Maxwell Leadership Podcast: How to Hire the Right People

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today John Maxwell is going to teach us how to hire the right people. Now let’s just pause for a moment and do a memorial on all the people that we hired that was not the right people. You feel me, don’t you, leaders? We’ve all attempted to hire the right people. Today we’re going to learn about the four c’s of building the team that will take you to the next level. Now, after John’s lesson, my co host Chris Goede and I will join you to discuss how John’s lesson today has built and refined the way we hire and add the right people to the Maxwell leadership team. So we’re going to give you a way to apply it from our perspective and give you tools where you can apply it to your perspective in your life and in your leadership.

Mark Cole:
If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube or download the free bonus resource for this episode, just visit MaxwellPodcast.com/RightPeople. Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
When I moved from San Diego to Atlanta, one of my challenges when I realized I was going to make the move as a leader. Remember the law of navigation? The law of navigation says that it’s one of the 21 laws. The law of navigation says that anyone can steer a ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course. So one of the processes was that, of course, if I’m going to move to Atlanta, I’ve got to chart the course. Now, that doesn’t mean I call the moving van. I’m going to let somebody else do that. And one of the things I knew one of my challenges was going to be that I was going to take my core people with me to Atlanta. But we’re going to have to do a lot of fast hiring.

John Maxwell:
We’re going to have to hire 50 people within a period of a couple of months. And those 50 people didn’t know me, didn’t have a history with me, didn’t know me from Apple butter. So I knew I was going to have to do a lot of work on developing synergy, developing teamwork. So I spent a lot of time, how am I going to do this? The four c’s of building a team. The first C stands for calling. The calling asks the question, what is my focus? What am I, quote, called to do? What’s my focus? One of the first things I did when I moved to Atlanta is I got all the players together. I said, bring your family, even bring your kids if they’re not too small. And I did a lesson, probably the most important lesson I’ve ever done in leadership called the soul of enjoy.

John Maxwell:
And the whole lesson was nothing more. But then who am I and what do I believe, and what do I live for and what do I die for? And what are the values and what’s the core and the culture, and what are the non negotiables? And let me tell you why I do what I do, because I want you to join me on this team. The soul of Injoy

John Maxwell:
The letter C is for chemistry. Are we hiring the right people? Do we have the people that’s going to work together in this process? In fact, one of the things I discovered in moving to Atlanta is that hiring 50 to 60 people in two months, one of the things we did is we hired some wrong people. Some of them, it’s almost a day later you say, oh, my goodness. For some it takes a few months for it to show up. But we didn’t hire all well. And I can still remember going through my list with the presidents of my four organizations and saying, okay, in your company there are three bad hires. Here. Over here we got a couple of bad hires.

John Maxwell:
Over here we got five bad hires. You know what I mean? Okay, how are we going to transition them back out? Because this isn’t going to work. Because one of the things I learned a long, long time ago is if you don’t have the right person and the right chemistry, you cannot afford to spend a lot of time with those people. They’ll drag you down. They’ll keep you from getting to where you need to go as a leader. One of the things I did well, we hired real well at Skyline. But one of the reasons we hired so well in the latter years is because I had developed such a goede team that when I got ready to hire, I would bring somebody out for the weekend and I’d have the team members spend the weekend with them. We’d go to restaurants and eat and we’d just do stuff.

John Maxwell:
We’d sightsee. And in that weekend, everybody would begin to get a sense of this. Can this player work on the team? Chemistry is so important. Number three is culture. Do we nourish a leadership environment? Oh, my goodness. This is a real becoming a real passion of mine. I am convinced I’m going to start doing a lot of teaching on how to develop a leadership culture, because what I’m convinced is that we still do not understand the transference of leadership. Leadership is more caught than taught and so what happens is we give a lesson or we have an event, and we think we’re raising up leaders.

