Attracting and Keeping a Quality Team

by Jeff Spear, Principal at CFO Colleague

So, you have finally been rewarded with the corner office. Getting there may have involved a series of challenges but that is irrelevant history until ten years from now when interviewed for your memoir. What do you do now? Successful leaders of anything larger than a sole proprietorship have in common one characteristic; they attract and retain solid lieutenants, even while knowing that many of them have aspirations for the corner office as well.  Consider the following nine ideas as this process unfolds. 1. The best people aren’t always looking. I am amazed by how many well-respected organizations believe that merely posting a high-level position will bring in the best candidates. With all due respect to Adam Smith’s invisible hand, the belief that a general solicitation is sufficient for the task requires a few presumptions.  First, good people have to be looking around. Most are so busy and have little time to do much snooping, though they may be restless where they are. Second, applicants have to invest the time it takes to trumpet their accomplishments. Some high achievers do not possess the associated ego. Third, most successful people have friends and foes. In fact, there is a good chance that a top tier performer left a place because of a strained relationship with the boss. When everyone with a little controversy is filtered out, no risk takers are left. The remnant is all too eager to apply. The most expensive investment for top-tier search firms is acquiring lists of names. Those of us who have served in leadership positions over the years recognize the heavy stock letterhead that announces a position at a similar organization and asks if “you or a colleague may be interested in discussing this opportunity.” Some keep these letters for a while or forward them to others who they have been grooming for the next move. It is clearly who you know that brings in the best of the best. Conversations with trade group leaders, retired executives, bankers, auditors and attorneys can provide inroads into the realm of the non-looking.  Most of these do not wish to put their name in the hat for a multi-step process. You need to sell them on why this is a good place to move and create a compensation and responsibility package that will make it appealing for them to upend their current situation. Posting jobs and paying minimal sums for advertising represents a lazy way to attract talent.  Go out and get them. 2. Money talks. “I’ll gladly take a pay cut to take on more responsibility and risk,” said no one, ever.  Leaders are keenly aware that they have given up personal and family time, hobbies, volunteer activities and even moneymaking opportunities because of their career. Give them credit for their years of hard work when apportioning vacation time. Put a bonus package together with a component that is merely a thank you for remaining with the organization while also offering added, substantial rewards for exemplary performance.  Pay them at the top of their peer group. Vacation costs you nothing. Bonuses tend to be more than offset by organizational performance. Paying well adds little to the organization’s total cost but guarantees that the best will be on the team. The mechanisms organizations create relative to compensation are almost comical. A less than stellar executive retires and is replaced by an arguably better person. The CEO states that the new person can’t make what the old person made because they are … younger. Small wonder that a stellar executive will find such a stricture motivational – to find a new position elsewhere. There is also the industry standard approach. “We’ll pay you at the 60th percentile …”  So, are the other 40% better? I am not suggesting that a financially constrained organization invest inordinate sums to hire Warren Buffett. Rather, an extra 20% will not tend to cause undue financial harm and may just land the kind of person who can unfetter those recurring financial problems. 3. Rarely is it both their faults. Ask an executive why they left somewhere and the answer often relates to leadership style. “I couldn’t see eye to eye with the leader or one of his lieutenants.” Digging deeper, one finds a characteristic of weak leadership is to play one lieutenant against another. This can be particularly frustrating when one of those being played is materially less equipped for the task than the other. The more experienced person may wind up bogged down by the engine blocks being thrown in his path and finds himself constantly in the mode of explaining and defending. It’s an exhausting process that I have seen played out all too often. A good leader assesses the capabilities of the team and weighs in on squabbles. My question to the leader is whether he would miss one or both of the people who seem to be constantly in conflict. Depending on the answer, my next recommendation is to release one or both of them. In the interim, I recommend establishing in the mind of the less experienced lieutenant the perspective that the attacks must end. Because those with lower levels of experience lack the options for employment enjoyed by others, a heads up is appropriate. Otherwise, the challenges remain intact while a revolving door cycles through good people who get fed up. 4. “All business” leads to unenjoyable business. I am amazed at how little is invested by leaders in building relationships. The team assembles, discusses business ad nauseum and adjourns. Occasionally they eat a meal together or attend some sort of entertainment venue. Team building involves silly exercises from a book of ice breakers. I have been on retreats where, during some of the more mundane periods I have calculated how much per hour the sessions are costing. Considering salary and benefits, I have attended sessions where the total annual comp for participants was over $900,000, or around $450 per hour for the meeting times. A twenty hour retreat thus cost $9,000 in compensation. What is interesting is that the cost of retreat accommodations was a fraction of that. There was little in the way of team building scheduled and the hotel was nice, but no resort. It was a lost opportunity for a team that needed to build relationships. Go to a great place. Schedule in significant time for interpersonal interaction. Limit the agenda to a few big ideas. Brainstorm, laugh and encourage each other. Make every person who is worth keeping on the team want to remain on the team. If people are found to be less than capable interpersonally in such situations, consider whether they are the right fit. 5. Encouragement is critical. Adopting ideas is better. It is pretty well understood that people need to receive encouragement. I have worked with those who gush with exemplary statements, telling me how wonderful I was and how lost the organization would be without me. While all of that is nice, when it is followed by non-action on initiatives of great importance to me, the words and the teller become a deflator. My advice to leaders is to praise your team members. Praise them specifically, however.  