Latest / The Action Catalyst / The Five Talents That Really Matter, with Barry Conchie & Sarah Dalton (Leadership, Hiring, Research, Business)

Transcript

The Five Talents That Really Matter, with Barry Conchie & Sarah Dalton (Leadership, Hiring, Research, Business) · The Action Catalyst

0:00
Stephanie Maas: So let's start there. We rarely have two folks
0:35
at the same time, so let's start with that. How did the two of
0:38
you guys come to be working together share with me a little
0:42
bit of that history.
0:44
Sarah Dalton: Barry and I worked together at the last company
0:47
that I was with. He was one of their major clients, and when it
0:51
came time for me to leave that organization, I'd reached out to
0:55
Barry to ask him if he could help me get another job. And he
0:58
just said, over, over, my dead body. If you're leaving this
1:01
company, you're you're coming on board with me.
1:04
Barry Conchie: In my version of that when I set my own company
1:07
up in 2013 My aim was to do interesting work with
1:11
interesting people. So my expertise is an Assessment and
1:15
Selection. I'd had a career spanning nearly 40 years before
1:19
I set up my own company. So I had a lot, lot of background, a
1:23
lot of experience in leadership, and I quickly got to the point
1:26
where we were growing so quickly that I couldn't handle it on my
1:29
Hill, and I needed to bring people on board. And being an
1:32
expert in select sheet, nobody came up close to what I was
1:35
looking for. And then when I started working with a company
1:39
where Sarah was at, it kind of dawned on me pretty quickly that
1:42
if there was ever a possibility that she became available on the
1:46
market, I'd slap her up in her heartbeat, because she checks so
1:49
many boxes. You know, I had a very successful book that came
1:54
out sold a ton of copies. And, you know, I'd always had this
1:58
idea of a book in my mind for our old one money based on the
2:01
work that we did. It was time to write that book, and I thought,
2:05
Sarah is going to be a part of this.
2:07
Stephanie Maas: So you had a book 16 years ago, came out. Did
2:10
incredibly well. Tell us about this one, the difference. Bring
2:15
us up to speed on that.
2:16
Barry Conchie: The last book I wrote was while I was at Gallup.
2:19
I used to lead Gallup's Leadership Research and
2:22
selection. When I left Gallup was set up, my own company was
2:26
completely different focus to what I did in Gallup. I was
2:29
relentlessly focused on top level selection, whereas in
2:32
Gallup we were a bit more of an all round consultant. So we had
2:36
to, you know, cover a whole gamut of different things. But
2:39
in my own business, I just became relentlessly focused on
2:42
leadership, and I built my own leadership assessment. So
2:45
researched it, validated it, and that assessment, in and of
2:50
itself, tells a really interesting story. So it became
2:53
a story of itself, and it was a story that needed to be taught.
2:57
So if you could imagine my wife existing in three big chunks.
3:01
The first shot was like pre Gallup work. There's a senior
3:04
professional in education in the UK I spent about 10 years ago,
3:09
and they managed 13 years in lower business. And this
3:13
particular book catches the last 13 years. Now, here's an
3:17
interesting thing to think about, Stephanie, two things can
3:20
be true at the same time, even though they sound contradictory.
3:22
So here are two things that sound contradictory, but both
3:25
are true. The first is that human beings are infinitely
3:30
variable, but our experience of this is every person we meet,
3:33
and it doesn't matter whether they're professionally, it
3:35
doesn't matter whether they're fairly doesn't matter whether
3:38
they're in the neighborhood or community or whatever, person by
3:42
person by person, these folks are infinitely variable. Notting
3:45
people are upset, contradictory Fact number two, humans are
3:50
eminently predictable. Even though there's such a
3:52
variability, we can predict aspects of human behavior,
3:57
aspects of human performance, pretty accurately. But what we
4:01
do within our business is we try to marry both of which facts so
4:06
we measure the variability in people. We can see, you know
4:10
that you're different from Sarah and you're both different from
4:14
me, but we can work in a way that enables us to build up
4:18
accurate statistical predictions of success in terms of
4:22
performance. So when you think about that at a leadership
4:25
level, that sounds value.