John Maxwell:
And this is an important part of the culture, but it is not the culture. I’m going to try to help people go from events to process, because process is what raises up leaders. Process is what develops leaders. So if you’re going to build a team, the first c is calling, what are we here for then? Chemistry. Do we work well together? The culture? Are we steeped in a leadership environment? And then number four is challenge. And we asked ourselves the question there, are we growing and are we reaching new heights? Are we going to a higher level? Now, as we wrap this lesson up today, let me say this. I think in this room you’re all convinced of this, but just in case you’re not, you have to become absolutely sold on the issue that if you’re going to be highly successful, it’s because you have the ability to develop a team around you. There’s nothing more important than for you in this room to understand your ability to be a coach, to bring people together, to develop a team is so key.

John Maxwell:
And one of the values of team building is that you spend more time building into other people. So I brought with me just kind of an amusing little poem that I’ll close with called indispensable man, just in case there’s someone in the room who thinks they’re indispensable. Okay? It’s like a guy told me the other day, he said, you know, he said, I just want you to know that he said that I’m a self made man. And I just laughed. Said, well, you haven’t made much, have you? I don’t mean that unkindly, but I want to tell you, if you can reach your dream on your own, it isn’t a very big dream if you can make it on your own, you didn’t make much. The value is leading is in developing this team. The greatest joy that I have is in the team today, now, anyway. So I brought with me again, laminated.

John Maxwell:
It’s laminated, folks. This is laminated. Indispensable man that says, sometime when you’re feeling important and sometime when your ego is on bloom, sometime when you take for granted that you’re the best qualified in the room, sometime when you feel that you’re going would leave an unfillable hole, just follow this simple instruction and see how it humbles your soul. Take a bucket and fill it with water. Put your hand in it up to the wrist. Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining is the measure of how much you’ll be missed. You may splash all you please when you enter and you can stir up the water galore, but stop and you’ll find in a minute that it looks quite the same as before. The moral in this quaint example is to do the best that you can.

John Maxwell:
Be proud of yourself, but remember, there is no indispensable man. Hey, John Maxwell here. I’m in the studio. We’ve been recording all day, and I was thinking about, really, one of my very favorite experiences that we have, and that is called day to grow. If you want to grow, you want to grow in every area of your life. I tell people all the time, you don’t want to go to something. You want to grow to something. But if you’re passionate about personal growth, development your team and growing them, you do not want to miss day to grow.

John Maxwell:
I’m going to have some real players with me, Dion Sanders, Jamie Kern, Lima, myself.

John Maxwell:
You don’t want to miss it. So, market, come and see us on day to grow. I will promise you this. You come and bring your team. At the end of the day, you’ll come up and shake my hand and say, one of the best days I’ve ever invested in for myself and for my team. I’ll see you there.

Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back. I truly, truly am sitting here today applying John’s content with one of my greatest hires. Now, let’s be really clear on mine and Chris Goede’s history. He was working with John Maxwell before. I started with John Maxwell in 2000 and then lost his way. Just kind of got really influenced and left for several years. And it was sitting on a plane to Indianapolis to where we looked at each other and said, we need to be back on teams together.

Chris Goede:
That’s good.

Mark Cole:
And, man, that was a great thing. Was that 2011? When was that? 1211?

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
And we’ve had a great run, haven’t we? Great growth. By the way, publicly on the podcast, congratulations for a brilliant 2023 with your leadership now taking on more responsibilities in the organization. For those of you watching by video, and you need to, you’re looking at what it means to hire a right leader. Mic drop. Done. That’s the end of the podcast, and I’m just teasing. We’re going to give you some things that Chris and I work hard to do to develop the right leader. I want to start today, however, with Jake.

Mark Cole:
Our podcast producer came up with a great quote, and I love this. I’ve heard Jim Collins say it personally, I’ve seen him write it. But here’s what Jim Collins says. He says people are not your most important asset. Now just pause there for a minute. But he goes on and says, people are not your most important asset. The right people are your most important asset. And he’s exactly right.

Mark Cole:
We lump all people in and then we struggle and wait and last and don’t make decisions because people are our greatest asset. No, it’s the right people that are our greatest assets. So, Chris, I really am privileged to build this lesson out with you as it relates to how we apply it around here.

Chris Goede:
I appreciate those kind words. I do think we should transition to talk about all the wrong hires. We make the bloopers. The bloopers. Jake said we have 4 hours and 22 minutes on this podcast, so we’re getting a thumbs down.

Mark Cole:
True that every good idea comes from ten bad ideas. So maybe it’s true that every one good hire comes from ten bad hires.

