Full Transcript Below
[ANNOUNCER]:
Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.
[COBY]:
Did we lose a patient?
[JAMES]:
No, that’s just my lunch.
[COBY]:
Hey, thanks for joining us. I’m Coby, he’s James, and let’s get started with a question. Should we be hiring for fit?
[JAMES]:
The short and probably somewhat misleading answer, in my opinion, is no. Hiring for fit, or at least in the way that most people approach this topic, is not the be all, end all that it’s sometimes positioned as. And it probably sounds strange for us in particular to be decrying the value of hiring for fit especially. We specialize in helping organizations create productive, inclusive, profitable cultures. But the way that I see most businesses approaching the topic of fit in their hiring practices essentially boils down to, I want to hire someone who’s going to seamlessly integrate with my existing team and who won’t rock the boat. And in that context, I believe businesses are shooting themselves in the foot by focusing on what they deem a good fit. Because if you’re only ever really looking for that really specific person who went to the right school or did their internship at the right company and brings that same outlook, perspective approach to work and won’t challenge the convention, then you’re not hiring somebody who’s going to be a good fit. You’re hiring somebody who’s going to be easy to assimilate.
[COBY]:
Yeah, I think that this idea of fit is something that was a big thing that was pushed 15 ish years ago. It’s like, don’t hire who you like, hire who’s going to fit in and everything like that. There’s some wisdom behind that conventional thought process, but then it was like, well, what does that mean? And there’s lots of different ideas out there about what’s the best way to look at fit or assess fit or everything like that. And probably the two most common ones that I see right now are value fit and culture fit. I don’t love those two terms because to us, culture is something that is about what you need to have to be productive and to be profitable and to be inclusive. So I’m always like, well, culture fit should be what you’re looking for. So I always find them confusing. And I also think that they’re not the best way to really visualize the difference in the comparative. So I think it’s important for us to really kind of say, so what do we mean by fit? Or how is fit being viewed? And what’s a more complete way to view it?
[JAMES]:
Yeah. And I mean, going back to how a lot of people think about fit is very much that I want to find that right person who will fit in with what we’re currently doing. Right. It’s very much we want to find a harmonious, easy entry, somebody who’s going to come in and be able to pick up the work fairly quickly, who’s going to gel with the rest of the team, and who’s not going to be disruptive. I get that. Right. That’s not necessarily inherently bad, but it is inherently limiting because that is somebody who’s going to fit in with your organization. But if we’re looking at what do we actually mean by somebody who’s going to be a good fit, then I think in my view, the place to start is that there has to be an alignment of values, the core underlying value of why are we pursuing this work. If there’s that, then everybody’s going to be pulling in the same direction. They need to have the requisite skills, they need to have the requisite knowledge. But to really hire somebody who is a good fit, you want that diversity in perspective. You don’t want people who have all gone to the same school, who have all learned how to do things in the exact same way. Because really all you’re doing is you’re replicating the same skill set that you have available to you. You’re replicating the same opinions that you have available to you. And somebody who’s a good fit, in my mind, is somebody who shares those core values, who’s going to bring a complementary perspective, a complementary set of skills, a complementary approach to doing the job that is going to elevate the rest of the team, not just assimilate with the rest of the team.
[COBY]:
And I think that that’s probably the better way to differentiate between the different sides of fit, is the idea of fitting in, which is about reinforcing the status quo, about people kind of being integrated into the workplace to be what’s normal or expected. Versus being a good fit, which is about expecting that alignment of those key qualities. So you’re pulling in the same direction, but it’s about essentially looking for the complementary skills and perspectives that will bring new ideas, new points of view, new ways to improve and to do things. And that’s probably how we should be having this conversation. Instead of the value and culture fit and some of the other language around it, I think it is a lot more clear and a lot easier to visualize. We say, okay, do you want someone who’s going to fit in and assimilate, or someone who’s going to be a good fit and bring the complementary skills and perspectives that you need in order to be a better version of yourself.
