I'd happen to work with one executive, who probably was literally a genius in terms of his ability to manage a business. But he was not great with people. And he refused to, I think, look in the mirror and admit that this wasn't his forte. And he needed to bring other people into the recruiting process to help him interview and select. So I think not letting pride get in the way and making sure that you get a second look at people and that your decision is very
considered. So I think in terms of recruiting, where things fall down is absolutely at the selection process. It's not a distraction from your day job. If you're a leader, it is your day job to make sure that you're still directing the right people.
This is The MINDSHIFT Podcast where we share real stories, real strategies that will help you find real success. This is the place to hear from people just like you who've taken their ideas, goals and dreams from a point of inspiration to realization or when life knock them down from a point of breakdown to breakthrough. I'm your host Darrell Evans. Let's get started with today's episode.
William Schrimer is an experienced executive and HR leader with over 22 years experience in the field. He has worked in both national and international companies in the USA and Europe, and has built numerous leadership development and Talent Management Programs. Along the way. He has helped many people address issues of personal fulfillment, professional development, performance, communication, and
relationships. He is the recent author of The Leadership Core Competencies for Successfully Leading Others, and his second book Fulfilled Finding Happiness and Prosperity in Your Life. William holds an undergraduate degree in behavioral and political sciences and graduate degrees in human resource management, and social science. Well, how's it going? Welcome to The MINDSHIFT Podcast.
Thank you very happy to be here. Appreciate the opportunity.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to the conversation. Before we jump in. Where are you in the world today?
I am in Olympia, Washington.
Good for you. Looking forward to this conversation around leadership. As we dive in, why don't you take a few minutes and introduce yourself to the audience?
Yes, certainly. So I'm Will Shermer. I've been in HR for about 23 years. So I won't say I fell into HR. But that's not too far off. True. I was working in the United Kingdom, and was an area manager for a retailer. And I found that I really enjoyed the people side of management, how do you acquire talent? How do you make sure that they perform and are motivated to perform?
And also what do you do to make sure that people are enjoying their work because happy employees generally produce for the organization and they stay. So I enjoyed that and had an opportunity to come on board with a consultancy in the UK, that was focused on recruiting, training and retention. And that was back in the late 90s. Before the whole year 2k excitement and was there for several years actually, I spent from 1993 to 2002 living and working in the UK.
Wow
Came back to the US spending most of my time in corporate HR, last several roles, running HR and training functions for national companies, and went back to the UK about about three years ago, three and a half years ago, I spent about three years there, working for an international company, and decided I just missed the snow too much. So I returned back to the Midwest.
That's an odd phrase. You don't hear that very often. I missed the snow too much.
Yeah, it sounds a little perverse. I know, I think one of the happiest days I had was when I saw my snowboard go away. So I traveled a bit work for national international companies. Much of my focus in HR, although I've run HR and training functions has really been on talent management on what I would consider to be by and large, the more strategic parts of HR, how do you bring good talent in the
door? How do you make sure that you properly onboard and make sure that these people get up to speed early, send some success so they are properly enculturated feel successful, and you're helping to build careers. And of course, all the other aspects of talent management as well have really been folded into that leadership training, training and development, succession management and so forth. So I really enjoy that side of the
business. And as I was creating training programs, including leadership, which I have a particular passion for, I found that I thought I had a book in me I think most people say the same thing. Right that I think I've got a book in me somewhere. So I wrote a book on talent management in particular leadership development, and that book has recently come out and that's continued to spark my interest in You know, authoring so second book is out in early
next year as well awesome. And enjoy all of these conversations I get to have with professionals like yourself about leadership and about managing talent.
That's amazing. I appreciate the backstory in the background. You know, I'm often saying to entrepreneurs who are growing businesses small to midsize enterprises. I'm often saying to them, when they asked me what's the hardest part about growing a business? And I used to say it's the people. And I don't mean that in a negative way. But it's how do you bring people together? Right. Jim Collins, I'm sure you're
familiar, right? People on the bus, wrong people off the bus, right people right seat, right. And so I'm really interested in how you think about that. Talk a little bit about the size of organizations that your experience comes from?
Yes. So everything from a couple of 100 people to about 5000.
Wow. Okay.
