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How Does Your Team Stack Up Against the Competition
By Anthony J. LoPinto
February 8, 2002
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Increasingly, as real estate markets become more challenging, we hear executives question the depth and caliber of their teams. What they also recognize is that it is not only the quality of the individuals that matters, but also how they fit within the culture of the company and how they work together. An individual's strengths, capabilities and performance are enhanced or weakened by the influences and direction of others.
Today, companies can recruit talent that has become available because of the weakening economy; now is the time to attract top performing players. Unfortunately, the risk is that you hire the person who was a strong performer in another setting, but who does not have the personal style or cultural values to operate effectively within you team and throughout the wider organization.
An individual who does not fit well within the organization is not only personally ineffective but also undermines the performance of others. This can happen in any type of organization. For example, a national real estate company hired for a critical initiative a leader who appeared to fit the profile for the role. However, it quickly became evident that he didn't support his team, and his team didn't trust him.
The result? Three of the best people on the team resigned, the performance of the rest quickly deteriorated and the company had great difficulty recruiting new talent because the market became aware of the problems with the leadership. After more than two years, he was fired. In the meantime, the initiative had lost momentum, causing the company to fall behind in the market, and a huge amount of management time had been wasted trying to resolve the problems.
The hard lesson is that organizations must address the issue of personality and fit, and that this assessment must take a front seat in the recruiting process along with evaluating functional and technical capabilities. I suggest a seven-point program to help address fit:
Point One: Be clear about the requirements up front. Very often the position specification is long on technical requirements but light on management style or values. Sometimes, these are mentioned only in very generic statements like "team player" that have become meaningless through overuse. Be specific and make sure that everyone involved in the recruitment process understands the issues.
Point Two: Plan your interviews. Study the background of the candidate and identify the issues you want to probe. Think about what you can discuss with the candidate that will draw out a comprehensive picture of the person's skills and fit with the organization.
Point Three: Commit sufficient time to the interview process. Often, managers charged with doing the hiring make a decision based on a one-hour interview; the candidate may pass the gut-feel test, but the deeper evaluation is missing. Engage in a comprehensive interview and commit sufficient time to draw out personality traits. Probe the candidate's responses to questions to get a deep understanding of their true role and behavior in previous projects or positions and of how they might react to new situations. Conduct at least two full interviews.
Point Four: Include core team members in the evaluation process. Typically, the team that has to work for or with a new hire is either not involved in the interview process or introduced after the decision has been made. This is done only to offer an illusion of involvement in the hiring process or to sell the job to the candidate. Where practical, the team should be involved in creating the position's specifications and should have a significant say in determining whether the person is right for the job.
Point Five: Talk to the candidate about what it will take to succeed. If management style, cultural fit or values are important, make sure that the candidate knows this. Very often the candidate will recognize whether he or she is right for the job, but they have to know what is required first.
Point Six: Take references. It is unusual for an individual to suddenly change the way he or she behaves. Hiring managers could avoid problems if they did proper due diligence on the candidate. However to be effective, this requires time. You are unlikely to learn anything by sending a standard reference request to the last organization the person worked for. Instead, you will need to discuss the candidate with people who have worked opposite him or her as clients or as colleagues. This must be done with great discretion to avoid jeopardizing the candidate's current position.
Point Seven: Consider personality testing. Few companies perform them, and there are testing services available that are cost-effective and quick but offer highlights of personality traits and characteristics. These types of tests are not right for every situation or for every level in the organization, but they should be an option.
These approaches all boil down to one basic issue. Make sure that you and your organization spend the time and effort to assess candidates comprehensively. If you don't, you could spend much more later to solve problems that could have been avoided.
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