4:27
Stephanie Maas: So I'm going to ask you a question, and then I'm
4:29
going to ask a similar one for you, Sarah, and you probably
4:32
know the questions, because, as we just determined, humans are
4:35
predictable. But just in case, in your tenure, Barry, the more
4:39
you've seen Have you seen that people really stay the same, or
4:46
have you seen people as whole and as individuals change?
4:51
Barry Conchie: It's an interesting question, but
4:52
there's a question you need to ask before that, and that is
4:56
what can change. So I think about myself. I haven't changed
5:01
that much of 40 years, but what has changed is the context. So
5:05
when you think about where I was 40 years ago, what I was doing,
5:08
characteristically, I wasn't that different to how I am now.
5:13
I was still a relentlessly competitive it just manifests
5:17
itself in slightly different ways. I don't cry when I lose,
5:20
but I used to, used to hurt me that much I couldn't bear to
5:23
lose. You know, I've always been very deep thinker that I've
5:27
never been over all by a particular problem, because I
5:31
knew, I knew eventually I could probably find a solution. Those
5:35
characteristics have remained very, very constant. You know,
5:38
what changes are the experiences that we acquire over the course
5:42
of our careers, and that teaches us to either moderate or
5:46
extenuate certain characteristics that we've got.
5:49
I no longer try when I don't win. An interesting question to
5:53
us, you know, certainly if you've got a partner or a
5:55
significant other, but the question to ask yourself is, you
5:59
know, if you do have a partner in life. What success have you
6:02
had in changing their characteristics over the course
6:05
of the time that you've known them? See if they're irritating
6:09
things that your partner does, you know and you've tried to
6:12
change it? How much, how much look have you had with that? And
6:15
most people at that point crack out in laughter, because of
6:19
course, the idea that you're going to change is ridiculous,
6:23
but here's what does change. You learn to accommodate certain
6:27
things. You learn to live with it. You were dead, so the
6:31
characteristics of the person don't change, then your attitude
6:34
towards those characteristics don't change. They're still
6:37
irritating. What changes is how you handle it, and if you think
6:40
about that from a leadership perspective, then you know,
6:44
we've got a whole world out there thinking that you can
6:47
train people to do anything you can't, but we should stop lying
6:50
to people about this, because that's what it is. We're lying
6:55
to each other. No, you can't train people to do anything. If
6:58
you want to pick nuts off a tree, don't hire a tortoise.
7:02
Hire a squirrel. Squirrels are brilliant at picking nuts on the
7:07
tree. Now you could teach a tortoise to them, and maybe they
7:11
could pick one or two before they fell off. But what's the
7:15
return on that effort? It's really, really limited. We don't
7:18
change any way near as much as we thought we do, and so we live
7:23
in this pretense, and that pretense is I manage myself
7:28
differently. Then I've learned, over experience, not to say this
7:32
in this environment. I've learned to keep my mouth shut
7:36
and let other people speak before I speak. We're just
7:39
managing them in more effective ways.
7:43
Stephanie Maas: Wow, that is food for thought. So flip side
7:46
of that similar question to you, Sarah, when folks reach out to
7:50
you and say, Hey, we need some help improving our hiring
7:54
processes, improving our retention, all the all the
7:57
myriad things, how receptive Do you really find that folks are
8:02
to changing their mindset? I mean, in your experience, walk
8:06
me through what that can look like.
8:09
Sarah Dalton: It's always a journey. It doesn't happen
8:12
overnight, because when you think about a typical hiring
8:16
process that you lead any candidate through the factors
8:19
that we're usually looking at have to do with the person's
8:23
background and career experience. So what companies
8:26
they've worked in before, how long they've been around in
8:29
certain jobs, we look at the kind of skills and expertise
8:33
that they list out on their resume, and then we get them in
8:36
a room, and we have we try and have a human conversation with
8:40
them, and at that point, what you're really doing is thinking
8:43
about how you build chemistry with that person, whether or not
8:46
you like them, whether you can see yourself working with them.
8:51
But likeability isn't a predictor of future job
8:55
performance, and neither are the companies that you've worked in,
8:59
how far you went in college, or any other things that people
9:03
typically list on their resume, none of those things predict
9:07
future job performance. So it's the very reason why we can get
9:11
someone who might be brilliant in an interview where we build
9:14
up a ton of confidence about what we think they're going to
9:17
be like in the job, and then we plug them in, and then we find
9:19
out otherwise every manager has had this experience where
9:23
they've had this brilliant candidate in an interview.
