eliminated and the phone interview is over.

4. Starting with their most recent role, confirm their dates of employment, including both the month and the year. People often fudge these dates – you want to verify them.

5. For each role, ask questions specifically designed to dig into their accomplishments. The best overall question to ask is: Please tell me briefly about the top accomplishments for which you were personally responsible while employed in this role?

6. Ask follow-up questions that keep the candidate talking. These questions include: How did you do that? Why so? Please tell me how you made that happen? What were the most important steps you took to make that happen? Such open-ended questions dig beneath a candidate’s initial, pre-planned answers and programmed responses to find out what he or she really did.

7. Take verbatim notes: I have found that jotting down the word-for-word responses that people provide during interviews is helpful. When you go back and look at your notes, those verbatim quotes will help you to recall the person’s strengths and weaknesses.

8. Score each candidate: Create a scorecard for yourself using the A-Player Profile that you created. Give candidate’s a score for each key area in the profile as well as an overall score. This helps you to objectively compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of all the people you interview.

In the end, it is your job as an interviewer to gain a complete picture of the accomplishments, failures, strengths and weaknesses of each person you interview.  Then, you compare that picture to your A-player profile for the job.  By taking this approach, you uncover more about job candidates than your typical interview and determine the person who best fits the role. The end result will be fewer hiring mistakes and more A-players hired.

Eric Herrenkohl is the author of How to Hire A-Players www.howtohireaplayers.com , being published by John Wiley & Sons April 12, 2010.

Peter Drucker wrote a classic article for the Harvard Business Review called Managing Oneself.  In this Performance Principles, I relate how Dwight Eisenhower failed to manage himself effectively and went from being known as a brilliant person in press conferences to being a klutz.

The Payoff – we have to know ourselves and manage ourselves in order to be effective.  As Nathaniel Branden, who has written about 20 books on self esteem, has said – no one is coming to help us.  We have to take responsibility for managing ourselves if we expect to be successful.

People who get ahead take 100% responsibility for their own lives and careers.  This does not mean that you can win by yourself.  No man (or woman) is an island.  However, each one of us has to grow up and realize that life is difficult.  Business is filled with problems.  The people who get ahead think ahead, manage themselves well, play to their own strengths and (critically) manage their own weaknesses.

Darren Hicks, CEO of Hicks Consulting, has written a great article for the EO Magazine Octane on how he learned the power of candor as a Navy SEAL and has worked hard to apply it to his business. Good stuff to read, internalize, share, and implement. http://bit.ly/navysealscandor

As Carmichael says, this is an example of a guy who doesn’t understand that you have to have some easy days (and some days off) in order to push yourself to the edge on your tough workout days.  Most bike racers have difficulty accepting this and so, as the saying goes, their easy days are too hard and their hard days are not hard enough. Because they refuse to pace themselves, they also are unable to push themselves to the edge when they should.

During this last year, my “hard days” got harder because I was writing a book – but my easy days got harder too.  I simply ran out of time to get everything done.  Then I realized that I had to stop trying to control everything that was going on.  I was getting overwhelmed. Instead, I had to schedule in some easy days to let me recover and help me keep working hard and smart.

Performance Principle:  We all have to figure out how to work hard without burning out.  Here are a couple of practical steps that have helped me do this during the past year.

First, I am doing my best to bring closure to each day.  When I walk out of my office at the end of the day, I am working hard to have completed at least the most important tasks of the day so that I can have a sense of closure.

Second, I am working hard to keep my weekends work-free (or at least my Sundays, I am writing this on a Saturday morning).

Third, I have started to schedule an occasional strategy day out of the office.  I did this a couple of weeks ago, and it was amazing.  I had a breakfast meeting out of the office, and I just did not go back.  I took my laptop, went to a coffee shop, and thought, strategized and planned.  I couldn’t get my wireless connection to work, so I didn’t even have wireless access – and it made the day better, not worse.  Fewer distractions and no email helped me create a to-do list and set my priorities.  I did that planning three weeks ago and I have been more productive since because I have a plan to follow.

So, think about some ways to schedule some easy days into your schedule that will make you stronger and more endurable for the work you have to get done.

One of the things I respect about Kevin is that he lives his message – he is a terrific promoter and he knows how to create a big splash and build a brand. Kevin is dead set on getting his book on the New York Times Bestseller list. For proof, check out his video: www.AwesomeRoar.com

This is a challenge to all of us when it comes to building our brand and helping people to connect with the value we provide.

The A-player janitor: As Auren points out, you don’t need a Harvard MBA to qualify as an A-player, and every role in your organization can be filled with a superior performer. So, I would ask you: what is the A-player profile for a janitor? If you were going to hire a truly superior person to fill that role,what results would demonstrate superior performance and A-player status?

Relentlessly resourceful: A-players in general know how to get things done. They don’t settle for results that are easily obtainable with current resources. They leverage what they have and find new ways to achieve results that go beyond what most other people are achieving.

Getting back to people: I think this is a great point – many highly effective people are incredible at following up and following through. They “close the loop” with people. They write a note to say thank you. They get back to others quickly. I wonder if this is not in part driven by the fact that very successful people often recognize that it is relationships and relational capital as much more than technical expertise that creates success.

More good points in this article, worth your time to take a look.

I recently talked to the president of a marketing business who told me that he wants to double the number of “homerun hitters” that he has in his organization. He wants people who can anticipate problems, see opportunities, and create solutions that serve customers. Another way of saying this is that the most valuable people in his business are those who know how to create solutions for customers and who can lead other employees to be a part of that process.

If you want to increase the number of strong leaders and performers in your company, here are two points to consider:

Every position has a combination of technical skills and behavioral skills required to qualify as an A-Player. What is the A-Player profile for key roles in your company? Don’t assume that people “will know an A-Player when they meet one.” They won’t. Or, worse, every person involved in the hiring process will have a different picture of what it means to be an A-player. Get everyone on the same page regarding this A-Player Profile so you can put on a big push to find and hire the best people.

In addition, not all employees are created equally. You should be investing your time with the A-players you already employ. Keep track of how much time you spend with your A players versus your problem children employees. Don’t spend too much time trying to solve problems for your average to poor performers while neglecting your best people. Your best employees don’t need their hands held. They do need you to provide them with the training and resources necessary to be successful. When you spend your time putting out fires for weaker performers, you do exactly that – spend your time. The only return you get is a resolved problem that should have been taken care of by someone else. However, when you invest your time with A-players, you give your best people the time and attention they need to do their jobs better. They take on even more responsibility and you fulfill one of your priorities – building an organization that has greater capacity to create value for customers and generate strong financial results in the process.

Fast forward five or six years. Eisenhower is now the 34th President of the United States. Both his predecessors Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman loved responding to live questions from the press without preparation. Instead of changing the format of these press conferences to play to his strengths (he was a reader, not a listener), Eisenhower tried to provide answers without requiring pre-submitted questions. As a result, the same reporters who lauded him just years before now considered him incompetent.

Performance Principle: We have to manage ourselves; no one else is going to do it for us. For example, I have learned over time that I learn by talking. Literally, unless the words come out of my mouth, I don’t really know what I think. Furthermore, I make better decisions if I talk things through with others before I act. The combination of “learning by talking” and getting the feedback of someone I trust yields consistently better results for me.

Learn how you learn. Pay attention to the setting, situations, and environments in which you thrive and spend more time there. Identify the circumstances that play to your weaknesses – and re-engineer them. You have to set yourself up to succeed.

If you have not read this classic article by Drucker, you should. You have to pay for the download but it’s worth it.

Thanks,

Eric