[JAMES]:
And I want to reinforce that one is not inherently bad and one is not inherently good. I think in some situations, depending on how your business is structured, there are times when you need somebody who is going to be able to assimilate and just perform the tasks that need to be performed. That is a legitimate business need. I believe there are more often times when you’re going to want to bring in somebody who has the same core values and approach, but brings a different perspective and skill set.
[COBY]:
Yeah, this is something that when we identify differences between things, it is important to realize that we’re not saying one is terrible and one is amazing and you’re doing something wrong if you’re using a terrible one. It’s more about clarifying the roles that these two approaches take. Because you’re right. If you’re looking for a job where everyone is basically doing the same thing, like what kind of comes to mind to me is like an assembly line. You want people that will come in, they’ll do the job, they’ll get along with people around them, and it’s just about the repetitive task and everything kind of works on its own. Right. So fitting in is not a bad expectation to have.
[JAMES]:
There’s a very clear process of how work has to be done because it has to be done for consistency, for safety, for all of these different reasons. Yeah, cool, legit reason, right?
[COBY]:
But I think we go to that expectation the well of that too often and we use that standard as a false equivalent when we’re trying to move in jobs that don’t require that consistency and that repetition when we’re looking for jobs where maybe, honestly, jobs that involve working with people is kind of a great benchmark, you’re going to want to look at a good fit as something to be an important element to it. Because the one problem that I see with leaning too heavily on fitting in is that in some jobs, yes, the harmonious coexistence is good, but it’s not the be all, end all for every position. And the idea of not wanting people to rock the boat is something that, again, is that a need operationally? Like we can only do the things one way because of, again, safety and this and that and operational need. Or it’s because as a manager, I don’t want to be challenged and asking questions and I want my life to be easier so everyone needs to assimilate and fit in because I don’t want to have to deal with boat rockers. That’s not necessarily a good reason to hire someone who’s fitting in, because likely you’re going to want more than that. You’re going to want someone who’s going to bring something of value beyond their presence to the job. Someone that’s going to bring new perspectives, new ideas, new skills.
[JAMES]:
Yeah. And I don’t think it’s a cognizant, like, an intentional decision that managers make. Of, I just don’t want somebody who’s going to challenge me. I don’t believe that’s the motivating factor 99% of the time. Sure, there’s always exceptions that prove the rule, but I think it’s more of a, we have been conditioned, we have been taught that to be successful. What we’re looking for in a successful teammate is somebody who’s going to seamlessly integrate, somebody who is. We have this idea that the standard that we want to hold ourselves to is harmonious coexistence. And that is not a bad thing. We want the workplace to be a place where people can show up, they feel safe, they feel connected with each other. It’s not rife with conflicts. The harmonious coexistence is not a bad thing, but it’s not the outcome that we should be trying for.
[COBY]:
Yeah.
[JAMES]:
And I think in large part, it depends on how you want to build your team. Do you want to build your team where everybody has just the same background, same experience, same skill set, and there’s really no distinguishing. You can’t really distinguish between the people on your team? Or do you want to build a team where people bring complementary skills, where they have strengths in one area that complement the weaknesses that somebody else brings?
[COBY]:
Right. We did talk about… fit came up a lot a little while ago. We’re working kind of in the legal sector with associations and stuff like that. A lot of conversations from training kind of came around that because I don’t want to pick on the legal sector, but they’re a good example of they often will only hire from certain schools, only hire from certain backgrounds where you did your internship and this and that and everything and there. Even the tv shows about legal firms kind of reinforced this expectation of fitting in, being one of the pack about, we want you to be another drone in our drone army.
[JAMES]:
Well, I mean, I started rewatching Suits not long ago, and that’s kind of their Pearson Hardman law firm’s claim to fame is that they only hire from Harvard. Right. That is a big selling point for them.