John Maxwell:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And we’re laughing with the people that we made the bad decision.

Mark Cole:
We’re laughing instead of crying.

Chris Goede:
But it’s not easy, right? It is not easy. And I do appreciate those comments. And we’re going to dive into these four c’s that John has talked to us and given us about building a team. And I think back to that moment we were having conversations and where we got in alignment, there was the calling of it.

John Maxwell:
Right?

Chris Goede:
Like, I can just remember some conversations about why you’re doing what you’re doing and where you want to take the company. And I’m like, man, that’s what I’m called to. So that’s just one of them. Obviously, we’ll go through and talk about chemistry and culture and challenge. I do want to back up just a minute. And you and I were kind of laughing as John was giving us this lesson. And I thought, man, he has moved from San Diego to the south because he used apple butter in his illustration. You and I were like, did he just say apple butter? So he is in the south.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, it’s now, right?

John Maxwell:
That’s right.

Mark Cole:
But you know, Chris, it’s so interesting that through the years, how John, a couple of weeks, a few weeks ago, John was talking about when he was a pastor and how he onboarded board members. You that listen to the podcast every week, you’ll know he talked about eaglets for the first year, then he made them a board member. Then they had to actively be on the board, and then they had to get their replacement in their three year term. John really through the years has been very consistent with some of these things. And today in our podcast, let me just say this. We have morphed and put these four c’s into three c’s for our current hiring philosophy. We’ve not negated any of these. We’ve just kind of rolled them in.

Mark Cole:
Here’s the biggest takeaway from the podcast today. You don’t have to have John’s four. You don’t have to have the three that we use right now. But you do have to have something. Because if you are hoping on an interview only to find the right person rather than a process, let me tell you something. Your emotional challenges are going to show up in your hiring realities. You had a bad night last night. Guess what? You’re getting ready to have a bad interview.

Mark Cole:
But if you can put a process together, it will stabilize your emotional up and down hiring leaders, and it will also give a framework for people to help you to make the right hires. John says always, I quit hiring a long time ago because I’m a terrible hire. I just believe in everybody because John puts a ten on everybody’s head. And I have a little bit of that tendency as well. So here, we don’t hire as a solo. We hire with an accompaniment, the whole orchestra. In fact, we get beat up all the time about how long it took to me to get through the hiring process and philosophy. And that’s because our three c’s, which we’ll talk about here, which really morphs from John’s four c’s, we are diligent in checking the boxes, aren’t we?

Chris Goede:
We are. And I love what you just said, because I was thinking that same thing. You’ve got to develop a process so that. I love what he said, where he’s like, yeah, no, we invited him in for the weekend and we did things together. That was part of his process that allowed him to maybe see some hiccups where there wasn’t a chemistry connection or maybe a culture connection. And for us, we feel like we have multiple eyes and ears that are a part of that process, that allow us to catch some of that. And again, I love what you said. There are a lot of different c’s.

Chris Goede:
John’s given us four here. We’ve taken what he’s given us and we’ve kind of built ours. But let’s dive in for just a minute. I want to go back to this calling, because we often here at Maxwell leadership talk about it being a calling of what we do, because the pace of which we play, which a lot of organizations and leaders play at our pace or a faster pace, but more importantly, because of our dna, because of our founder, of being an opportunistic leader, putting a tent on people’s head, thinking, and most of the time being right, that there’s opportunities in adding value to people around the world doing different things. We really have to have people that have somewhat of that calling. That is why you and Stephanie do what you do, right? Because you guys have that calling. And so I think it’s important as we dive in here to hear from you as a leader, as a CEO that’s leading the organization, why is that you, I know you do talk about what you see maybe in those that maybe do feel called to the same mission and vision than maybe others that don’t and that we’ve had to part ways with because we missed it on the front end. Talk about that importance as a leader.

Mark Cole:
Calling is for so many people, and perhaps out of 180,000 people a week that download one of our podcasts, perhaps calling feels mystical to you. And I want to first demystify calling to really this concept of purpose or a higher reason. Yeah. Is there a higher purpose to what you show up to do every single day? And so some of you might interchange calling with purpose. John has a strong nonprofit, really a church foundation in his leadership. And so calling is a very natural word there. Don’t let it demystify. Is there a greater purpose than just showing up and getting a paycheck and clocking out? Clocking in.

