I picked up some gems from this Farnam Street podcast where Shane Parrish interviews Adam Grant.
Around sixteen minutess in listen to Adam outline a process for recruiting the people you want. It’s about criteria for decision-making, and evaluating on those criteria, not just on a “gut-feel” method. And about having multiple interviewers, not just one. And each person has to assess for their assigned criteria, not for the overall.
It has more to do with their styles and preferences then it does their experience or resume – and takes a little longer. I interviewed a lot of data analytics leaders about this in my podcast, and there’s a summary of it in the wings.
There is a useful distinction between
soothing beliefs
vs
beliefs that serve me well
Optimal distinctiveness: being different but belonging (join a group that’s obscure, but be part of that group, so you belong AND you can be different).
Also, where people pull their power from. Adam quotes the French and Raven model for power:
- Expert Power
- Referent power (liked and respected)
- Coercive power
- Reward power
- Legitimate power
- Informational Power.
Around 23 Minutes in, check out the stuff around psychological safety
The two foundations [of psychological safety] are trust and respect.
Leaders who sought feedback more often had teams with higher levels of psychological safety
but getting people to ask for feedback didn’t necessarily increase psychological safety (depending on how they responded)
They asked leaders to criticse themselves out loud – CEOs who did this naturally had higher levels of psych safety in their teams, those who showed that level of vulnerability had a higher level of psych safety in the team for about a year. This relates to the Why Should Anyone be Lead by You principle of authenticity.
On another note, check out this McKinsey insight on keeping and developing talent.
