Your First Leadership Job: How Catalyst Leaders Bring Out the Best in Others

Your First Leadership Job

Mastery and Leadership Skills10Hiring and Selecting the BestBehavior Predicts Behavior

Pre:Think

Remember back to when you were hired for a job or picked for a team, committee, or board. What was the process like? Were you a good fit every time? What was missing? What clicked?

Surround Yourself with the Best

The late management guru Peter Drucker said, Of all the decisions a leader makes, none are as important as the decision about people.¹ He wasn't wrong. When the right people are in the right jobs, performance soars. The conversations you have with your team become rich and meaningful, and your company—and everyone who works there—benefits. As one leader put it, The key to my success is hiring people far better than I am. The intent is spot on. But the truth is, most people don't know how to identify and hire the better people they need.

There are lots of reasons why this matters. Conservatively, a wrong hiring decision can cost a company three times the person's salary. Other sources have calculated the cost of a bad hire at 24 times the position's base salary.²

But for you, a new leader, a hiring mistake can be immediately expensive, and not just monetarily:

• Your credibility and judgment may be called into question by your team, peers, managers, partners, and customers.
• The new hire is likely to be unproductive, inefficient, and unengaged. If ...