Covering at its peak, we had 250 offices in 56 countries, but also working with smaller businesses, too. I worked with a couple of small regional businesses in the Midwest. Yeah. And you're absolutely right, of course, my opinion is woefully biased, because I've been focused on people for over 20 years. But I think it is the hardest part of growing the business. And I've seen businesses who, not only when you look at leadership, but just the ability to acquire talent, and properly training
and cultivate them. It either makes or breaks a business. And it is crucial. I think that most business leaders, particularly as they are growing smaller businesses focus on management, you know, how do I get the capital? How do I manage my resources, what am I doing in terms of process and project. And that's a logical place to start. But in the end, the only asset that you have that is not easily repeatable down the road
is your people. And so it's crucial to get the right people on board and to make sure that you are retaining them, that you're not allowing that knowledge to walk out the door to your competitor. Now it happens, right? But certainly shifting that focus as your business grows from doing the work yourself or with a couple of others, to learning how to manage results through the work of others, is a fundamental difference as you grow your
business. And I think that that is a key skill that you have to acquire and leverage if you're going to grow your business exponentially.
Yeah. So much I really want to unpack here, I gotta throw something else out that I've used, or I've heard, and I've lived by my mind. And that is because I agree 100% That, you know, you have to have a process for recruiting great people getting them on board or properly getting them into the
roles. I've often heard, or I heard somewhere you and I joked offline before we started the call that where we heard something, it wasn't probably from the person that we heard it from it was a person most recently that we heard from and here's the thought, people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses they don't like, What is your response to that?
Completely agree. There is a raft of research on this, that indicates when people leave, they're not leaving for money. Interestingly, there was one study where there was a poll of leaders and 90% of leaders believed that their people left for money purposes. 89% of the employees said, No, we don't leave for money. We leave for other things we leave because our boss, frankly, was a jerk.
Or there are other aspects of the work experience that were lacking, could be challenged development, it could have been autonomy. But these are the psychological aspects of working that many leaders, including small business leaders, perhaps don't fully understand or don't fully leverage. And that is absolutely right. If you ask most people, they're going to tell you that they got more money down the road, of course, sure. And often leaders won't look in the mirror to say, I own
this though. This was a preventable, this was a regrettable piece of turnover. That had I operated differently, or perhaps that I adjusted the environment, that person might still be here, you're going to lose people. It's a reality of business. There are too many people that operate under the fallacy that people are leaving for money. Money isn't what caused them to start looking at was something else. Money is just a byproduct of their job search.
100% agree. You know, if you're a leader listening this and I know for myself, I'm speaking from my own 20 something years now hiring people 30 years roughly, money will come into the play down the line, but it's usually never it's opportunity. It's, you know, friction with teammates. It's a culture. It's not being challenged. I mean, I can tell you just on exit interviews, I could go down the list and I'm
sure you can as well. Well, I want to see if we can break this down for audience A little bit. Let's start at acquisition of new talent first. And then let's talk a little bit about the idea of motivating and crafting a team environment that is thriving with great culture. And I don't know how much use the word culture, but I'm sure in your world culture has a lot to do with it. But let's talk about the the beginning part of it.
Because I think a lot of people that I work with, and over the last 11 years of my work, I hear this theme, like, I can't find great people. And the reality of it is there's great people everywhere. Right? So let's talk about the recruitment or initial thought process, either strategically or tactically about where leaders making mistakes at that very front end of the recruitment process. Talk us through some of that.
Yes. So I would tell you that candidate generation is certainly an issue. And people should make no mistake, we're going to work for talents, even now, in the midst of or perhaps at least in the US, on the downside, hopefully, of COVID. There are huge numbers of people that put their head down and clung on to their job over the last 1518 months, who perhaps haven't enjoyed the experience with their employers, and they're going to be out
looking. And employers that are progressive in how they treat employees are flexible, and offer them, I'm going to call it a better deal and this goes far beyond money, are going to win that war for talent. So yes, you need to generate candidates. And of course, we can go through all the tactical aspects of online versus referral and so forth.
And that's not unimportant. I mean, you've got to bring candidates through the door, I think where most leaders make mistakes is in candidate interviewing and selection.
That's exactly what was..
Yeah.