[COBY]:
Yeah. And the problem with, again, that default to the sameness to the fitting in is that it’s exclusionary for a lot of people. Right. It’s like, I don’t care about your skills. I don’t care about your abilities. I don’t care about your potential. If you don’t have the right resume, you’re out. And we see that fitting in can be misused to be, again, be a bit more discriminatory for all different kinds of backgrounds and histories and stuff like that, because we want someone that fits this. We have a single. This is another way to think about it. We have a single archetype about what a successful employee here looks like. If you don’t fit, that you’re not welcome is kind of an extreme case of it, but that is sometimes how fit gets co opted. As we’re doing the right thing, we’re hiring for fit. But fit has one look, and I think that that’s the damaging piece, especially when you’re right,
[COBY]:
there’s a real weakness to that because it doesn’t allow for the complementary skill sets to be on teams and stuff like that when everybody’s kind of a clone of everybody else.
[JAMES]:
Well, we had a situation with a client not too long ago where they were not for profit, trying to. They were launching a new, innovative initiative that was very different from their core operational. What this nonprofit typically did. And one of the things that we were helping them with was not only with kind of framing out what this would look like, but hiring the person who would fill this role. And where this whole idea came in, really, it came down to two candidates in our minds. There was one that, on paper, would have been perfect for the role from an academic standpoint. They had so much knowledge and expertise in this niche area. They were very comfortable, very warm person. Even part of the screening process was using a personality assessment tool that, I mean, there’s dozens of them out there, but this one was specific to aligning your personality with a color. Right. So blue is the warm, fuzzy, people centered, and that’s what 95% of the team was. They were the very caring, people centered team because they were in the nonprofit sector, and that’s very common, and this person would have fit in with the team quite well. There was also another candidate who we really thought that they had a strong application, because while they weren’t as academically qualified, like, they didn’t have the same master’s degree that the other person did, they had the requisite skills and knowledge to be able to do the job. But what really impressed us was how not only their values aligned, but how adamant they were and how they really stood on their beliefs and would fight for and argue for what they believed was the right way to do things. And for this innovative role, which was very new that the funders were not entirely sure about, in our opinion, it needed that person who could push back, who wouldn’t just fit in and go with the flow, because that is very easy to be co opted by the funders and the rest of the team who are looking at this, well, let’s just turn it back into the same thing that we’ve always done.
[COBY]:
Right.
[JAMES]:
The idea that the good fit in this situation was not the person who would easily get along with everybody in the workplace. It was the person who was actually going to stand up and push back and respectfully, obviously, and had the core values and wanted to advance the work that the nonprofit did, but had a very different approach and a very different perspective and a very different skill set. And that fit was what we really needed in that role.
[COBY]:
Yeah, I mean, this organization kind of lived and died by this personality assessment. And they were like, this favorite candidate. This first candidate was blue. That’s just like everybody else here. They’re just seamlessly integrate into the workplace. And we were like, okay, that is great. We found that first candidate to be an excellent candidate. They were lovely, but we had to do some convincing to kind of say, but this second candidate, I forget the colors now. I think it was yellow or something like that, where this person was very detail oriented, very time oriented, kind of like things were, let’s get stuff done, and let’s not take no for an answer. And that was something. They were just like, well, we tend to kind of like things to be a little bit more harmonious here. And we were like, well, the thing is that you need someone who’s going to bring a complementary skill set to your compassion with the let’s get it done kind of attitude. And honestly, we were right, because it wasn’t long that we helped them build a concept later, the project, and we kind of were kind of like weaning ourselves off the implementation and management of it. As soon as we were starting to pull back, the funders were starting to kind of modify it back into the same old, same old talk about wanting things to be the same, the government. But this person stood up, and it was insistent. Again, very respectful, very evidence based, and that kind of stuff, but really was not backing down to the funder. And because of that person, this project actually really worked well. It lived to the vision even though it was different. It took a lot of keeping everybody on board and bought into this new way of doing things, but it made a huge difference. And that’s the value of a good fit versus fitting in is someone that’s going to bring what’s necessary to complement what already exists.
[JAMES]:
Yeah, I think one of my happiest moments in that entire project was being in a meeting and having the person who we hired for that role just flat out tell the funder, no, we’re not changing it. No, that’s not the way that we’re doing it. This is what we.
