← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
473. The Five Talents That Really Matter
00:48:07
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer is joined by Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton, co-authors of The Five Talents that Really Matter. Barry and Sarah share their extensive research on leadership effectiveness, revealing the...
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- [00:01]
Melina Palmer
Have you ever wished you had more influence at work? That people would naturally be more likely to buy in on whatever idea you're selling them, whether they report to you or not?
- [00:11]
Barry Conchi
Well, you're in luck.
- [00:12]
Melina Palmer
I teach a virtual 10 week class on internal Communication and Change Management through Texas A and M University and it's enrolling now. Get details and enroll@hbl Tamu edu and click on Certificate Program. You get to learn directly from me, including live virtual office hours over zoom with a cohort of interested brainy folks like you from around the world. Again, learn more and enroll in the internal communication and change management course at HBL TAMU.
- [00:50]
Barry Conchi
EDU.
- [00:51]
Melina Palmer
That's HBL like Human Behavior Lab, dot TAMU like Texas A&M University. EDU and click on Certificate program. Your future self will thank you and when you're ready, enjoy the show.
- [01:08]
Barry Conchi
Welcome to episode 473 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy in today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Barry Conchi and Sara Dalton, co authors of the Five Talents that really Matter. Ready? Let's get started.
- [01:30]
Melina Palmer
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [01:45]
Barry Conchi
Hello hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. In today's conversation, I am joined by two guests, Barry Conchi and Sarah Dalton. Barry is the Founder and President of Conchi Associates. He is an expert in psychometric talent assessments, leadership research and development, team building and succession planning. Barry consults with company boards, CEOs and leadership teams of leading organizations across the globe and researches leadership effectiveness and decision making heuristics. Sarah is a partner at Conchi Associates. She has worked extensively in developing processes and training teams across a variety of industries and has managed complex operational logistics for a global company. Leaders and managers partner with Sarah to better understand the attitudes and behaviors that drive performance and how to select for talent in the hiring process. She is an expert at training teams on interpreting talent assessments and using those insights to facilitate a superior candidate experience, greater confidence in hiring decisions, and world class performance across all levels of an organization. Based on their research of over 58,000 executive leaders in a variety of industries, their book the Five Talents that really Matter How Great Leaders Drive Extraordinary Performance dispels the fluff in leadership literature. Unveiling the traits and characteristics that truly determine high performance leadership that is, of course, what we are here to discuss today. Now, really quickly, before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch with Barry and Sarah and myself and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 473 now. Let's jump right in. Barry, Sarah, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.
- [03:47]
Thank you, Melina.
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Sara Dalton
Good to meet you, Melina.
- [03:50]
Melina Palmer
Yes. I'm so excited to be here with you today. I've really enjoyed reading your book and learning more about your work. Before we jump into talking about, you know, what's in that amazing content for everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about yourselves and the work that you do?
- [04:07]
Barry Conchi
So Barry and I run a consulting business and we specialize in measuring talents and people that drive the highest levels of performance, no matter what the job that they do. And we wrote a book summarizing all of our research into what drives more effective leadership. So I think we'll be talking about that today. But Barry and I have been partners now for going on nine years.
- [04:32]
Sara Dalton
Yeah, we work with companies to help them resolve difficult selection decisions, particularly so if you think about roles across the entire spectrum of an organization. Although our book is about leadership, we focus on all levels and the purpose of that is to try to help organizations pick the best people. And we don't need to spend a ton of time talking today about how difficult that is and how companies often get it wrong. You just look at the news over the last month and I've read a dozen articles about big CEOs losing their jobs. So there were 12 occasions that I'm aware of in the last month where boards got selection decisions wrong. So we try to partner with boards to pick CEOs who are more likely to succeed and then in all the other roles in an organization to do the same for those.
- [05:28]
Melina Palmer
Yeah. And as we know, like you said, don't need to talk about why that is, you know, so harmful for companies, especially as you get higher up into organizations. Right. If you get it wrong, one, it's really expensive. And of course there's so much just, you know, the cognitive strain for different team members and the stress of, you know, transition that if you can and you lose, you know, really valuable time for an organization. So that and a million and five other reasons for why it matters to, to get selection right. I was really fascinated in the book as you were talking about the process you went through in doing your research around this. So as you share a lot, you know, a lot of the advice that's out there is kind of in an n of 1. You know, my opinion is this sort of space and it was really just fascinating to hear about your process. Can you share about all the work that you've done to help make this a much more, you know, quantifiable science of hiring, you know, versus like I said, that sort of my gut says X, Y or Z.