There's no shortage of finding people to apply for the work. That's exactly where I wanted to go. Was that the point of engagement from that thought process? Because I believe that's where it breaks down. It's, at least in my world, it's what I've worked on refining in my career. So yeah, let's definitely dive into the point of engagement at interviews.
So interviewing is an art. It's not a science, and most individuals, including, perhaps the preeminent theorists, on leadership, like John Maxwell, will tell you that a huge proportion of your success is determined by who you bring through the door and sit in the seats in your team. So those seats should be treated as gold. They're precious. Yes. And I think a lot of leaders use a very sort of casual and unstructured approach to
interviewing and selection. And if you don't know what you're looking for, how do you know you found it. And so you have to define what are the competencies required for the job. Now this goes beyond I want someone with experience, skills and experience can be certainly skills can be trained, that's over the course of weeks and
months. But competencies, like the ability to work cooperatively with others, work ethic, a sense of competitiveness, self motivation, the ability to build relationships, these are things that as leaders, we don't want to have to teach the people coming through the door, I don't want a project that is a years long project if I can help him, right. And so this is important, you have to define what you're looking for, and then build some
questions around it. behavioral interviewing is built on this. And the whole idea is not to find the perfect hire. And I've heard countless managers say, I'll just wait, I'll keep looking, the perfect hire will come out. That's a fallacy. There is no perfect hire, you're going to have to train coach and develop people.
Yeah.
What you're looking to do is you're trying to minimize the chances you're going to get a bad mishire.
Right.
And to maximize the chance that you're getting a good fundamental fit for your role. So that's important concepts, like making sure that more than one person interviews, if possible, I happen to work with one executive, who probably was literally a genius in terms of his ability to manage a business, but he was not great
with people. And he refused to, I think, look in the mirror and admit that this wasn't his forte, and he needed to bring other people into the recruiting process to help him interview and select. So I think not letting pride get in the way and making sure that you get a second look at people and that your decision is very considered. So I think in terms of recruiting, where things fall down is absolutely at the selection process. It's not a distraction from your day job.
If you're a leader, it is your day job to make sure that you're still directing the right people.
It is your job. Well said. You know, you talk about the interviewing process, I still do it in my organization. And I agree, I do the first two then I usually have some key people on my team do interview three to make sure I didn't mess up. And because as an owner, a lot of times I want to fill a seat but I'm also smart enough to be cautious but I'm also judicious enough to say there is no perfect candidate. I loved what you just said about
that. I want to talk a little bit before we move on from interviewing, I want to talk a little bit about the distinction between skills and competencies, the stuff that's coachable or trainable. And the intangibles right, the behavioral side of forming those questions, because in my world, I've got three to 10 questions that I asked at different stages the interview
process. And it's interesting, because I can tell when I get pre scripted answers, because they're used to certain interview structures or interview styles, I'm a non traditional interviewer. And I think that has just been my own process that I've developed. If the audience member listening right now is saying, got it. Well, I got it. I've been doing all of this. Did they go to this school? Have they worked for years here? Did they have this
skill, that skill? Do they know how to use these pieces of software? Like that's the technical that's the science part of it, right? That's either a yes or no. And there's no gray areas, whether it's acceptable or not for you? What do you say? Are there a couple of questions that come to mind that are just good ways to start to figure out if this person behaviorally intangibly that you can't see on paper? And outside of how well
they dressed? Right? What do you say to those, you get some questions there.
What I would tell you is that behavioral interviewing, it's a practice art. And new interviewers are going to find it a little uncomfortable at first. But what we're looking to do is go beyond those canned answers. You're right, we get them a lot in the interviews. And the art is around digging deeper beneath that. Because to be honest, it doesn't make much difference to me where someone went to school,
did they get their degree? Great if it was at Grand Valley State, wonderful if it was Harvard? Great. Good tip. Right. And obviously, there are certain schools we know have reputations, but I want to dig deeper beneath that to understand how people think, feel and react to certain situations at work. So behavioral interviewing is based on the fact that the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Because we all
have behavioral patterns. Yes. So for instance, you know, you often get the answer, Well, I'm a people person. And some inexperienced interviewers will say, Oh, that's great. Well, it's great that they answered, I'm a people person. But that doesn't mean anything. Right? Right. You want to dig beneath that. So for instance, tell me about a time you used your people skills to successfully manage conflict with a co worker at work. Tell me about a time that...