9:25
Everyone may have interviewed felt really good, really
9:28
positive about them, but yet, how they perform in the job
9:31
isn't what we thought it was going to be. So none of the
9:34
things we typically look at are a really good indicator of
9:37
future performance. You know, one of the first questions I ask
9:41
some managers that I'm working with is, tell me what kind of
9:44
candidate you're looking for. Describe it and always describe
9:47
aspects of talent. So when they talk about, I need a really good
9:51
problem solver, or I need someone who's going to be the
9:55
relational glue in an organization that's otherwise
9:58
really dissatisfied right now. Know, or they talk about someone
10:02
who can put good processes in place, these are all
10:05
illustrations of very specific talents that we can measure in
10:10
people. The difference is we put them through an assessment, we
10:13
can ask way more questions in an assessment and get a much more
10:16
reliable read of how people think and whether or not they
10:19
have the talents that you might think they do in an interview,
10:23
but they really don't. It's way too easy to fool someone in an
10:27
interview where you've got no real experience with them.
10:30
They're not exactly sure what questions to ask. So what I've
10:34
got to do in my job is to wind people back and try and get them
10:39
to hold back their own gut instincts and decision making
10:42
about the candidates that they like, and say, Look, I know you
10:45
might think this because you met them once or twice, but here's
10:50
what the assessment results tell me about how they actually
10:53
think, and here are the questions that you should be
10:56
asking. It's a journey. It doesn't happen overnight, and
10:59
they don't always listen to us so they don't always take our
11:02
advice. They don't always listen to us when we say, do not move
11:05
them forward. We just look at what happens. We're usually
11:09
right.
11:09
Stephanie Maas: Do you have a stack of I told you so cards?
11:14
Sarah Dalton: We definitely have those. And that's, you know,
11:17
that's what helps us tighten up some of our predictions and our
11:20
understanding of what characteristics drive better
11:23
performance in a role.
11:24
Stephanie Maas: Okay, so let me shift gears and talk about the
11:27
book, The Five Talents That Really Matter, How Great Leaders
11:31
Drive Extraordinary Performance. And I think what's just so just
11:35
catching already is we are definitely seeing an emerging
11:42
emphasis on a different kind of leadership than probably existed
11:46
Barry when you first started in your career, the way that people
11:50
are really embracing this idea that you know, Leadership isn't
11:55
just about climbing the corporate ladder. It's a lot of
11:58
responsibility, not just to those north of them, but to the
12:03
folks that they're leading and managing, etc. So tell us a
12:07
little bit about how the book came to be, and maybe give us a
12:10
couple of nuggets to entice us there.
12:12
Barry Conchie: Well, the book came to be because there isn't a
12:15
book out there like this right now. And the book does four
12:19
things. First, it describes as the title suggests that there
12:25
are five talents that really matter. So when people ask the
12:28
question, what is it about leadership, and what do we need
12:31
to know about leadership in a way that drives high levels of
12:35
performance? The answer to that is the five talents. Now the
12:38
five talents, I've just very quickly rolled through that. The
12:41
first one is setting direction. So establishing a course heading
12:45
somewhere, right? You need to be heading somewhere. The second
12:48
thing is harnessing energy, and that means you're going to
12:53
motivate people. You got to motivate yourself. Third
12:56
component is exciting pressure. Leaders need to change people's
13:00
minds, and in our view, without the capacity to do that, your
13:05
organization will really go nowhere. Not everybody's going
13:08
to agree with you that you're still going to get there. The
13:10
fourth element is improving connectivity, and that means
13:15
organizations are associate as well as professional. It's about
13:20
the connections between people. If your organization is
13:23
supremely well connected, it predicts strategic agility. And
13:29
if it isn't, you're going to get silos, trenches and divisions.