Mark Cole:
The best way to answer that question, Chris, is to really be clear on your purpose in life. I can remember. In fact, I’m going to challenge everybody listening to the podcast today. What was the last job you had before the job you have now? Think about that for a minute. Chris, was yours making cabinets, is that right?

Chris Goede:
It would have been leading a cabinet company.

Mark Cole:
Leading a cabinet company. Mine was washing trucks in the middle of the night. You all give me much mercy and grace to share my stories, but yeah, I was washing trucks in the middle of the night from 11:00 p.m. To 07:00 a.m. Before I came here. It was an interim. But I’ll tell you what happened. Three weeks into that job, I don’t talk about this that much.

Mark Cole:
Three weeks into that job, they approached me and asked me would I want to get on a management track because of how I was with people three weeks in to an hourly now I was 30 years old, washing trucks. I probably was twice the age of most of the people washing truck. That may have been it, but I don’t believe it. I believe they captured in me and caught in me a fundamental calling to add value to the people around me. I didn’t come in and just grab my station. I came in and asked everybody how they were doing. Was there anything I could do to serve them? I wasn’t doing that to climb the corporate ladder. I wasn’t really interested in climbing that corporate ladder.

Mark Cole:
I did it because there was something innate in me to motivate and inspire people to reach their full potential. A calling.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. So that’s good.

Mark Cole:
Some of you that are discounting this calling concept in your hiring process, because after all, you’re just hiring people to run a cash register. Or is that even a word anymore? Cash register. I don’t even know if it is anymore.

Chris Goede:
Too many people tell me they don’t take cash.

Mark Cole:
You’re at the counter. Perhaps you’re trying to disqualify this calling. And I would just tell you that you’re going to hire better people. If you can match their purpose in life with something that’s involved in their daily task and daily responsibility, it will work. I found purpose washing trucks. So did you running a cabinet company because you just added value to the people working alongside of you, just like you do here at Maxwell leadership. So don’t demystify calling or don’t discredit calling because it feels too mystical to you. Because we still hire off a calling.

Mark Cole:
We don’t use that as one of our three C’s. But we still want a greater purpose of why somebody is on our team than just they show up to punch.

Chris Goede:
Numbers in and through that process, through the interview process, and getting to know those candidates. One of the greatest ways to do that is to talk about how that specific role ties to that team’s function, that then ties to the organization’s mission. To Mark’s point, you’ve got to tie those together. You can’t just say, hey, we need you to come over here because we need somebody in accounts receivable. No, let me tell you what’s happening when you are in accounts receivable and what that means to the bigger vision. And if you can do that, you’ll see. You can read the body language. If that is something that they believe in is a purpose that they want to get behind.

Chris Goede:
And I would say that even more so now. The younger generations that are coming up. That is a big deal. That is a big deal. I would say the last report that I read, and this would have been a couple of months ago, it would have been a top four or five reason, maybe a top three, on why people are making the decision to join companies. And so as you’re going through this process, you have to cast that vision, and then you have to swatch their body language and see if that purpose is something that they get excited about. And when you do that, then you have a good potential higher of being the right person in the right seat for that team. All right, let’s talk about chemistry.

Chris Goede:
We say a lot. We like to do business with people that we like. Right? We say, man, I love what we do. Even more important, I love who we get to do it with. That’s a powerful statement that I think we need to take into consideration. We talk a lot about in the organizational development side of what we do, when we talk about benchmarking the position and the personalities of people that are in that role.

Mark Cole:
Right.

Chris Goede:
And we talk about what’s the dynamics in the team, what’s the connection in the team, where does this person fit? So there’s some assessments in this part of it now. It’s just a tool, right. Because you still will get a little bit of, are we hiring the right people? Is there chemistry there? You and I both have worked with people that we do like, people that we don’t like, and there’s a difference in there. Why is chemistry so important to.