[COBY]:
Absolutely. To me, that always kind of clarifies. You’re right. Sometimes it’s not as short term easy to have a good fit versus fitting in, but in the long term, it pays dividends. So it is something that’s really helpful. I do think, though, another way to kind of look at this whole conversation is to look at it from the team perspective. Because talk about individuals, it’s kind of a little bit hard to know, well, how is this individual going to fitting in versus the role? But I think an easier way, or another way at least to look at it, is look at it through the functions of what we want our teams to actually be. Because most of the work isn’t done by individuals, done by the team they work in.
[JAMES]:
When you’re talking about fit, you’re right. You can’t really do that in isolation because if you’re a team of one, fit doesn’t really matter.
[COBY]:
Yeah, you’re right. So I think a good way to look at, again, the way that we want to structure our team is to have, again, another comparative. So the difference between wanting a well rounded team versus a team of well rounded individuals, and with a team of well rounded individuals, usually you have people that are likely, often the same. Their strengths and their weaknesses are usually pretty in line. They can kind of all do different parts of the job, different parts of the role, and someone that’s going to fit in will meet their level of strength and weaknesses and will kind of just be another, again, clone in the bunch. Whereas a well rounded team is the idea of you have people that tend to specialize and are complementary, where maybe this person, where the work is done, kind of some work is done by person a, then passed on to person b for the next piece. And you have this whole team. All the boxes get checked as far as the required skills, but not by every person checking the boxes, but by one person, or having a couple of boxes that they specialize in, and another person having a box that they specialize in. And the difference of a well rounded team versus a team of well rounded individuals is really something that I think a lot of organizations and a lot of managers should really be kind of reflecting on. What is it that I want? Do I want a team that has highly skilled people that specialize, or do I want to hire a team where everyone’s pretty good at everything? Because the results and the way that those teams work be very different, but they really have their place. But do you have the right combination in the right place?
[JAMES]:
Well, I think this goes back to the same like we’ve had similar conversations before, in that it’s not that one is inherently good and one is inherently bad. It’s that we tend to default to building a team of generalists. Building a team where everybody has kind of the same baseline skills, experience requirements, versus that idea of I need to hire somebody into the team who doesn’t actually have the same skills or all of the same strengths as everybody else. What are the skills that are missing from my team? And then I’m going to go searching for that specifically. It is a different mentality than we often take to hiring. And it’s just, I believe in many circumstances it is the stronger approach if it’s built with intent, but it’s not always the right approach for every situation.
[COBY]:
Yeah. The idea of a well rounded team tends to be that team of specialists. Everyone specializes in kind of their areas of strength sometimes. So they maybe excel in some areas and have areas of weakness. But ideally, if done with intention, one member’s area of weakness is another person’s area of strength. So everyone does more of what they’re good at and less of what they’re not good at is kind of how those teams can operate. Whereas a team of well rounded individuals is the team of generalists. Everyone is generally skilled at kind of all the areas. No one excels necessarily in any certain area. Everyone kind of does all the work. And we’ve seen this probably play out enough that I can speak with confidence. The team of well rounded team of specialists tend to always outperform the well rounded team of individuals, the generalist, because you’re putting people who can do the stuff that they’re naturally good at, they spend more time doing that, so they’re more efficient, they’re more productive, they’re more motivated, so the work quality tends to be higher and the output tends to be higher.
[JAMES]:
I think it’s worth actually looking at some industry examples to make this real. Sure. If we’re talking about a team of generalists, what kind of naturally springs to mind is environments like a production facility. We used the example a little earlier around a production line. Yeah. In that type of situation where there’s a very specific process that needs to be followed in order for the work to be done, then you want everybody to have the same skill set. That is the right approach to building your team. People need to be able to follow the process. They need to be able to do it safely. They need to have the same base requirements and skill sets and understanding to be able to accomplish that position safely, because efficiency and safety are two of the biggest considerations in that point.