- [06:41]
Sara Dalton
Well, I think on the N of one idea, Melina, we aren't good at picking people either. I mean ourselves. So we don't have any special powers, Sarah or I, but we are very good at researching and building tools that help narrow the error rate in selection decisions. So we started by defining leadership performance and the success that we wanted to study in really successful leaders. So we looked at three characteristics. We looked at measurable impact on financial or process measures in organizations. We wanted to study people who were number one in their organization. We wanted to study leaders who did that the right way because you can achieve good performance by bullying people and doing nasty things to them. We don't like that. We want leaders who do it the right way. And therefore we wanted to study leaders who were in the top quartile of a credible global measure on employee engagement because that would be a good indicator that at least they were treating people the right way. And then the third criteria was the most difficult and that is to achieve the first two criteria for at least three consecutive years. And the reason why that's difficult is because businesses go through different cycles, the economy goes through cycles. We didn't want just to study people who were riding the crest of a wave. We wanted to study people who could deliver during the tough times as well as the good ones. So we looked at the three year time span as the best indicator. Then when we found 100 people who met those criteria, which wasn't easy, we studied the heck out of them. We put them under the microscope, we put them through a whole range of other assessments as well as our own. We observed them in team meetings, we watched them carry out one on one reviews, we looked at them on a stage to see how they presented to others. And then we looked at how they solved difficult problems, kind of questions that they asked, the process that they went through. And we distilled from all that knowledge the characteristics that went into what we describe in the book, which is the assessment that we built that predicts more Leaders who look to have those kinds of capabilities. And once we'd achieved that and we built our database up, then we thought we got to tell the world about this. That's where the book came from.
- [09:05]
Melina Palmer
I love that. And you say, you know, you said here it's, it was hard to find 100 people, I think it is, that met the criteria. I think people will be surprised how many people you had to evaluate through to get to 100. I think it's even more than we might realize.
- [09:23]
Sara Dalton
Thousands. Thousands. The thing to think about, Melina, is this exceptional leadership is extremely rare. And I think it's really important people recognize that it's beyond the reach of the vast majority of people. And I think people just need to level set themselves against that reality. Exceptional leadership isn't in the reach of everybody. In fact, it's not in the reach of most people. It's in the reach of a tiny number of people. And what we try to do is find out who those people are. Now that doesn't mean people can't use our analysis and figure out how to improve. It's that everybody has a limit. And the limit for most people is that they won't be outstanding organizational leaders. And our assessment tries to figure that out, definitely.
- [10:13]
Melina Palmer
So of course, you know, in the spoiler alerts of the world, you've boiled it down to five talents that, that matter when it comes to this. Can you share a little bit? I guess first you know, how you define a talent and then, you know, sharing a little bit about what goes into those criteria, those sections.