Mark Cole:
I think I alluded a couple of weeks ago, Chris, that you and I watched a movie together called Boys in the Boat. The boys in the boat. A great movie. If it’s still in a theater close to you, it’s highly worth watching. But let me say this. I think we saw in that movie, and we see incredible teams. I mean, I remember one year, one year the Atlanta Falcons went to the Super bowl. Yes, we got beat.

Mark Cole:
New England Patriots fans. I get it. But you remember, that was the year of the brotherhood, man. There was a chemistry with that team. You look at any dynasties, you look at a champion, and a lot of times you’ll find a person or a good program. You look at repeats and you’ll find a good program. You look at dynasties, and you’re going to find chemistry because it’s the same thing with golfers. The reason golf is such an interesting game is because you have to string three.

Mark Cole:
If you’re in one league or four in the other, you have to string several good rounds together. And golf is very hard to do that. Only the top 1% can do it week over week, year over year, come up with three, four good rounds. I believe that teams that can sustain have to have chemistry. Teams that can win, can do it with a bad teammate here and there. But if you’re going to have sustained success, it’s going to be because of a chemistry, a brotherhood, a sisterhood. It’s going to be something greater than just raw talent or one great superstar. There’s going to be a chemistry to where people really work together.

Mark Cole:
You look at Chicago Bulls, you look at the Atlanta Braves, we do have one bright spot in sports. You look at the brave. There was a chemistry man, that sid brain that was slower than you, Chris. He could run across. Sorry, I had to throw that edge. He could run across the plate, and it would just charge people up because there was a chemistry there. All of your great, sustainable teams have a chemistry. So what do we do here in the work environment? We call it competence, by the way.

Mark Cole:
It’s the way we frame it. Now, I like chemistry, too, by the way.

Chris Goede:
I do.

Mark Cole:
But we want the team that’s going to be most closely working with the hiring the person that we’re hiring to answer that question. You don’t answer it as the leader? I don’t answer it as the CEO. The team that’s going to be working together answers the chemistry or the character question.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, well, one of the things. Let’s just pause just for a minute because I think you bring this up at a really good time. We have learned from John, and as he’s talking about these, as we’ve said, there’s many of these. You got to have some. We have three right now that we kind of are our north star in this process. And unpack for our listeners. You just talked about the competence one. Right.

Chris Goede:
But the other two are character and then culture. Talk a little bit about that and then leave culture to the end, because that’ll lead us into what John was talking about, too, is one of his.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So, real quick, we’ve taken these four things John’s done, calling chemistry culture challenge. We put it into a tight three. And the tight three, we’ve already mentioned a couple of them, but the first one is competence. And the leader that is responsible for that person’s performance is the only person that answers the competence question. Do they have the experience? Do they have the know how? Do they have the aptitude to get the know how? Once we can answer that question, there’s only one person whose neck is on the line for that person’s performance. That person answers the question. Sometimes that’s a pretty quick and easy answer.

Mark Cole:
The next question we just talked a little bit about this is John calls it chemistry. It’s our second c in chemistry. We call it character. And what that means. Is there a relational connection between that incoming potential teammate and the team they’re going to work closely with? I just talked about that chemistry character just a moment ago. We’re going to talk a little bit about culture in just a minute. But we have our HR director or people like you. There’s a lot of people that will not be working in your side of the organization that you have to answer the culture question.

John Maxwell:
Right.

Mark Cole:
Why? Somebody that is a champion over many years is the person that has to answer the culture question. And we put calling and we put challenge into culture because our culture is always challenging each other. We’ve always got to be bigger, better, brighter. Chasing an opportunity and calling for us means the significance of what we do, not just the success of what we do.

