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current skills needed and are eager to learn new skills. Add “What did you learn?” and “How have you
applied that?” questions to your interviews to try to hire current doers and future learners.

4. Hesitant to take action? Address people problems promptly. You inherited the team and some of
the people are just not up to standard and you don’t want to pull the trigger. If you don’t, it just means
more work for you and the rest of the team. The sooner you address people problems, the better off
everyone will be, even the people involved.

5. Impatient? Give yourself a choice of candidates. You are impatient to fill empty spots on your
team and tend to take the first acceptable or near-acceptable candidate that comes along. That
means you will make compromises and probably never meet the best candidate. Always try to wait
long enough for multiple candidates and a real choice.

6. Always scrambling to fill vacancies? Recruit proactively. Finding someone to fill a gap in the
team can be tough. The pressure’s on. Results are at risk. Don’t wait for someone to leave to look at
the talent out there. Find people before you need them. Use your network to identify potential future
candidates. Build a pipeline. Keep in touch with people; keep them interested.

7. Need diversity? Avoid hiring clones. You tend to hire too much in your own image. You prefer
working with people who think and act as you do, so the team ends up skilled in only a few areas.
You may load up on friends, people you have worked with in the past, or favorites. If you clone
yourself in terms of skills, beliefs, background, or orientation, you and your team will not have the
variety and diversity for truly great performance.

8. Ready to learn best practices? Study high-performing teams. Look to teams around you that you
feel are the best-performing teams. What does the talent look like? What does the hiring model look
like? Are the team members more the same or are they different from one another? Do they have the
same background or come from a variety of situations? How do those team managers hire? Ask them
what they do when filling an opening.

9. Not challenged? Stretch yourself and your team. You spend too little time worrying about
improving the team. You may as well just do the important things yourself and let the team fend for
itself. This is a very short-term strategy—one that will usually get you in more trouble as the situation
continues. A good rule of thumb to follow is that your team should spend 20% of its time working
outside its (and perhaps your) comfort zone. Stretching assignments are the prime source or reason
for improvement.

10. Trouble saying no? Stick to your criteria for candidates. You take the easy way out and are
hesitant to go against the grain and reject internal candidates. You can’t say no to people more senior
than you. You will be better able to do this if you have criteria for success for the job—ones that you
can discuss easily. It’s far easier to take a stand if you can say, “This candidate is strong in these
competencies but not in these; we need someone who can do these as well.” Discussions of criteria
get discussions off individuals and onto what it takes to do the job. Beyond this, you have to take a
stand. Prepare a brief list of what you are looking for and stick to it calmly. Invite input on criteria, not
people.

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