- [10:33]
Barry Conchi
When you typically hear people talking about talent, it's in really generalized ways, right? Where I could be really talking about anything. The important distinction for us is that talents are. Talents are innate, right? They are born into who we are as people. They are patterned into how we think. Talent tells us about the things that people consistently do really well to an incredibly high standard, sometimes without having to try very hard. And the reason why we look at talent in terms of predicting effectiveness in a role is again, they are stable, they are resistant to change, they are highly predictive of how people ultimately behave. So an issue with a lot of assessments out there is they are personality based. It's really difficult to get a stable or a good prediction around how people are going to behave. If you're just looking at personality, an example of that, you know, if I were to ask you to describe an extrovert, right? Everyone can figure out 15 different ways of characterizing that, but it's really difficult. Or what you can't always do is say extroverts always behave in these ways in all situations. So talents are much more narrowly defined than what you get with broad descriptors like extroversion. They capture things like discipline and detail orientation. And when you get people who are highly disciplined buttoned up, there's a process for everything. They've got ways of organizing things in their mind where details don't go missed. Right. When you get really strong evidence of talents like that, people can't shut it off in themselves. You can't tell a disciplined, structured person to just go out and work wing it that they don't need all the details. So sometimes a talent like that, it's a differentiator between really high performers and people who are just kind of average or mediocre. So in our world, talents are massively predictive of how people behave. And then again, all the research that we do is what talents really matter in specific roles. So when we're looking at effective leadership, we've kind of centered around five broad talents. One of those, when you look at what leaders need to do, they've got a set direction in their business. So leaders need to have a way of looking at all the goals and opportunities in front of them and figuring out what it is that they're going to do. So the talent of setting direction is all the thinking that plays out before we just make up our mind and say we're going to do this right. Another talent that we look at is what drives and motivates a leader. Because I need people in these positions who set high standards for themselves and other people. They've got to harness all of the energy in their organization and drive people to the most productive outcomes. The third and fourth talents that we look at and talk about in the book are around how you exert pressure and influence people to do things. So if I'm in a leadership role, I've got to be able to break through resistance in my organization and push people to do what the really to do what is right. Right. So we've got to be able to influence people. We look at that as a leadership talent. Fourth is about how you build connectivity in your organization. Now, if you think about a company and all of the people in it, you can almost look at that as a kind of social network where there are bonds and connections that exist between people. And what we found is that the stronger those bonds are, the easier information flows, things happen easier in a company where people have good relationships with each other. And leaders really need to drive that kind of connectivity. So we look at that as its own leadership talent. And then fifth is, you know, the first one that we talked about is about setting direction. It's thinking about what we could do. The final talent that we talk about in the book is around how you control traffic, how you set the right guardrails up so that things get done in more predictable ways. So controlling traffic as a talent is about how you put the right systems and processes in place that enable things to just get done. Right. So those are, those are kind of broad descriptors of what leaders do. And then within each of those five areas we talk about all the different characteristics that we find in really successful leaders because they won't all do it the same way.
- [15:24]
Melina Palmer
Definitely. And I love, thank you for giving that great summary there, Sarah. And of course, you know, everyone, you know, good news, there's a whole book you can read more about each of those five things, right? And how they, they come together and, and you know, it's an important point like you said there. So you found from your hundred people and as you've said that these are the five areas, but not everyone's going to do them exactly the same way. It's not going to show up in the same way for every role. And so for someone who maybe doesn't even know, like I'm, you know, I'm just being exposed to these five things. I've never really thought about them before. How do I start to analyze whether I myself have any of these or all of these qualities and if the people on my team have them right, if I haven't thought about them, where do you advise people kind of start in that process?
- [16:19]
Sara Dalton
The book goes into a lot of detail about how to do that with respect to yourself. So, you know, we pose pretty powerful reflective questions to say, look, as you consider this particular talent. And they're fairly broad descriptors so there's some variance within each of those talents that, you know, we try to drill into so that people can help potentially identify those characteristics in themselves. So those self reflection questions help them a little bit. And similarly we ask them to apply those questions to the observations they make of other people. But the caveat we put around that is that people are largely influenced to a big degree by likability. And therefore the only real way of definitively answering that question is through an assessment where it isn't me making a judgment on you, it isn't contingent on me getting my assessment of you accurate. The assessment can do it for you. So one of the things that people can do, we open this up at the end of the book is we give them the chance to take this assessment after they've read the book so they can actually get very accurate information about how to measure their strengths in each of these areas. It's a little hard for some people because we're very honest in the book. We don't pull any punches. And one of the ways that we illustrate that honesty is by right out of the gate saying we've yet to find a leader who's strong in all five areas. We haven't found one yet. Our database when we wrote the book was 58,000. It's now about 61,000. We've yet to find the person who's good at everything. And yet if you were to ask leaders and interview them, there are quite a few people who think they're good at everything. And so that's why the self reflection is a little unreliable. And that's why we encourage people, look, if you're really serious about your leadership development, it's as important to know what you're not as good at has reaffirmed the things that you are good at. And therefore that's why we opened up the assessment. And I think that's a big differentiator because there aren't. We can't find another way outside of those generalized personality assessments that Sarah mentioned before of getting a really good read of your future leadership potential. And we're very honest with people when they take the assessment will say, look, we don't think top leadership's for you. So rather than encourage people and give them false hope or as we put it, lying to people about their future capability just to make them feel good about themselves, we'll tell them the truth.