[COBY]:
Yeah, I’d say another good example of the generalists would be like an inbound call center, where you have people calling in and everybody who is respondin to a call has to basically have the same requisite skill set, requisite experience and knowledge to be able to handle whatever kind of response or whatever nature or question that kind of is coming through. So I think that idea, you want someone that can kind of do a little bit of everything because you never know what they can actually be doing.
[JAMES]:
Right? And I mean, it’s not that actually, that’s a great example because you could actually build your team around specialized skill sets with an inbound call center. Maybe it’s some sort of tech support. Doesn’t really matter what that inbound call center is. You could have a team of specialists where depending on what the problem is, the person might get bounced around. Know Johnny has a specialization in this specific area, so we’re going to funnel you over here. I don’t think it would play out practically in that environment because it requires the individual calling to actually know what their problem is. And if you’ve ever even heard stories from a call center, let alone worked in one, people don’t know what their issue is. That’s why the first question you’re asked is, well, did you turn it off and back on? I love the IT Crowd. Actually. That’s going to be my next rewatch, I think after I’m done Suits, but that’s an aside.
[COBY]:
But I do think you’re right for the most part. I think that the idea of a generalist team in kind of inbound calls makes the most sense. But I also think though, if talking outbound calling, I think a team of specialists might actually be a better recipe where you have people that are really good, the salespeople are really good on the phone. They’re really good at making that connection, having the person be able to kind of productive in those conversation pieces, but then having that conversation piece person not have to do all the administrative reporting stuff. Having someone else maybe that can do that, that would probably be a lot more efficient in letting the people person make the phone calls and letting the administrative person be able to do all the behind the scenes documentation stuff. That recipe could probably be a good example of what a team of specialists can do in the same industry. Right? Well, and.
[JAMES]:
Exactly. And I think that already happens to a degree, especially in those types of outbound sales roles, because you want your salespeople selling. Right? You want them, especially in an environment where it’s a numbers game. You want them on the phones, you want them reaching out to people, you want them using their time to their expertise to sell. Once it reaches a certain line part in your pipeline, it gets handed over to an account manager, or it gets handed over to somebody to finish off the paperwork. Right. So that the person who specializes in sales can keep selling. We do some of this naturally, and I think that type of environment is a good illustration of what we’re talking about from a strength based team perspective, but we can also take that same approach into virtually any environment.
[COBY]:
Yeah, and I think that where we see a lot of misconceptions is that the team of well rounded individuals tends to be used more than the well rounded team approach, because a lot of organizations are trying to have a lot of the same skill sets, a lot of the same people in jobs that don’t require it. And one of the ways it is kind of easier to kind of think about when to use one over, when to use the other. Because again, it’s about using the right tool for the right job. Right. Is that to me, the team of generalists, the team of well rounded individuals are really good in responsive roles because you never know what’s coming at you. So being able to respond with people that are going to have a pretty generalized skill set is probably a great strategy because you don’t want the person to come in and talk to a specialist who’s like, well, I only know this one narrow area, so I can’t really help you. That’s not going to create a great customer experience, but someone that has got enough and knows enough and has enough skills to be able to kind of help anybody that walks in or calls that you’re responding to is a good use of that approach. Whereas a more kind of proactive or a more deliberate or preemptive kind of role where you’re doing something new, you’re reaching out, you’re building connections, you’re doing more kind of like you’re building a lot more momentum or you’re doing a lot more with an intended outcome. Those tend to be jobs that still use the generalist approach but really could value from a team of specialists or kind of, we said earlier, let’s talk about the same in terms of what we call a strength based team, because that’s something that would be very transformative to some teams who maybe unintentionally are looking to build a team of well rounded individual team of generalists when they really might be able to see huge productivity and efficiency boost if they maybe shifted the role delineations and the tasks to be a more well rounded team of specialists.
