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Written by: Aaron Klein
Everyone who leads an organization or a team dreams big dreams about the wonderful attributes of the people they would like to hire.
In fact, I’ll bet that I can describe the people they are looking for in a single sentence. “We want great team players who are proactive, reliable, honest, adaptive, critical thinkers, possess strong attention to detail, have a positive attitude, willingness to learn, are dependable, and strong problem solvers.”
Sound familiar?
The problem is — everybody is looking for those qualities.
Counterintuitively, I think one of the most important things you can do as a leader is to define who is NOT welcome in your organization.
This is a lot harder, but at Riskalyze, I made a list of four types of people that would not work in our culture. We wrote these down and embedded them in our values.
- Mercenaries who don’t care about our mission. Our people live and breathe our mission, and are driven by building an incredible company for customers and shareholders, and a great place to work for employees. If you are only here for the paycheck or the resume lift, this is the wrong place for you.
- Jerks who tear down others. We don’t tolerate jackasses in any position on our roster. 100% of our elite business athletes are eligible for the sportsmanship award. Kindness wins.
- Narcissists who think it’s all about them. We don’t tolerate divas or prima donnas either. People who put themselves ahead of the team can’t succeed here.
- People with a victim mentality. If you consistently find yourself being shaped by forces out of your control, we’re probably not the place for you. Our people take command of their destiny, and mold external forces to fit the future they are working to build.
Now, did we always get it right and filter these people out?
Heavens, no. In fact, one time we hired a relatively senior person who turned out to be ALL FOUR OF THESE THINGS. (You might ask, how can you be a narcissist and a victim? The answer is: victim up, narcissist down.)
While this list wasn’t perfect at avoiding any hiring mistakes, it did allow us to quickly spot when we had made hiring mistakes, and move rapidly to fix them.
Your list shouldn’t be the same as mine, but you should sit down today and define who you can’t work with.
Your company and your team will get better.