- [19:05]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, well, and I think in so many ways it doesn't mean that they'll never be successful in any role. Right. But it's being able to help someone to see, hey, you're not gonna like this. It's gonna be really hard. Like it's not gonna be that right fit. But there may be a role that. Or there is, you know, there are several other options of roles where you can excel that maybe aren't just being, you know, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Right. Like that's not gonna be.
- [19:38]
Barry Conchi
Be feels like it's relatively recent that companies are getting smarter about the need to develop kind of individual contributor level expert tracks where it isn't the only way that you're going to gain status and more money in your career. That you start managing people and climbing that ladder. The reality is that most people aren't cut out to manage and lead people, particularly not at the highest levels of a company. So like Barry said, if we keep lying to people or we keep making it seem that that is the only option if you want to grow, then it just pushes more people towards that. So what I, again, I'm really encouraged by some of the discussions that I've seen around. Is there a different way? How do we keep challenging and developing people if it isn't in leadership? Very recent, yeah.
- [20:31]
Sara Dalton
In the book, we share data that it indicates that 80% of managers shouldn't be in the job. Now, that's not just our own research. We share third party research that shows pretty conclusively that people fall into management and leadership positions by accident and they wake up one morning and they're miserable. So to your point, not everybody's cut out to be a leader. So there's a role out there for somebody. And what we try to do is to say, look, it might not be leadership. Now, one of the options that we offer in taking our assessment is that Sarah gives a candidate feedback. So she gets on the phone or the video and she goes through their assessment. And part of that conversation may well be, look, sure, you can keep trying to climb the corporate ladder if you want. You're going to reach a level where you're utterly miserable and then you're going to inflict that misery on everybody that you work with for free. You know, you don't charge for it, you know, you just give it for nothing. And it destroys people, it destroys careers, it destroys families, it increases stress. Now, I remember talking to a teacher of one of my children at an American school. I came over from the UK and 2000 and I sat down with this teacher. I said, you don't look as though you're having fun. And you know, she kind of blustered a little bit. You know, she was obviously highly, highly stressed. And I looked at her in the face, I said, what right have you got to be miserable with children? And that was a rather sharp comment. But I said, there's gotta be a role that makes you happy, what puts a smile on your face because it isn't teaching. And we have to have those conversations with people in companies who are managing other people. They've got no right to come into an organization and inflict mediocre management on the people in their charge. Now, we used to call this the beta principle, where people were promoted to their level of incompetence that applies to 80% of managers across companies around the world. We've got to get real about it. And what we tried to do is to correct that statistical anomaly.
- [22:55]
Melina Palmer
Yeah. I mean, it's very, I will say, like humbling in hearing it that way.
- [23:03]
Barry Conchi
Right.
- [23:03]
Melina Palmer
As we know, we of course have some of that optimism bias problem for ourselves and wanting to say, that's not me.
- [23:12]
Barry Conchi
Right.
- [23:13]
Melina Palmer
Everybody's gonna say, oh good, yeah, that other 80% is the problem. Right. Like that can't possibly be me. We know we want to be trying to take a more, you know, honest look and know that it shouldn't be the goal to rise up until we're miserable.
- [23:30]
Barry Conchi
Right.
- [23:31]
Melina Palmer
We should be feel enjoying the work we do that is possible for all of us, whatever. And there can be a role for, for everyone, which is good. So as people are looking and if we are saying, okay, we're going to be finding, like you said, with those five talents, you haven't found someone yet that has, you know, exceptionally is doing all five of those things. I also really appreciate in the book you talk about not trying to. It's not that the things you're weak at that you need to focus on those necessarily, like this weakness and strengths conversation. So what does someone do if they find like, is it, do I need four? Is do I being really good at two of them enough? Are some of them most important? You know, how do we go about understanding, you know, what we're trying to do if we're just. And we can say, just looking kind of for ourselves.