[JAMES]:
And it can be a really interesting aha moment for teams, I guess. Spoiler alert. One of the tools that we have that we use frequently is in working with clients is around building strength based teams, and we have a program that we use to be able to do that, and we’ll talk about it in a second. But what immediately comes to mind is a client that we were working with, a municipal client who we did this strength based team program with their community development department. And it was funny. As we’re going through and as people are understanding, they get the idea of strength based approach we’re going through. They’re understanding their own preferences and where their natural skills and strengths lie and how they can start working together. And they realize everybody in this department has the exact same skill sets. They are all that people focused. Everybody wants to be out in the community, working with the community, leading projects. Nobody wants to be doing the paperwork, nobody wants to be doing sitting in meetings. It was really cool to see them identify that in themselves, that, oh, the reason why we spin our wheels and that we end up stalling or we have all of these great ideas that don’t actually get implemented is because we’re all focused on one aspect of the job and nobody on our team is focused on the actual implementation of work.
[COBY]:
Yeah, it’s always very cool for us when we see those kind of aha moments. Let’s talk a little bit about the program because I think that’ll help make that example even more kind of clear and impactful. So the program that we have, we call it SPECtrum, and the idea of it is that there are six roles on a team that help create efficiency and success. It really is about looking at a team of specialists. And how do you make a strength based team as specialists, where people do more of what they’re good at and require less time, effort and energy to complete their tasks? And we have a psychometric built into it, where we kind of ask preferential questions to kind of help people kind of figure out which role do they prefer? Which role takes less time, effort and energy for them to deliver on. Because then if teams know this, then they might be able to kind of shift around some work or identify where they’re lacking. So they know, what complementary skills do they need to hire someone to be a good fit, to allow them to kind of flesh out their team, to be more well rounded? And so what’s funny is when we built this concept, we actually stole the language a little bit from kind of an old legal kind of paradigm, which was kind of finders, minders and grinders. The idea of this idea is not unique to us, but the language of finders, miners and grinders came from the legal sector, where a finder is your rainmaker, minders are your lawyers to kind of handle most of the client cases. And your grinders are the people behind the scenes, low and totem pole that do most of the grunt work.
[JAMES]:
And it was a very hierarchical approach to it. Right, where there’s a tiered legitimately, in that situation, finders are better than minders who are better than grinders.
[COBY]:
Yeah, exactly. We liked the language and the idea, so we kind of co opted that into kind of our SPECtrum program. But the way that we utilize this is, we say there are six. So there’s Binders who are the bridge builders, the good interpersonal people, the ones that really enjoy working with different kinds of people. There’s Finders who are the hunters. They’re motivated by the chase and they have a knack for turning leads into triumphs. They’re very focused on the idea and the big picture. Minders are the administrators. They’re the backbone of the team that help keep everything moving and everyone on task. Grinders are the creators. They’re often behind the scene workhorses that produce high quality work. Then there’s Pathfinders, who are the explorers. They’re looking for success and innovation, but they need their crew to be along with them. And Spellbinders, who are the influencers. They’re very persuasive and good at convincing evidence based arguments. Now, when we did this program, the SPECtrum program, with those six roles, Binders, Finders, Minders, Grinders, Pathfinders and Spellbinders, with this municipal team. Everybody on the team were Binders. They were people, people. And this was the problem. Was they great at community engagement? They were great at kind of, like, all working together, but they really did not get a lot done. And part of that was because they didn’t have any Minders to kind of help them plan out the project, manage and plan stuff out and be kind.
[JAMES]:
Of organized on task. Yeah.
[COBY]:
They didn’t have Grinders who were going to actually do a lot of the administrative or do a lot of the work required to kind of get the data that’s required for their funding proposals. They didn’t have Finders to find the funding to do the cool things they wanted to do. They’re missing some of the other ones, too. But the idea was this aha moment was, oh, my gosh. We keep hiring people focused Binders, and so no one’s actually wanting to do any of the work. They can do it all. But this is the whole concept of our program. It’s not that a Binder can’t do the administrative work of a Minder or the creation work of a grinder. It’s that it takes that Binder far more effort and energy and time to do the work than it would someone who’s naturally a Minder or naturally a Grinder is that it takes us far less time, effort, and energy to do the stuff that we’re naturally good at, and then we prefer. So if you want to maximize your time, effort, and energy, then allowing people to do the stuff that they’re naturally inclined to do or they’re naturally good at is a far more efficient and productive way to structure your teams.
