You don’t need to guess. How to start hearing their potential.
You’re Renting a Subscription to Their Future Time
As a leader, you're renting a subscription to their future time. One of your roles is to BUY the potential of future time.
Let me remind you how we buy and sell things that are not awesome humans.
Apple doesn't sell iPhones by giving you a user manual. They help you tell a story in your head about how wonderful life would be with You + an iPhone.
You didn't buy tickets to that concert because you wanted to listen to the band's music. You bought them because you wanted to be part of the experience.
Now let's talk about awesome humans. We use resumes and job descriptions to start the decision-making process. Think about it for a second. What does a resume do? It contains words and data about someone's past. Your resume is a representation of your ingredients.
People are more than just their ingredients.
Here's the thing, a can of beans shares more than its ingredients as it sits, waiting for you to pluck it from the grocery shelf. The tin includes a photo of a serving suggestion. All these elements combined are why you choose to (or not) pull a can off the shelf and have them for dinner.
A can of beans promotes its potential better than a resume.
Job descriptions, resumes, performance reviews, titles - they all tell a story of the past; we have nothing, barring an interview, that tells a story of potential. Potential is what you're responsible for buying as a leader.
I think it’s time we changed the buying process of human time and included this amazing product's past and potential.
EXPERIMENT
I'm not expecting you to change your entire hiring and recruiting process overnight. But you can start optimizing for potential.
As you go through the interview process, I want you to ask two questions.
What kind of problems are you great at solving?
What type of organization would get the best from you?
The first question will start to get to the heart of who they will be in the future. The second question puts them in the future-thinking state as they need to opt into a future with you as much as you want to opt into a future with them.
Note: People will inevitably stumble on both these questions. Unless, of course, they've worked with us, then they will stun you with their brilliance. It's worth your time to dig into how they think and where they thrive, so if you're getting generic answers like, "I'm great at solving complex problems." or "I'm a strategic thinker." tell them why you're asking. Say, "I'm asking these questions to learn how you think about solving problems and the environments where you thrive." You'll find some interesting answers.
AMPLIFY
It's unlikely you make your hiring decisions in a vacuum, as potential is often different from person to person; you have a responsibility to ensure you get aligned.
Before you start, ask the group what kind of problems we want the candidate to be great at solving. And like the candidates, telling you that you want them to be "strategic thinkers" is also a generic answer in hiring. Get clarity on the type of thinking and problem-solving you want for the role.
INVEST
Want to find out how your team thinks in the future and help them opt into you, opt into each other?