13:33
You're going to get missteps, poor animals and so on. The
13:36
Fifth Element is controlling traffic. And controlling traffic
13:41
is how you think about the way that you manage complex
13:44
operation. And the controlling traffic that we describe in the
13:47
book is like an air traffic control. There are rigid roads
13:50
that, my goodness, you've got to change on a dime in a heartbeat,
13:54
and things change, playing malfunction, angry passengers,
13:59
the drug pilot. I mean, whatever it is, you know, you got to be
14:03
able to deal with it. So you got very, very strict rules that
14:07
guide certain parameters, like how far planes you've got to be
14:10
apart, how fast they go, how quickly they descend, how you
14:15
move them around the taxiway. Then everything after that is
14:18
managing them to the road. Goodness. Has so much
14:21
unpredictability, you've got to be able to go with that too. So
14:24
the five talents that really matter is our explanation of the
14:29
critical elements that predict the top performing leaders. Now
14:33
not everybody is going to be good at all of them, but you
14:37
need to be good at enough of them. And what the book does is
14:40
describe that balance, because I've got to tell you, there are
14:44
some things I'm no good at, absolutely hopeless.
14:47
Stephanie Maas: Sarah, did you want to chime in on this?
14:50
Barry Conchie: She's got a book of these things. And as I think
14:53
about my career, Step B, I've learned to do more and more of
14:56
less and less. So I'll let certain things go, and that's
14:59
how. Actually a really interesting model The book
15:01
describes, because we're not saying everybody has to do these
15:04
five things. We're saying these five things need to be taken
15:08
care of, so you need to contribute sort of them, but
15:11
maybe the way you build your team fleshes out the rest. So
15:15
first element of the book, five talents that really matter. Then
15:18
there are three other things. First two. Number one, the way
15:22
we've talked about leadership in the past is immature, inaccurate
15:27
and ineffective. We've either said leadership is a million
15:30
things and we've complicated it, or we've been even more silly
15:34
and said it really only boils down to this one thing, like, I
15:38
don't know humility well. Goodness me, that's just not
15:42
true. So we deconstruct a lot of nonsense that's been written
15:48
about leadership over the last 40 years or so. The third
15:51
element of the book is the companies get a lot wrong about
15:54
selection. Sarah highlighted a few novels a little bit earlier
15:58
with respect to face to face interviews. So what we do is we
16:03
analyze what they get wrong about selection and then put in
16:06
place a series of things that will help correct that. What
16:09
which, of course, is the assessment that we describe in
16:12
the book. If you use a well calibrated predictive
16:15
assessment, you'll make far fewer selection errors and far
16:19
more selection hits. So the third element of the book
16:22
describes what companies are currently doing wrong, how to
16:26
fix it. And the fourth element of the book is the most
16:29
exciting, and that is we give people a chance to take the
16:32
assessment. So the book covers those four issues. One of the
16:36
things that we'll be saying to folks before we even think of
16:39
taking the assessment is not everyone is cut out to be a
16:43
leader, but not everyone is going to make it as a leader. Be
16:47
prepared.
16:48
Sarah Dalton: I mean, just to add to what Barry is already
16:50
saying, the idea with the five talents that really matter is
16:55
that there are unchanging elements of who people are that
16:59
drive very good performance in leadership roles. Now very said,
17:03
not everyone will have them, or people will have them to
17:06
different degrees. So what we wanted to do with this book is
17:09
give people a means of very give people a very clear language and
17:14
a means of identifying the characteristics in themselves
17:17
that might lend to more effective leadership and to help
17:20
them think about where they spend their time if they're
17:23
going to develop those usually, I think one of the mistakes we
17:26
make in our culture is thinking that we should be well rounded
17:29
people who are who are just good at everything, or that we should
17:32
focus on the weaknesses that we have and try and coach those to
17:36
just get a little bit better. But that's not how you get the
17:39
best performance out of people, we got to help people understand
17:42
how they're unique and what talents make them stand out. And
17:46
we know through research that if you want to get the best out of
17:49
people, if you want to help them perform better, you've got to
17:52
give them a way of understanding the natural talents that they
17:55
have and the things that they naturally do really well.
17:58
Because the more interesting question is, How good could you
18:01
be in those areas? We want people spending their time in
18:04
the areas where they've got the greatest potential to develop
18:07
and grow as leaders.
18:09
Barry Conchie: Sarah's point about self awareness and helping
18:12
people understand more about who they are, recognizing that they
18:15
won't be brilliant at everything. We do have people in
18:18
our database, by the way, who think they're brilliant. You
18:23
might even have met one or two in your career. But here's
18:27
something really interesting. When you ask leaders about the
18:30
trait or characteristic they must admire in themselves, the
18:36
most common response we get is how good they are at strategy.