Tell me about a time.
Right? And what you work are examples. And I don't want people to be slaves to behavioral interviewing, right? Because you can ask within the bounds of what is legal and what is relevant. And that's important, too. You can ask what you want. But what you really want is an understanding of how people handled past situations, and what the outcome was. And so the person who says I'm great at relationships,
wonderful. Tell me about a time you use your relationship building skills to convince a reluctant coworker or customer to share your point of view. Now we're getting people to think and follow up questions are key, right? There's an art to this. And it's called domino questioning.
Yes.
So someone gives you an answer. And you go beyond that, then you say, Well, why did you choose the path you did? Or, you know, why did you choose to handle it the way you did? And then they give you an answer, and you follow up? And you say, great, what would you learn from it? For instance, tell me about a time you made a mistake at work? Yes. Now, you may get people who own the mistake or say it's someone else's fault, right? I'm the victim, I didn't really make a
mistake. And that begins to tell us something. Right. And you follow it up to say, well, you know, how did you handle that situation? Or you go into digging deeper? And it's a three part question, essentially, what happened? Maybe Why did you handle it the way you did? Or how did you handle it? And the third might be what did you learn? So what did you learn from that mistake? Yes. And you're looking for things right, you're looking for either? Well, I learned not to make the boss
mad. Well, that's not really learning, right? That's an answer that indicates someone doesn't really their part in the situation.
Ownership, yep.
So this whole idea is fascinating. And when you dig beneath, you begin to learn a lot about what makes a person tick because I can teach skills most leaders, overvalue skills and experience and undervalue competencies and personality traits. Yes. And I think that's key. You know, I can teach you a skill about the techniques around phone screening, if you're a recruiter, or how to handle an
employee grievance. If you're a generalist in HR, I can teach you to show up for work on time, right, be cooperative, and to build good relationships easily. And those are the things as a small business leader, for instance, I want out of my people, I want good raw competencies that I'll build around. Because smaller businesses don't have the bandwidth, they don't have the time to take on projects. When it comes to new people,
yeah, unpacked a ton there. This Tell me about a time when insert blank, right, and that's them being able to look in their past. And, you know, I'm often interviewing a lot of young folks coming into the world of digital marketing. And they may not have a time in the past that is going to replicate something that might happen in my world today, with
our business. So a question I would use, or a different way of asking is, if you were in a situation that and describe the situation, can you describe what you think you might do? Right, this is forward pacing, this is one question I've used because I interview a lot of people that are young to the digital marketing space. And so I'm giving them an opportunity to forecast how they think they
might react. And then the other way is for me to go back in the past and take a real problem that happened in my business, my organization with a client with a campaign, and say, I'm going to tell you a story, I'm gonna put you in the story and tell me what you would do if you were in the story back then. And it's just kind of another way to get them to go back. And even if they're not at the level to where they could technically handle, I just want to hear
their thought process. And that's what you were talking about. You're like, you are literally saying, but tell me why you made that decision. Right. And then one other question you probably use as well, which is, if you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently? It's not judgmental, to say it was right or wrong. But if you were to do it again, what would you do differently? And that's another one of those ones that just as
hypothetical. I think, like you're saying peeling back other layers to how they think, because how they think matters, right? It's just how they think, you know, just help me understand how you think. And I've only got a few minutes in this interview. So hurry up, no I'm just playin.
Yeah, it's exactly right. Right, people are onions, you have to peel back the layers to really find out what the core looks like. And the questions that you've mentioned are great, right? When you have somebody who lacks experience, just give them a hypothetical and ask, how would
you handle it? Because you're getting the same answer the same type of thought process, in scenario based questioning that you're mentioning, that's a wonderful way of digging further beneath, give someone a simple scenario and ask, how would you handle it? Tell me why you'd handle it that way. Because now you're getting beneath this to really understand how a person handle situations or problems. Those are great examples of good questioning techniques.
What are you looking for when you bring in other interviewers? So the recruiter or whoever that initial first or second interviewer is, why is it important that other folks on the team talked about the dynamic of what you're hoping to accomplish there, or the bias that you're hoping to remove there? I've got some thoughts in my mind, but I want to hear from your side of it.
