How do you build a stellar team? How do you find, hire, develop and inspire the right people for the optimal cultural and competency-fit? Having the right people in the right positions helps you achieve your bottom-line needs and long-term business goals. Experts, Michelle Coyle (BGSD Strategies) and Frieda K Edgette (Certified Exec. Coach and Neurpolitics Professor) discussed how best to staff your company and build high performance teams to effectively take your work to new heights during AAPC’s May 9th virtual webinar.
Michelle Coyle’s Lessons:
1.) Make sure you are leveraging strengths of your current team before hiring anyone new. Identify strengths and motivators (yourself included!) to help understand what you’re in need of moving forward.
2.) Think about what your current staff is doing and see what kind of tasks you might be able to offload to a new hire. This will free up your time to go out and serve your clients at a higher level.
3.) Don’t put someone on payroll until a few months into the job to make sure it’s a good fit for both of you. Use contractor positions judiciously and only in the short term.
4.) Toxic employees are folks that are not happy with the tasks they are doing at work. You always need to make sure people are happy at your job which will ultimately make them more productive.
5.) Behavioral interviewing helps bring out someone’s true personality and real strengths and weaknesses. Deliberately bring in negative behavioral situations to see how they respond–this will help you navigate away from typical, canned answers.
6.) Resist the urge to hire someone that is exactly like you. Also, make sure you’re hiring people that are smarter than you! These 2 hiring tactics will help your grow your business in ways you might not have even imagined.
7.) Diversity of thought is the most important business concept. Give everyone a seat at the table and make sure you’re always encouraging employees to speak up and speak out about their opinions and ideas.
About Michelle: Michelle Coyle specializes in turning dreams into reality. As the founder and President of BGSD Strategies, a boutique management consulting firm, Michelle guides political businesses and advocacy organizations as they launch and grow. In addition to being a consultant, she is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, and is currently putting together an early-stage venture capital fund to support woman-founded startups.
Frieda Edgette’s Lessons:
1.) Culture is about the intangibles in the workplace. These things might not be measurable, such as the general feeling or trust, but you must constantly be thinking about the environment you are seeking to create for your team and your clients.
2.) It is very important to create a memorable first day for a new employee. Make sure all of the office supplies are already set up for someone. This communicates that you are ready and excited to have them come aboard.
3.) It takes 1 year for a new employee to be immersed into your company culture. Remember this, and encourage current team members to help integrate a new employee into the company dynamic.
4.) Trust is so important in any business and especially during the first few months of a new hire. Without trust, a new employee will not feel like they can talk to you about negative situations.
5.) Offer feedback right from the beginning. Don’t assume people know what you’re thinking or how you’re feeling. Accentuate the positives and reward behavior.
6.) Be crystal clear about expectations. Accountability follow up is extremely important for projects and assignments, so that someone can understand what is being asked of them, how long they have to complete, etc.
About Frieda: Frieda K. Edgette is a former government affairs specialist and lobbyist turned certified leadership coach, neuropolitics professor and pioneer of political well-being. She has facilitated more than 150 civic change initiatives on five continents, and has helped more than 1,000 emerging and veteran political leaders navigate through unpredictable environments, including corporate, nonprofit and political campaign C-Suite executives, US secretaries, and parliamentary ministers. Frieda has been published in the Harvard Business Review, GOVERNING, Campaigns & Elections, US News & World Report, and Mindful, and has appeared on C-SPAN Washington Journal.
A huge thank you to our speakers for sharing their expertise with the AAPC membership!