[JAMES]:
And I want to be clear, because I have to give this disclaimer every time that we implement this program, this is not an excuse to dump work that you don’t like onto somebody else. Right? That is not the intent here. And it’s not about one skill set is more valuable than others. This is not a hierarchy that we are talking about. The value of each role in a team is tremendous. The value of having these different skill sets and somebody who complements what you’re not strong in, so that you can use your time and energy in what fills your bucket, what you’re naturally inclined to do, and knowing that you have teammates who have other complementary skills and that they are working towards what actually fills their bucket. It’s an incredible recipe for creating a productive and, by extension, a harmonious work environment. You can still get to that harmonious work environment with a strength based approach. When people understand that one skill set is not the be all, end all, and that everybody else is the grunt, but that each skill set is valued for the contribution that it brings. It can really transform how a team connects with each other, understands and works together towards that common goal value outcome that we’re trying to achieve.
[COBY]:
Yeah. And what we like when we kind of use this program, working with different clients and working with different teams, is one the self discovery piece is always, everyone always really enjoys. Okay, that does make sense. Yeah, that does speak to me. Okay, I see now why I like to do this over that, but a lot of it, too, is, again, going back to fit. So is that when you know what your team is made of, then hiring the right person for a position can actually be a lot more tactical than just hiring someone who we think is going to get along with folks in the break room. Like we’re working with an organization. This organization was a very small team, and they had this person who was an incredible, what we called a Finder. They were out there working with organizations and they were good on the phone, they were good at building relationships, and they really found opportunities. But the person was pretty weak in their more administrative pieces. And a lot of the work that this organization did, they were a pretty small team, but they kind of fed off the work that this person, who we called a Finder, off their work. So when they were looking to hire a new position, they thought that, well, the best thing to do is just to hire another person that’s going to be just like this one person. And we were like, you know what? You can hire more people with that same skill set, but you’ve got this lax. You have this one person who’s now having to turn around all these great opportunities is slowed down by this more administrative burden that he has to do. So by doing this program and talking to them about kind of the complementary skill sets, we’re like, honestly, you would leverage better finding a Minder, someone to the administrator to kind of keep this person on task and focused and out there doing what they’re naturally good at, you’ll yield far better results. Plus, it’s going to be easier for you to find a Minder who’s going to be able to administrator type role than finding this other great finder. So it’s also about also being more realistic in the skills you need to bring on and not having to kind of constantly chase unicorns when you’re trying to fill positions. So there’s a real tactical advantage to knowing these roles and leveraging these roles for maximum output.
[JAMES]:
I go back to my disclaimer again, because it’s easy for us to take what’s a really strong program and put our own intentions on it with best of intentions. But it’s not that you’re going to be able to get rid of every aspect of your job that you don’t like. You’re not going to be able to pawn off. The point of this is not, the finder is not going to be able to pawn off every piece of administrative work onto somebody else and only ever do the parts of the job that they like. Let’s be realistic. We all have aspects of our job that we do not enjoy doing, but we still have to get them done right. Time, effort and energy is really what we’re talking about. And from a team based perspective, as much as possible within the operational requirements, we need to free people up to be able to work towards the skills, the strengths that they have that will allow them to accomplish the most with the least amount of time, effort and energy.
[COBY]:
Absolutely. And this type of strategy works in really any type of job, organization, department, industry that would leverage from, like we talked about before, with the specialists and the generalists. So any organization that would benefit from having a team of specialists really does benefit from this clarity around these roles in a team and the strength based approach. Because whether you’re like anything involving sales, anything involving marketing, anything involving project management, it really kind of, anything that’s not responsive to kind of incoming calls or incoming customers would benefit from looking at their teams through this lens of the six roles of SPECtrum. Because again, I’m sure you listening to it goes, you know what we talked about Binders. I am kind of a people person. That was something that I would kind of connect with. Yeah. If I could have a job that did more of that, I might be able to bring more of myself to work. Again, it’s a very simple idea to talk about. Implementation requires more work, which is often why we don’t kind of walk in, do a three hour training and leave. It tends to be more part of a longer strategy because utilizing this program in a more tactical way is a bit more than just doing a personality assessment, but the payoff and the dividends that benefit from it are substantial.