Yeah, there's a few things. So we all have biases, and we all have blind spots. If you're the sole person interviewing, you're at the mercy of those in terms of your hire, if you have someone else also interviewing their blind spots, and their biases and yours are bound to not be the same. And hopefully, of course, you're aware enough to try and minimize those biases. So the other is, quite simply, you're getting a different perspective on the hire. And you're looking
for consistency, too. So for instance, if you're interviewing, not in a panel format, but one after the other, you're looking to see is the candidate representing themselves in an authentic way anyone can fake their way through an hour interview?
Yeah.
That's not difficult. The key is to dig beneath to find out is this person, authentic? Is this person representing themselves genuinely so you look for consistency and answers. If it's in a panel interview, you want someone else to be able to follow up on your questions. So the art of probing or dominant questioning, you may ask a question, and then be satisfied with the answer. Your colleagues might say, Well, tell me a little bit more about why you did something the way you did.
They may help you with these follow up questions to help you dig deeper for this to be a better type of interview. So those are some of the reasons why and frankly, we all know at work that best practices put in place through debate and discussion. And this is one of the most important decisions that you'll make. So there shouldn't be some lively debate about candidates. It's okay to disagree. And it's okay to to have some debate about whether to move someone forward in the
process or not. That's a good thing. I'm always scared when everybody loves the candidate. Right, but well, that they're perfect. That makes me really nervous, because no one is perfect. And you're going to put someone up on a pedestal when you hire them and then knock them off because you created an expectation that's impossible for them to meet. So this is why we bring others into the interview process.
So let's move forward. We've got through that interview stage. They're now on the team. I want to kind of move into now team, collaboration and manage Man, what are some of the big challenges? Not just with brand new hires, but in general team management, talent management, as we talked about this general term, you know, businesses, whether they're small, mid or really large in that in 5000, you know,
categories. What are some of the challenges right now that leaders are facing with people management slash talent management, and humans are humans no matter how big the team or smallest, so I'm sure you've seen some common themes. What are those?
There are in one of the things I won't belabor this point too much, but it is in onboarding. Onboarding is a crucial part of an individual's employment experience. And leaders that work really hard to generate candidates and then select to hire sometimes largely abandoned someone to the forces of fate when they come in first day. Because they're too busy to train and coach, initially, they got too many other things going
on with the business. And so the new hire flounders, you know, there's an unstructured experience for them in the first few weeks where they sit next to someone doing the job, and we expect them to learn by osmosis. It just doesn't happen that way.
To shadow them,
Exactly, just shadow them, because I'm too busy now that I've hired you I'm actually to busy to manage you.
I'm sorry to be laughing. This is not this is serious stuff. I shouldn't be. But it's true.
It's true. And it's ironic, isn't it? I mean, I think this is the part where, you know, we have to approach the job with some real humanity and humor, right, because that's what our people expect from us
too. But I will say onboarding, you know, structure, that onboarding experience, make sure you know, who's training and when, because new hires are really sensitive to everything you say and do and they're going to make a decision very quickly, within the first few weeks about whether this is just a holdover job, or whether they think they can build a career. And if they leave you month, eight, they were looking month three, it just took them a while to find
the job. So onboarding is, is really important.
Can I ask you really quick?
Yeah.
It's not a boring topic. And listen, I think we need to spend some time here. Because, you know, if we go back to the beginning of our talk, we were talking about what people leave bosses, they hate it, hate maybe a strong word. But onboarding really plays into
them. You know, it's like that relationship thought process, if we're talking about dating a spouse or significant other or someone that we're interested in, it's like, okay, date number one was the nice cool stuff at the bar, the drinks, the dinner, but it's really what happens in that near term phase. And I think that's what onboarding is someone, they wanted a job. So they showed up with their best selves. You wanted someone in the seat, so you show up with your energy of wanting to find
the right person? Now we've said yes. So I really think what you're talking and it was a lesson I had to learn. I did it wrong. For a number of years, 20 years ago, I can think of three or four scenarios, I just did it wrong, completely wrong, didn't pay attention, onboarding, didn't pay attention to that experience. And we think about serving our customers at a high level, why don't we treat our team at a high level? Why don't we treat that new person organization and a high level?