18:41
Here's the problem. Strategy is the rarest element in our entire
18:46
database. We find it at a lower level in relatively few people,
18:51
and at a high level in a tiny number of people, and yet nearly
18:55
everybody claims it. Disconnect is not only worrying to us, but
19:00
it's also potentially damaging for the individuals who claim
19:04
that and for the organizations that they need. So we have to
19:08
spend time on picking those perceptions of self and saying,
19:12
look, I think what you really mean is you pretty smart, but
19:16
there's a difference between being intellectually smart and
19:19
being very good strategically. So a lot of the time we've got
19:23
to pull people away from low levels of self awareness and try
19:28
to shine a light on what they really mean about themselves in
19:33
ways that is much more helpful to their goals and development.
19:36
Stephanie Maas: So maybe a good piggyback to your book would be
19:38
self awareness for dummies?
19:40
Barry Conchie: Yeah. That might be a good precursor to this. I
19:46
don't think there's any virtue in being always wrong, but never
19:49
in debt. Those two things worry me, and I think too many people
19:55
have got an inflated view of their capabilities, where covid.
20:00
To interviews and selecting people. So I'll give you an
20:04
illustration. One of the questions I often ask the CEOs
20:07
we work with is, how would argue leaders? Nobody's ever said, I'm
20:13
bad. And then I'll say, so what's your hit rate when they
20:16
look at me and say, Well, what do you mean by that? Of your
20:20
last 10 appointments? How many turned out to be above average
20:23
performance? Well, they look at me and they say, Well, yeah,
20:26
maybe, oh, maybe six, I said. So what you really said is you
20:31
don't know, because people don't track this information, and we
20:35
wish they would. You should have a number, and you should be able
20:39
to say six of the last 10 people are appointed with the average
20:43
performance. It's remarkable the lack of specificity that
20:48
organizations communicate with us about their hit rate when it
20:51
comes to hiring. These are people, by the way, who measure
20:55
widgets to microns of tolerance. They can tell you, you know,
21:00
with a nanometer of, you know what the tensile strength of a
21:05
steel beam is, they can tell you how many widgets are in transit
21:09
between Indonesia and Cape tech, right? They go into this
21:14
inordinate detail. Most important thing of all. Well, I
21:18
think it's about six out of 10, just good as they can get, that
21:22
we think it's embarrassment, and we need to change it.
21:26
Stephanie Maas: We hear all kinds of books and stories and
21:29
feel goods about what made somebody a great leader, or, you
21:34
know, a certain characteristic, or something happened in their
21:36
life, or some kind of professional event or whatever.
21:39
And I'm not saying there's not value in them, there's stories,
21:42
there's inspiration, but in terms of really modeling a
21:47
formula, a research based way of approaching leadership, it
21:52
sounds like you've got the corner on that.
21:54
Barry Conchie: And we think we're doing a big public service
21:56
Stephanie, because if we stop the person in their tracks and
22:02
make them think maybe I don't want to be a leader that's
22:05
actually really good for them, because there may well be
22:08
another role that isn't a high level leadership role, where
22:11
they could be utterly brilliant. But if we can encourage people
22:17
who've got measurable leadership potential but have either not
22:22
been encouraged or, you know, a little bit on, you know, unsure
22:27
of themselves, if we can build their confidence to take on
22:30
these bigger jobs and to unleash their talents on the world and
22:35
be a great success, you know, we think that's phenomenal, So we
22:39
take that really, really seriously, just because you
22:43
might not be cut out being a top leader doesn't mean there is a
22:46
role out there where you can shine and be fantastic. And if
22:51
we can help people in those kinds of discoveries start only
22:54
good for them, good for the people they work with, good for
22:57
organizations, actually good for society.
22:59
Stephanie Maas: Yeah, that passion definitely shines
23:01
through. Thank you both so much. This has been super fun and
23:05
really a fascinating topic. I can really hear the passion and
23:10
the mission making the world a better place with better
23:12
leaders.
23:13
Barry Conchie: Well it's been great talking to Stephanie.
23:15
Thanks for the opportunity.
23:16
Sarah Dalton: Thank you so much.