Great businesses have great people, and every growing business is always looking for more. The people you need to grow your business may be full time employees, part-timers, contractors, virtual types, vendors and suppliers, partners and advisors — all types of people. But finding great people can be a formidable task. Human resources experts tell us that if you're successful more than 50% of the time with your people selections, i.e. half work out and half don't, you're doing pretty well. Argghh! Those are tough statistics for a business leader to swallow. They equate to a lot of wasted time and resources. So can you improve upon those statistics? I think so – dramatically in fact – and here's how.

 

First, change your focus from finding great technical skills in people to finding great people. Now, I'm not devaluing technical skills. If you're looking for an accountant, engineer, CSR, underwriter, unit manager, assistant, copywriter, etc., they certainly need to know their stuff. But that's simply a requisite to work with you. It's not the principle reason for you to cement a relationship; that requires much more.

 

Second, identify those characteristics that really make people great in a business environment. Those things that enable them to add value to your business and to your relationships. A few characteristics that you're not likely to find on a typical performance criteria list, but you will find in great people, are:

 

Learning Agility - the ability and willingness of an individual to learn new material and adapt to new situations. As a business leader, you're committed to life-long learning; you know it's a requirement for success. Surrounding yourself with people who are eager to learn more, especially about your business and challenges, can only increase the value of your products and services.

 

Desire to Engage – a willingness and appetite to immerse oneself in the task at hand and the key priorities and conditions of the business. "That’s not my job" or "I don't do that" just won't cut it in a dynamic business. Success in business means meeting all the challenges that are thrown at you. It sure helps to have as many people as possible who are willing and enthusiastic about helping you with those challenges.

 

Emotional Intelligence – the ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups in a healthy and productive manner. Read: no adolescents allowed, and tantrums and hissy fits will not be tolerated. People must work together, as a high-performance team, to maximize the effectiveness of your business. Great people don't get hung up with personal issues; they just get on with it and enjoy doing so.

 

Problem Solving – the ability to think, reason, and get answers to questions through a conscious, organized process. This is an attitude as well as a process. Great people are solution-oriented versus problem-oriented, choosing to search for alternatives when encountering problems rather than being stopped in their tracks by obstacles. When encountered, though, the problem glass is viewed as half-full rather than half-empty, and great people will find several ways to fill it.

 

I'm sure you could add a few more from your experience, but these four characteristics are quite powerful. You might even call them "success factors," because people that have them are typically very successful in whatever job they have or business they lead. Working with such successful people can only help you with your success as well.

 

Finally, incorporate these success factors into everything that you do. You'll find that by modeling them you won'’t have to work quite as hard at finding great people; you'll attract them to you.

 Lessons from the Field of Dreams
by Rand Golletz

While I don't believe that sports are always a metaphor for life, I do believe that we can learn some lessons from the more successful and eloquent coaches and players. Some of those follow, along with my take on their application to your business and life:

 

Joe Torre is the manager of the New York Yankees. He's known as being level-headed, even-tempered and a straight-talker. His players acknowledge that he rarely allows problems to fester and that he always deals with conflict in a dignified way. Some words from Joe:

 

"Teamwork depends on how we handle conflict and trouble at work. If we gloss over every problem with an employee, colleague or supervisor, we're going to live with that tension constantly. If we say, "I'll deal with it tomorrow," we're asking for a tough night's sleep. I know, because I've had my share of sleepless nights."

 

My take: We all want to be liked. We all also create rationalizations for not dealing with problems. Have you ever said, "She knows what she did. I shouldn't have to tell her." Or how about, "We're all adults here. They know what I meant when I said that heads would roll if our results don't improve."

 

Deal with issues in real time. Don't gloss over them. Demonstrate dignity and respect, and remember conflict doesn't mean combat.

 

Fran Tarkenton led the Minnesota Vikings to several Super Bowls. His coach, Bud Grant, was known as a tough-minded, consistent leader. Fran’s comments about his coach:

 

"Not once in all my years playing for Bud did I ever hear him hand a player a bill of goods. From the first day you walked into training camp, you knew he was telling it like it was.

 

"He carried a 'no B.S.' philosophy into every game we played. If we were going up against a team we should beat handily, he'd say so and tell us what we'd need to do to avoid getting cocky and blowing it. If we were playing a team that was better than we were, he'd tell us that too – and what we should do to beat the odds."

 

My take: If you want the most out of people, spend your time figuring out how to convey the truth in a way that it'll be assimilated and productively employed. Forget about inventing scenarios to create synthetic motivation.

 

Pat Summit is the head coach of the Lady Volunteers, the women's basketball team at the University of Tennessee. She is tough as nails. She's also compassionate, consistent and a laser-like listener who envelops people with her undivided attention.

 

From Pat: "How many of us go through the day without saying a word? Maybe some of us ought to try. Communicating isn't about giving great speeches. It's about encouraging others to express themselves. The more I have listened to our players, the better I have known them and understood them."

 

My take: Most of us don't listen worth a damn. We're either suffering from terminal distraction ("blackberry syndrome") or we only allow others to speak so that we can catch our breath and resume our diatribe. At the risk of generalization, men are especially bad listeners. We typically listen only to respond. Women are much better at listening to understand. Those lines are blurring, however, as we are all increasingly assaulted by external stimuli.

 

You can't listen effectively if your mind is somewhere else.

 

Phil Jackson is the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. He has led teams to six NBA championships, in addition to two he won as a player for the New York Knicks in the '60s and '70s. He's known as the Zen Master for his unique and compelling approach to the game and to life.

 

Phil believes that playing aggressively is appropriate; playing angry is stupid. His comments:

 

"The man who taught me that lesson (about anger) was Jack Marin of the (then) Baltimore Bullets, who liked to bait Bill Bradley by calling him a "pinko liberal" to rattle him. He was an emotional time-bomb, and I knew if I could get him angry enough, he'd do something stupid."

 

Phil went on to say that he'd bait Marin to provoke him into technical fouls. While he indicated that he later regretted his own transgressions, his bigger point was that anger usually results in unproductive action.

 

My take: Human beings are not rational; we are emotional. We use reason to make sense of our emotions, but it's our emotions that incite our actions. Given that, it's imperative that we understand our triggers and manage and channel our emotions in a useful way.