- [24:21]
Sara Dalton
Well, let me give you a few thoughts and then I'm going to ask Sarah to fill in a few more of the details. Two is too few and five is beyond reach. So between two and five, we've got to find out a workable blend. And the answer isn't for people to try to become brilliant in areas where they're not very good because we know what the success rate looks like. If you want a real illustration of that, have you ever come across a person who couldn't deliver a tough message? And we all have. And then the question is, did training solve it? And the answer is always no. Because we're talking about traits and characteristics at the level of the brain and they are very, very difficult to change. So we do things like say, well, if you're going to go in for a tough meeting with an employee, write down what you want to say. So they write it down, but then when they deliver it, they sugarcoat it. So what we then say is okay, Write it down, talk them through it, and then give the piece of paper to them afterwards. So they sugarcoat what they write down. Right. But they just can't seem to deliver that kind of tough message. And our five talents are like that. And so one of the best things to do is to build partnerships. And you mentioned in an earlier question about the team component, not just how you look at yourself, but how you look at other people. You might not be capable in one area where one of your team members is brilliant. Well, that looks like a potential for an optimized relationship. The problem is that all the effective leadership research into the way people select other people is that they tend to pick people like themselves. Now, they deny this. You say to a person, do you pick people like themselves? They say, oh, no, we don't do that. But then we come along and measure them. And it's as though we found a little community in western Nebraska that humans still haven't discovered yet. They're all very similar to each other. And so what we have to do is encourage people to look for more diverse capabilities than the people that they bring onto their team. That's where the assessments can help.
- [26:30]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, Sarah, do you want to add or build on that? Any thoughts?
- [26:34]
Barry Conchi
Yeah, just talking about the issue of likability. When you think about what happens when you get two people in a room together, the goal is, can I build up chemistry with this person? Can I see myself with working with them? Do. Do I like them as a person? And it's when those judgments start to play out that people end up picking people like themselves. So part of the value in the research that we do and the assessments that we build is that we are broadening a company's understanding of what talents actually predict effective leadership. Because without that, again, people are thinking in their minds. Well, these are the talents that made me successful. I've got a really strong work ethic. I'm really organized. I'm more outgoing and gregarious. And so the talents that made me successful must replicate. You know, when I see that replicated in other people, I develop a preference for it without even realizing it. And when we study really effective leaders, when we study really good people in any role, again, they do things in different ways, sometimes dramatically different from each other. So we try and build up a model that flexible enough to highlight some of those differences. So that when I've got an action oriented energizer bunny and a leader over here and someone comes along who's way more thoughtful and deliberative and Slower to react, then we can actually put a measurement and some understanding to the characteristics that they might not be picking up in the room. Right. But the first thing we've got to do is really understand who are our best people, how did they achieve their. And when you find really good people, you just find that sometimes they do it in very different ways from each other. So I think that's where assessments can just bring out a ton of value in educating people about how other people think that are different to themselves.
- [28:32]
Sara Dalton
Melina, we want to enlist your help. We need a lot of help in this area. We'd like to remove the term chemistry as part of the evaluation between people because it's one of the worst terms I hear hiring managers and executives use as an excuse for making a bad hiring decision. Oh, I felt this chemistry with the person. At that point, all the alarm bells should be ringing because chemistry is horrible. What it really means is I found someone that's like me and it doesn't need me to point out the diversity challenges at the top of most organizations. The lack of female leaders, the lack of minority leaders. And all you have to do is to think back to what chemistry means in those circumstances. We know exactly what it means because we can measure the outcome.
- [29:32]
Melina Palmer
I think that's such an important point. As someone who once was told I couldn't be promoted and shouldn't be at a spot because I wasn't nice enough and it was a very nice culture and, and I brought, you know, you ask questions and you know, it's like I wasn't always just saying the nice thing or, or whatnot. So I get that, some of that, that piece. Right. But. And I think I'm pretty nice. I think people would disagree. But anyway, with that I, I am curious about this balance between. Because I totally get the chemistry thing like, right. And people are also, I think the natural pushback. And potentially you've heard this a ton of times. Right. But is this. But we need people who are a good cultural fit and to evaluate if they're a cultural fit is going to be, you know, that's chemistry. Do they get along with the team? You know, how does that kind of come together? So what's the balance for people where we do want to make sure that there is a good corporate culture? How do we bring that all together?