So talk a bit more about that? What are some ways, again, maybe frameworks or structures. And I know this can't work for everyone, because a large organization I remember, early in my days, I had a six week thing with a company. That was a big company. That was a six week thing before I ever technically got to the job, like six weeks I was in this world of getting on board it to the company did no work. That doesn't work for the entrepreneurial firm that has two employees, three employees,
10 employees. What kinds of topical things should an organizational leader do to get that person acclimated? That may be a better word acclimated.
Yes, there are a few things. The first is prepare for day one. When new hires come in, and you're clearing, old papers are way off the desk, and there's no access for them. And you spend tons of time and energy, randomly, showing them around introducing them to people who probably don't need to be interrupted, all of this leaves a bad impression. So prepare for day
one, right? Make sure that they've got the supplies the access, that you have organized a schedule, which is crucial, I think if if leaders need to only remember two or three things, one is prepare for day one, two is create a schedule for onboarding, day by day, hour by hour. Make sure that you know what they're going to be doing. Now, small businesses don't have the time but what I would tell you is there's always pressure big business. It's the same
thing. Well, I've hired them now I have to get them up to speed as if two weeks is going to make or break the business. I understand that the business impact is bigger, right with small businesses in terms of carrying that extra payroll. But if you invest the time now you're going to see a much greater payoff later. So be realistic about How much time it takes to get your person up to speed and know who you're going
to introduce them to. So there's a stakeholder map, who do they need to build relationships with? Who do they need to shadow? Who are they going to need to work with in order to do their job successfully. So I think those are some things on the other side inculturation. So oftentimes, leaders will forget to talk a little bit about what
the culture is like. And they allow people to then stumble into cultural minefields, where they learn only because they've made a bad mistake, upset one of their co workers, violated some cultural Moray, and now they're immediately on someone's bad list. And that's not a great way to career. So talk culture, talk about expectations, as well. Early on, go through the job description, go through how the success is measured. These are the KPIs or measurables that we use. This is how you'll know if
you're doing a good job. Yeah, I love that things are important. So yeah, the first two to four weeks, you know, cover some of those basic things. We could talk for an hour just in this area. But I think if we had to boil it down to three or four points, these would be the ones that focus on.
No, I love it, just you know that that last piece, when rubs my tell them, what the heck they're going to be graded on, don't tell them after they've done something wrong, give them the rules of engagement up front. Like, it's just the worst thing, don't tell them, they're going to be penalized for something after they've already done it. You know, this is crazy. And this is not the ordinary stuff, this ain't showing up for work late, call him off sick, we're talking about the rules of your
performance. Right? So yeah, I'm gonna throw something in just because it's just this begging for me in my head, because I've been, you know, my 30th year of being in and around entrepreneurship. And then 11 years with a number of companies coaching, consulting, helping etc. Well, you have probably seen in your run, superstar talented people who are toxic to the organization, and their supervisor and or leadership will not let that person go, or they will not address the
toxicity. And I know you talk about, you know, managing and motivating teams, but what if the team is motivated, but as this person, you know, in a lot of where I come from, it's the salesperson, somebody in sales, who's making it rain, right? They're making it rain with all the revenue, but they're a jackass. Right? And nobody will call them to the carpet on that. So and it doesn't have to be a salesperson. But talk to us about that their toxic superstar. What do you do with that person?
Yeah, I've had this absolutely happen, where executives and organizations fail to address this. And of course, you talk about the best ideas being stolen. One of the best quotes I've ever heard about corporate culture, is that the culture in your team is the worst performance or behavior that you'll accept. That's it. It's that simple, that the bar that you set for performance and behavior, absolutely dictates
the culture. And I remember one superstar, who exactly that the brought in the revenue, but they were putting the organization at legal risk because of the way that they interacted with customers. And frankly, they were just a massive pain to deal with. They were incredibly disrespectful in bullying to their co workers. And it took a little while to convince the CEO of this organization, that you can train someone else to be a superstar in terms of what this
person did. They're not the only one out there that can do the job, hey, they're doing a great job. And yes, there may be a short term pain, it's like ripping the band aid off to give the wound some air to properly heal. And that's what happens. This is about leadership integrity, and the most courageous leaders need to put the standard in place where they know that lying cheating and stealing is not okay. And if you're a superstar, your performance doesn't exempt you
from those things. And if you're struggling, you need to know that you can't cheat your way to safety either. And so it certainly happened where yes, in the end, I had the I'm going to say task, but I think in my case, it was probably privilege of going down and telling that person that they can no longer be employed with the organization. Because they just didn't belong. There negative effect on the rest of the team was was horrible.