Chris Goede:
And you’ve set this as a standard around culture to where whoever that individual is as we go through that process, it’s so important to us to sense of kind of what is their focus, what is their belief in the purpose? And then are they willing to grow? Are they willing to reach new heights? That that culture interview trumps all other interviews because we want to protect that. Right. By the way, when you hire somebody that has the ability to be extremely competent, but maybe you’re questioning them on the purpose or the culture, you’re in trouble. By the way, what we’d rather happen is we’d rather you find somebody internally first. You’re developing people. We’re all about that. But maybe you don’t have that role, but look for the calling, the purpose, the culture side of things, and go, man, they got that. We’ve got to help them maybe a little bit around competence, but we’d much rather err on that side than we would the culture side, because that’s a recipe for disaster to where you get subcultures and you get silos and you get everything that’s happened in a negative way that’s slowing down the momentum of the organization.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. I would again challenge you to make it yours. Sean’s given us four very good foundational components that needs to be in some sort of category for you in getting the right team and hiring the right team for us. Again, we feel like that we can get these four components into three words, but you need to have a formula. You need to have a predictable process that your team can rally around to get these teammates. But here’s the other benefit of it, Chris, that John didn’t really talk about today, but I’ve heard him talk about it. When you work hard and diligent and consistent and predictable in adding the right teammates to your team, it makes it easier to offboard them if they turn out not to be the right team. Because you go back and say, we missed it here, we should have got it here, or we missed it completely.

Mark Cole:
And now let’s make a decision, because you’re not meeting this criteria. So every one of our new hires, new teammates, we go, hey, this is our process. And it’s going to feel arduous, and it’s going to feel long, and it is. And you’ve got about seven to ten people to impress. So don’t just get good one time. You’ve got several times to get good. When I can come back to a teammate that’s struggling in the first 90 days, because everybody comes in with a 90 day probation piece. When I come in in 45 days and go, these are the struggles we’re sensing right now, linking back to our three c’s, John’s, four c’s, you’re how many ever C’s got to have C’s, guys? When we can link back to a 45 day check in and go, this is where we’re struggling.

Mark Cole:
Is this just a weird thing? Is there some tweaks that we can do? Because in 45 more days, we’re going to have to make a decision.

Chris Goede:
And I think if you’re honest with that in the front end, to your point, you can have conversations, and I’ve seen you do this. I’ve had to do this with people where you have that conversation and you’re just like, hey, now that we’re in this boat again, we’re talking now maybe not hiring the right person versus hiring, you can have that conversation and say, hey, I’m sensing this. Are you feeling this? Are you sensing this? Is it not a good culture fit?

John Maxwell:
You know what?

Chris Goede:
It’s probably not. But if you’re communicating that on the front end and you’re trying to go after this right team, then you can have that conversation on the back end. You mentioned how we take a long time to go through this process. I think we also take a long time to offboard people.

Mark Cole:
We do.

Chris Goede:
And so then that has given us the opportunity to look at and evaluate. Are we going about hiring the right people? And we’re always moving and we’re always trying to get better at this. It’s not perfect. As we joked a little bit earlier, we’ve made a lot of mistakes, but our goal is to really focus on the C’s and to develop people so that we can hire the right people.

Mark Cole:
I’ll close with a story and then a listener comment. And then we’ve created a way to build a championship team. It’s a digital product that I’m really excited to offer to you today, but several months ago, it’s been probably maybe a year or so now, maybe a little longer, we had a need for a position, and you and I looked at each other and said, I don’t think they found the right candidate, but yet the timing and the new leader that we were trying to empower to make the decision. We registered the concerns, but we had that 90 day, 45 days in, we were having the conversation that we predicted that we would have before. And we don’t always do this. This was extenuating circumstances. But in 90 days, guess what? The intuition that we had that we chose to put aside to give this leader that needed to make the hire a quick win, we had to come back and clean it up. And I’m just going to tell you this, pay attention to your intuition, because it cleaned up and it was nice.

Mark Cole:
We built structure into where we could clean it up. But that intuition checked with others is a very valuable thing. In fact, that’s why we created. We created a mentor’s guide to building a championship team. It’s a typical process that we give to people that’s responsible for building this team. And its retail is $97. We’re going to give that to our podcast team, podcast family for $39. Go check that out in the show notes.

Mark Cole:
I believe those of you that are really trying to build this championship team will love this product that we’ve created. It’s an audible digital product that you can download there. Go to the show notes. We have a podcast listener, Mayina. Mayina said, this channel is really growing. Me, I am thankful to the Maxwell Leadership podcast, Mayna, you are why we what we do. We believe that we’re bringing powerful, positive change to your world, Maena, and many other podcast listeners. Because we’re all committed to one thing.

Mark Cole:
We believe the world deserves good leadership. We’ll see you again next week.