- [30:41]
Sara Dalton
Well, we start by shifting people's perception of what culture is. We talk a lot about high performing organizations and you build high performing organizations by people completing roles to world class standards. So we select people who can contribute superior performance to an organization. Now, to me, that's a really important cultural attribute, high performance. So if that's the arbiter, then we're not talking about social connectivity. We're not talking about likability. Both those elements, by the way, lead to us picking people like ourselves. We're focusing on the traits and characteristics that enable a person to perform fallen at the higher standards. One of the questions that we force executive leaders in particular to consider is, could you ever imagine appointing a person you actively disliked? The answer should be yes. And as I think back on my career, I've worked with quite a few people I didn't like, but my goodness, some of them were really good for me. And these are people I'd never take out for a cup of coffee. I would never call them my friends, but some of the work we did together was phenomenal. They made my brain hurt. I didn't like them. They probably didn't like me. In fact, that's a racing certainty, right? And we've got to make that okay. So what we can't allow organizations to do is use cultural fit as a means of squeezing the real talent out of a person, because that, to us, is a recipe for mediocrity. If you want to know why most companies have not broken away from their competitive set, you look at industry by industry by industry. You look at that whole bunch of companies that are indistinguishable from their competitors. It's because cultural fit has played too much of a part of the perceptions they have of who will succeed in their organizations. And it's a complete and utter nonsense. Now, the good news is Sarah and I call that out, you know, which is. Which is why, you know, we're not a fit for some organizations because some organizations can't grasp it.
- [33:09]
Melina Palmer
That's a really powerful question in the. Because I think, you know, we say, would you hire or appoint, like you said, someone that you don't like? I think we want to say, like, no, right, of course not. But, you know, there's. Seeing the value in that I think is really powerful for people. And to see, you know, it doesn't have to just be about that liking as. And, you know, hopefully there's some version of some mutual respect that comes and someone's not just, you know, mean for no reason. But before we close out our conversation, I really want to make sure we have at least a little bit of time to talk about kind of the interview questions, assessment questions, and of course, we won't get to all of them. But you have some really important questions in the book and showing, you know, trying to get away from maybe some of these, you know, how many golf balls can you fit in a Volkswagen Questions. But, and yeah, knowing that there are some things that we can be asking that are more standardized. Can, can you share the, just some tips for people, you know, that are in that HR space or something thinking about interviewing potential candidates. What, what should they be considering as they're looking to hire for these five talents?
- [34:27]
Barry Conchi
So I won't remember the exact questions in the book, but I can definitely give you an illustration of how these work. And one of them that I play out for people quite often. But in the book, for each of the five talents, we've set out sets of interview questions and we're really good at thinking about what's the non obvious question that we could ask that is open ended, that invites people to tell us what they really think? And then what we've done in the book is said, here's what a good answer looks like. Because the mistake that too many hiring managers make is they have their kind of pet questions that they like to ask, but they don't actually know what they're listening for. They don't know what kind of candidate responses are actually predictive of better performance. Right. And there are simple illustrations of this. I think one, there is a kind of salesy question that, that hits home and it's, you know, think about if you, you just happen to be in a, in a room interviewing sales reps, for example, a question you might ask is, you know, as you think about what you do well compared to other reps that you've seen in the business, right. So you're out there, you've met other people in your company, you met your competitive reps. What do you do better than other people? Now sometimes you might get brilliant answers to that question that in the moment sound wonderful. You know, what if you get a rep that comes in and says, you know, as I think about my performance against other reps, one thing that I think I do really well is building relationships with customers. My customers consider me a friend. They have access to my personal phone number. I know the kids, birthdays, I know what they're doing on weekends. And that really informs the conversations that we have week to week so that I know my, my customers know, I know them as people. Right. So someone can really play up that kind of response and in the moment, sounds wonderful. I'm thinking I need to get that person into my business. What about the Rep that comes in and says, as I think about myself against other people, I close deals, I close deals better than anybody. Right. One of those responses is massively predictive of higher performance in the role, although the other one sounds good too. So what we've done in the book is given you illustrations of what are really good questions to ask that people don't can't listen to those and know off the bat what it is that you want to hear. Right. That's mistake number one managers usually make is the answer is always obvious. So what's the non obvious question? How do we invite people to tell us what they really think? But also what does a good response sound like? What do you need to hear that's more predictive of higher performance in a role? So it's those kinds of things where I think people are going to get a tremendous amount of value. Just out of that one chapter, what questions should you be asking?