Yes.
And we can produce more great producers. If you're a great leader or executive and you did it once with this person, you can do it again. And again. That's a sign of great leadership. So you do have to address this No, take
them aside. Sometimes they just don't know that they are, let's say arrogant enough or perhaps self centered enough that they don't realize the effect and you can you know, enjoy that gives people a chance to, to understand that part of being a superstar is also leading by example, that that's the value that they bring to your team. If the value is nothing more than revenue, I can get more of those
people. So if you address it, and that person changes, wonderful, if you address it, and they know that they're doing it, and they just don't care, or they don't change, then you have a decision to make. And it's not all that difficult a decision. If you look strategically at your business, you can quite simply get or manufacture another superstar. But don't allow someone like that to poison the culture of the team and poison the morale because
that, in fact, is long term. And they cause turnover amongst the rest of the team, the say, average performer, who by the way, is the heart of your team, right? The average Joe, so to speak, is the person that's perhaps adding value to the team beyond the revenue. And you can't sacrifice those people again, and again, and again, for the sake of one superstar.
Yeah, gotta be willing to bench the star player. There's a phrase I use, I did get it from a leadership training. It's just a mindset now, and that is when I'm interviewing, and I'm looking at my team. And this is not just at the point of interview or the point of hire, it's as time goes on in the organization. And I can think of one very difficult termination we made in 2014. And they'd been with us since 2011.
And it wasn't because of talent, it was because we believe this is a phrase, we use an organization like what is their coachability index, right? And if their coachability index slides back into the six range, and we try to get it back up, I mean, so we're looking at has their coachability changed. And that's usually a tough one for
us. And for me, if you become less coachable, and you're not willing to address the facts and make those leadership improvements, if you are a superstar, then it's time for us to trade you to a new team. I'm a sports guy. So I use a lot of sports analogies.
Yeah, absolutely. Right. We all know that there's numerous examples of superstar players in sports who have been traded.
That's right.
Because they're a pain in the locker room. And this is no different.
No different man, we got so much to go. I definitely want to ask about best practices around keeping these motivated, engaged, highly performing. We've been talking a little about some of the challenging types of things, getting people in the door, that kind of thing. But let's talk about motivating teams and some of those best practices that you see that leaders should be implementing in their businesses today.
Yes, I think the first is don't rely overwhelmingly on external motivators. This is common with new leaders and inexpert Does that mean I'm sorry. So an external motivators, anything that has to be given to your people money,
oh, incentives.
Right. And it's interesting, you know, I had, I had a lively conversation with one executive who said, but money motivates behavior. It's as simple as that.
That's not true.
Well, remember, if we go back to the significant research regarding why people leave, and what motivates people, money is typically not in the top two or three. Now, it's not unimportant, right? We all know that we have to pay the bills. But when people reach a point where they feel like they're fundamentally paid fairly, then money becomes a hygiene factor. You can throw more at people, and you get a rapidly decreasing return on your investment.
Because if the boss is a pain, if the work environments toxic, if there's no challenge, if there's no ability to grow, then, frankly, money is obviously the ultimate commodity. We can all get more of it down the road. If we look hard enough, often when you look at leaders and they'll say, Well, I motivate people through contests, or it's the bonus, that's a fragile place to be if you're an employee, because it can be withheld. Look at COVID, the bonuses that people counted
on getting in the races. They didn't happen for most companies and many companies, of course, cut staff. So it's a safer place to be as both an employee and a leader is when you tap into internal motivations. Pride, the ability to build relationships, good relationships with coworkers, customer service, autonomy, inclusion, growth, learning challenges, right. There's lots of internal motivators that we have, that as a leader, if you're perceptive you can tap into and that's
repeatable. That's something that the competition down the road doesn't know today, what's going to motivate your star player to do more. And that's key. So I think realizing that money isn't the primary way to sustainably motivate. It's a bandaid. We've all seen it and we've all used it in certain cases, throwing the retention bonus at people or the the golden Hello handshake. But people quickly spend money and they forget who gave it to them. Yeah, they spent.