Invest the time to understand the work that they are doing and make it a point to give kudos for specific accomplishments. This connects the reward with the activity. When praise is targeted toward actual accomplishments, the opportunity for correction is not as difficult. Even more important is to encourage creative thinking on the part of the team and praise ideas with the gift of deployment. Nothing is more motivating than an idea that has been endorsed and adopted by the team and the leader. Not every idea has to be bestowed with action. In the same way, however, never taking action can lead to discouragement and the tap of creativity being shut off. So, encourage honestly and specifically. Add weight to that encouragement and praise by adopting the good ideas of those who report to you and serve on your team. 6. Evaluate team members. Let me say at the outset that I hate the traditional employee evaluation, aka “performance appraisal” or “PA." So often, it is a contrived process that is similar to my kindergarten report card from 1962. I always was marked off for “carries a handkerchief.” I wondered why “always wears his fedora while outside” was not included. Organizations do a horrible job with these. People who think all is well throughout the year can be shocked by the contents of the PA that lambastes them, all because something unfortunate happened to the reviewer that week. Worse yet is the employee who is universally considered to be inept but scores amazingly well on their PA. When evaluating the executive team, I like to believe that goals have been set the previous year or six months ago that will form the basis for the review. In other words, we agreed that you should accomplish these five things. Either you did or didn’t. What now do we want to try and accomplish for the next period? Meet with the newbie and establish the goals. Don’t just have them sign off on them but ask for a narrative response that expands how the lieutenant plans to tackle to areas of need, the constraints that are expected and the kinds of results that he or she believe are possible. After the time has elapsed (six months, a year) and prior to the review session, have the lieutenant review the goal set and the narrative, creating a reflection report on progress.  The evaluator (leader) will then consider the original document set and the lieutenant’s reflection before preparing a review. The goals for the next period are always a separate document set that is processed in the same manner as the first set. A reiteration about encouragement is appropriate here. Praise the lieutenant specifically about particular accomplishments. Correction should be approached after sufficient praise and made a part of the ongoing goal set. This is a time for relationship-building, ending with the statement that the lieutenant is a needed part of the organization. Ask for feedback, about you and about the organization. What can we do better? What are we doing that you appreciate. What can I do to make you more successful? 7. Manage the troublemaker. Every organization has them. When I was in the stockbrokerage industry in the 1980s, we would say that what made our brokers so good, made them so bad. A high producer had to be reined in every so often when his zeal for getting a commission outweighed what was best for the client. Some were mentioned in the paper for activities that were less than noteworthy. Sometimes I wanted to fire all of them. Of course, we would have had no business as a result. A challenging person who delivers the goods is an important part of any successful organization. The key is to kindly channel their challenging ways into helpful initiatives for the benefit of the entire place. It is OK to work with them to address certain interpersonal quirks. It is also important to be their defender when others attack them on style points.  Success is not defined by everyone liking everyone else. When it is, those who have been challenged by a passionate lieutenant will find the leader’s office all too welcoming to criticism by subordinates of their supervisor. Unless it is a serious defalcation of behavior, support the gadfly lieutenant. This is even more necessary when criticism is being leveled by their peers. Taking sides over style issues is never a worthwhile investment of a leader’s time. In the end, we should not be encouraging equality of personality and style. We have a job to accomplish and may need some more difficult people to accomplish that task. Channel their zeal appropriately and everyone will benefit. 8. Give credit where credit is due. Some leaders have a tendency to take credit for just about every good thing that has happened in the history of the organization. Resumes abound with scores of initiatives attached that demonstrate myriad victories and successful initiatives. What is clear, however, is that he or she did not accomplish all of these things on their own. Sometimes, they knew nothing about the activity until it was completed and everyone benefitted from the outcome. Solid and sure leaders will publicly praise the work of their lieutenants. This shows the entire constituency that the leader stands behind the lieutenant and that the only kudos due the leader are for his or her ability to attract and retain good talent. Weaker leaders take full credit, even engaging in put-down style humor in public presentations. Instead of recognizing the incredible contributions of those who report to them, this kind of leader basks in building up their own ego at the expense of a hard working subordinate. This is a good way to encourage capable lieutenants to pack it up and move on. Instead, the leader should deflect as much of the credit as possible. It creates the appearance of self-confidence and highlights one of the most important aspects of leadership, surrounding yourself with the best of the best. 9. Graduate people every so often. A leader whose team leaves due to discouragement or dismissal is ineffective. Multiple and constant exits of lieutenants calls into question the capacity of the leader to lead. With that understood, there should, from time to time, be those who move on, endorsed by the leader, to new and more challenging assignments. As they grow and their potential is identified, ensure that they are provided with greater opportunity to exercise their many gifts. Expose them to other leaders and coach them in ways that the rest of the team would not be privy to. Remember that there were those in your life who adopted you along the way and helped to make you the leader you are today. Return the favor. Conclusion Attracting and retaining a solid team of people is a challenge at which many fail. Whenever I see an organization where there has been significant turnover in the lieutenant ranks, it is because of either poor hiring decisions or incompetent leadership in retaining good people. With the above suggestions and the education of experience, a solid team can be assembled and kept together for many years of effective service.