- [37:32]
Sara Dalton
And just on that issue about number of ping pong balls or tennis balls you can fit in a Volkswagen or whatever it is. So I've sat down with people who've asked that question question and I said, what's a good answer now? They never give you a specific number. They don't say 17,328. They never do that. What they say is, well, you know, it teaches me something about how the person thinks. So, you know, I list some people imagine, you know, a cardboard box of a certain size and how many of those fit into the vehicle. And then they estimate the number of balls that go in each cardboard box and multiply the number of balls by each cardboard. And they get. So they say, I learn something about how they think. And people answer that question in different ways. And then I turn around and say, so when you've learned that, how does it correlate to performance? And it's like crickets, as I said. Okay, so the fact that somebody gives that kind of an answer and you like that answer, what does that tell you about how they're going to perform? They've got no idea at all. So what we try to do is cut through that kind of nonsense and say, look, stop playing silly games. I mean, there's one of the CEOs of one of the big search firms, his favorite question to a candidate is, tell me how you make a tuna fish sandwich. I mean, what planet are we on? I mean, whatever a person says around how they make a tuna fish sandwich, there's nothing that that CEO is listening to that's going to help him make a Prediction of future performance, Nothing. So what we try to do is teach people to stop asking stupid questions and to start asking questions around which listening for specific responses increases your confidence about a future prediction of performance. And we probably go through about 30 to 40 questions in the book. So one of the values that people get from reading it is that when you go through all the process leading up to that point, when you then go through the questions, you got a much better understanding about how to ask good questions and stop asking bad ones. Oh, by the way, here's another good question. If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be? And then get the follow up and what colour would you be? Right. Well, I hate to tell people, but I'm a purple kangaroo now. What are we learning about people by asking stupid questions of this type? A long time ago I wrote a series of articles on LinkedIn and I did it every week and I was illustrating stupid interview questions. Now I did that about eight years ago, Molina, and I got to tell you, I could be continuing that article to this day because there are so many of them. But yeah, so I'm a purple kangaroo if anybody's interested.
- [40:49]
Melina Palmer
Sarah, do you know what sort of animal you would be, what color you would be? Do you have the.
- [40:54]
Barry Conchi
No clue. I'll be a dog, I'll be a blonde one. It doesn't matter. Right, Talk about these interview questions. Imagine I'm in a company and I've got a kind of structured set of interview questions and they're good ones like the ones we've got in the book, Right. Imagine that I ask every candidate those same questions and now I've got a more objective means of comparing people versus what we know actually happens. Where hiring managers go into the room and it's an off the cuff conversation. And at the end of it I've just got to decide how I feel and who I liked more in the room. Right. It's that that we need to start winding people back from. So I love thinking about just the improvement in an overall process. If I've got good questions and I give everyone a chance to tell me what they think across the areas that I know actually connect to how they're ultimately going to perform. So for people who do pick up the book, look at those great, great questions.
- [41:54]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, and it really helps, I think, with those questions. Like, so just for everybody, as you're going to go and be getting your copy, you're going to go find this chapter here. As you said, there's lots of great questions there but it has the question. It has kind of the explanation as to why you would be asking this question and then what the. What you're looking for in the answer. And so some of them also having multiple choice versus saying, you know, are you very good delegator? Do you. Are you good at delegating? Which is like, who's. Who's gonna say no, right? Like, yet. Yes, I love delegating. It's great.
- [42:28]
Barry Conchi
Right.
- [42:28]
Melina Palmer
But it doesn't help to actually kind of get into the moment. So there's some, you know, saying, why are we asking where. It's the, like, pressure test on some of these, where things could go wrong that you can help to identify that someone might not willingly, you know, be. Be putting out there because they don't necessarily know. And it's just to help get people away from saying the answer that they think you want to hear because they're trying to get a job.
- [42:55]
Barry Conchi
Right.
- [42:56]
Melina Palmer
But you want to understand more about, like you said, those innate talents. And also, I think, you know, it was really surprising for me in reading this that I don't think enough. And I. I'm sure you've come across this so much more, but it's just don't think enough about how the question and the answer they're going to give ties back to the performance. You know, what is it I want them to do in this role? What is the most important thing that we're going to get? You know, here on the Brady business, we always talk about, you know, with behavioral science being, you know, what do you want someone to do? What are they doing now? How are we going to get them there? What are these kind of points and indicators? And I think it translates in this.