Wow.
So that makes it one of the least powerful motivators in the long term, good practice around motivating is to find out what each of your people are motivated by, because it's bound to be different. But there are some collective motivators, some good practices around providing autonomy, empowering your people, including them in decision making. And that's just good basic leadership practice that
we need to look at. So tap into those internal motivators, I would say whatever they may be, because that's going to help you most in the long term as a leader, and it'll improve your relationship with your people.
I love it, we've just begun to unpack this here. But if they pick up leadership core, and I want to ask you about your next book coming out, tell the audience what they're going to get when they finish that book,
Just some good tips that they can easily implement to enhance their own leadership. So it was born out of by development of numerous leadership programs for organizations. So we cover a handful of subjects, the first is character. So we talk about leadership character, and how important integrity is and humility, for example, and compassion. Because leaders have to lead with both their heart and their hand, people don't leave their emotions at the
door. And as a matter of fact, you want them coming with motion, because you want to tap into it for mutual benefit. So we talked about that performance management's a big one. So I'm passionate about performance management, it's been a big part of what I've done. And it's the bottom line, it's why leaders exist, is to help the organizations perform well, by managing the work of others.
Change management's a big one, we talk about change management, servant see and stewardship, which is an aspect of leadership, and how to develop other people as well. So another big part, and we've covered it a fair bit is acquiring talent and building teams too. So there's a core of about seven subjects here. And it's designed as a, I'm gonna say, a primer. But it's not just designed for new leaders. It's designed for every level of leader to take away some best practices around these
things. So that's what we talk about. And hopefully, they'll get a good overview in which people can reflect on their own leadership, and take these tips away. And each main competency to enhance that about their leadership.
Nice, I love it, appreciate you writing the book, just think about my journey. My first leadership role was at the age of 20. I'm now 51. And I always believe that I'm still constantly learning. And I don't really know anything I just mentally do. So when I pick up a book like yours, and I'll see one of those seven that's going to speak to where I'm at, in my journey today, some awareness, something new COVID was just 12 months ago, what am I doing now on the other side of COVID, all
of these kinds of things. So I think as good leaders, we're always evolving. And we can always be honest with our self assessments and say, there's a topic here that I can grab some perspective from tell us about your upcoming book.
Yes, the next book is a little bit of a different take, but not wholly unrelated. Really, it's it's called finding joy and prosperity in life. And it was actually built from a from a ground level leadership program, in which we were defining the competencies for people who were thinking about leadership. So we were preparing people to take their first step into leadership. And really what we were talking about was before you can lead others, you need to know how to lead yourself
successfully. And so it evolved. And as I was thinking about the book, I said, Well, this really isn't a program regarding how to step into leadership. It's a subject that speaks to how to live a more fulfilled life, a happier life. And so we talked about things like emotional intelligence, resilience and managing stress, how to develop yourself, we talk about
character, again as well. So some of these subjects are really core self awareness is a big one, we cover emotional intelligence and self awareness a lot. So hopefully, people will come out of reading the book again, with a greater awareness of the things that are counterproductive in terms of their thoughts and actions in leading a happier life and some of the things that they can do or focus on to find that happiness hopefully, and success a little quicker.
Sounds good. I can't wait to that one comes out make sure you let us know when that is out. Great subject Well, where can people find you and connect with you online,
So they can connect through my website it's WillSchrimerofficial.com. The book today The Leadership Core can be found on amazon.com, Barnes noble.com The ebook version is already out. And then the second book is out on ebook in early 2022.
That's awesome. Well really appreciate you being here on the show. And my final question is if for whatever reason today was your last day here on this beautiful planet we call earth what would you want everyone to remember you for?
I hope it's providing a little bit more joy or happiness in other's lives at work hopefully that was because I developed people and they found a little bit of humor. We did a lot of humorous things at work in my teams, and hopefully those that knew me outside of work would say that I made them laugh at least once so hard they cried that.
That's a good one. Thank you so much for being here.
Thanks so much. I appreciate it. And best of luck to you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Darrell. Bye.
Hey, my friend. Thanks again for listening to today's episode of the mind shift podcast. Listen, let's not have the conversation in here connect with me on social @mrdarrellevans. Until next week, remember you're just one shift away from the breakthrough you're looking for.