[JAMES]:
Yeah, I mean, what’s great about it is it’s fairly easy to understand, which makes articulating it nice and easy for us. You can grasp how playing to your strength is going to allow your team to work together, but you’re right, it’s not a half day and then never. You’re able to utilize this to full efficiency. It does require a strategic approach and understanding of how your team operates. Before I would caution somebody who’s listening to this to just take the language or even the concepts and try to build a strength based team from this short conversation, or even from we’ve got some training on our Roman 3 Academy that helps to articulate this in a different format. You really need to understand, do some reflective on what the outcome of your team is that you’re trying to accomplish, what the operational requirements are, and then how this is going to fit in. It can be a very powerful tool if used with a bit of strategy and intent. But please don’t just take this and start trying to rearrange your workplace over the next couple of days because I don’t want angry calls saying you guys are idiots. Now my team is all screwed up.
[COBY]:
Well, going back to an episode, I think about three or four episodes ago about Chaos Solutions. If you try and implement this without really looking at the full picture and fully understanding a chaos solution, which is why we often say that we’re happy to have a conversation with people and kind of help them figure out what’s the best tactical way for them to utilize this approach to the organizer team. So you want to talk to us, feel free to contact us, and we’re happy to have a conversation about it. But ultimately, I do think that there’s a lot of value in people really just rethinking about the way that they utilize and plan their team. Because the other thing too, to keep in mind is that managing a team of generalists is different than managing a team of specialists.
[JAMES]:
It is.
[COBY]:
It’s also about knowing this idea, knowing, okay, I need a people person, I need a workhorse, I need an explorer. I need someone that’s going to help us create, influence and buy in that knowledge could be very helpful. But how do you manage that team and maintain full productivity is also not necessarily completely intuitive or completely just set it and forget. It does require a lot more to it. So it’s more about if someone’s going to take something away from this conversation, more about rethinking about the team that you work with, the organization that you have. And could you see a beneficial adjustment if you took a more strength based approach? Could people be more? Could they use their time, effort and energy more effectively if they did more of what they’re naturally inclined to do and less of what they’re not,
[COBY]:
what tool do you need to bring to your team? Should you be a team of specialists that’s well rounded as a team, or do you want a team of well rounded individuals? But again, going back to the original question, should we be hiring for fit? The idea is we should be looking for. Ultimately, I think if you want to default, to who’s going to be a good fit? Who’s going to complement the skills? Whether you’re a team of generalist or specialist, what’s going to be the idea or the right person that’s going to bring the ideas and the perspectives and complement what exists and add to it? How do you bring more to what you’ve already have? How do you make what do you have better? Not just bring more of the same? Again, not that fitting in is bad. It’s just that the idea is that we want to make sure that we’re not overusing fitting in and neglecting a good fit.
[JAMES]:
I think that’s a good summary.
[COBY]:
Yeah. So, yeah, I think that was my unintended summary. Yeah. But no, yeah, I don’t know if I could do any better. All right, so I guess we might as well end the conversation here. Do you have anything else you want to add, James?
[JAMES]:
No, I think you did a good job in summarizing how important it is to understand and look at not just the assimilation piece, but how do we actually want our teams to perform.
[COBY]:
All right, so that about is it for us. For a full archive of the podcast and access to video versions hosted on our YouTube channel, visit www.roman3.ca/podcast. thanks for joining us.
[ANNOUNCER]:
For more information on topics like these, don’t forget to visit us at www.roman3.ca. Side effects of this podcast cast may include improved retention, high productivity, increased market share, employees breaking out in spontaneous dance, dry mouth, a version of the sound of James’s voice, desire to find a better podcast…