- [43:34]
Barry Conchi
Way of, like, what's going to be.
- [43:35]
Melina Palmer
Most successful in the job role? We need people to be really good at these three things. And we've seen maybe, you know, this type of response is not great. We don't want people that are, like you said in the, you know, great relationships is important, but if you don't close deals, it's. That's a lot of time when you were giving that response, Sarah. And I was thinking about the person who is, like, best friends with all their clients and they've shared their phone number and they know their kids and where they're going on the weekend and what they're doing. You're like, ooh, like, that sounds like a lot of time being spent on things that aren't necessarily moving that needle. Right when you stop and think about it. And so Understanding, you know, there's a balance to that. But if they're not closing a deal then they're not doing the job right. So but thinking about those things in advance and we can know what we don't want an answer. And if somebody does, does say that, right. They say the thing about having good relationships, okay, good relationships are good. And like how about closing deals?
- [44:35]
Sara Dalton
Right.
- [44:35]
Melina Palmer
We know we have a follow up question or something to ask to, to get to things that really matter, you know, for us in that, that role.
- [44:42]
Barry Conchi
Love it. Perfect.
- [44:44]
Melina Palmer
Well, as we go to close out, any last thoughts in addition to, you know, for everyone who wants to is now so excited to find you and learn more. You know, where should they, they go?
- [44:53]
Sara Dalton
Well, they should go to, they should go to Amazon and buy the book. That will help them. And then if they go to www.concierge.com that'll get to the website. It'll tell you more about our approach and what we do. So Those are the two sources of information. And then follow us on LinkedIn. We are fairly regular posters on LinkedIn. We cut through a lot of nonsense that we see on LinkedIn so we often point out some of the silliness that goes on there. So if you want to, you know, keep sharp and up to date on the stuff that we pay attention to, then we're both on LinkedIn. Follow us there.
- [45:34]
Barry Conchi
Perfect.
- [45:35]
Melina Palmer
And we'll have links of course for all that in the show notes to make it easy for everyone to find you to get their copy of the book and to start evaluating themselves and their teams and hiring for the right talent. So you know, just thank you so much again for your books and for your book, your insights for, for joining me on the show. It's been really delightful to chat with you both today.
- [45:57]
Barry Conchi
Thank you Melina, appreciate you.
- [45:59]
Sara Dalton
Pleasure talking to you. Thank you.
- [46:02]
Barry Conchi
Thank you again to Barry and Sarah for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I always appreciate when people have large data sets and have really invested in finding answers to their most burning questions. Researching nearly 60,000 leaders is no easy feat. And I really like their approach to find the best of the best with very stringent criteria so they could closely look at everything these leaders might have in common or not to help understand the traits and characteristics that truly determine high performance leadership. As a reminder, the five evidence based talent dimensions they uncovered in their research are setting direction. High performing leaders guide their organizations through complex situations and articulate that value in a way so many employees find motivational and engaging. Next is building energy. Driven by a burning work ethic. Talented leaders set an exacting example. They measure progress and recognize that the most talented employees beneath them demand their greatest attention and support. Third is exerting pressure. Talented leaders assert a clear point of view and persuasively drive change and improvement, never settling for average outcomes. Fourth is increasing connectivity. Outstanding leaders prioritize people, establishing effective followership through purposeful and ethical behavior and demonstrating care and concern for those they lead. And finally, we have controlling traffic. High performing leaders understand their organizations driving superior performance by establishing protocols and guardrails while showing agility and flexibility when circumstances change. And while, as Barry said, they've yet to find someone who excels in all five talents, the best leaders have several of these five. And if you're curious about your own talents, the final chapter of the book is called Are you an exceptional leader? And has resources for you to see how you stack up in these five talent dimensions. There is of course a link to get your copy of the book, the five Talents that really Matter, along with links to my other top related episodes and books, ways to get in touch with Barry, Sarah and myself, and more in the show. Notes for the episode it's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthebrainybusiness.com for and thank you again to Barry and Sarah for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.
- [48:58]
Melina Palmer
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.