Great leaders surround themselves with great people. Lone ranger leadership is doomed to fail, there is no one great person that is going to transform an organisation it takes a strong team and a great leader. If you look at the life of anyone who has achieved success, such as Jack Welch, Bill gates and others, you’ll notice that they surround themselves with great people. But! It’s not that easy, the trick is to know what great looks like, "How do you know the great people when you see them?" An article by Peter Carbonara from Fast Companyprovides help for leaders looking to identify and select the right people for their team.

"The proposition is undeniable: you can’t build a great company without great people."

The article proposes that by using the following four principles you can improve your chances of selecting the right person…..

• What You Know Changes, Who You Are Doesn’t - Popeye was right: "I y’am what I y’am." The most common — and fatal — hiring mistake is to find someone with the right skills but the wrong mind-set and hire them on the theory, "We can change ‘em." 

 

 

• You Can’t Find What You’re Not Looking For - Bill Byham, perhaps the world’s foremost authority on hiring, is president and CEO of Pittsburgh-based Development Dimensions International (DDI) . He’s also the father of a hiring methodology that goes by many names ("Targeted Selection" is the most popular) but revolves around a simple idea: the best way to select people who’ll thrive in your company is to identify the personal characteristics of people who are already thriving and hire people just like them. 

 

 

• The Best Way to Evaluate People is to Watch Them Work 

 

 

• You Can’t Hire People Who Don’t Apply - Companies that take hiring seriously also take recruiting seriously….. Companies that hire smart usually start their recruiting efforts close to home — with their own people. SGI’s Lane estimates that 65% of his company’s new hires began as referrals from current employees. It makes sense: it takes a certain kind of person to thrive at SGI, and those people tend to spend time (personally and professionally) with people like themselves.

 

One of the central tasks of leaders is the selection and development of people and teams. Leaders tend to recruit too hastily and take too long to remove those who are under-performing. The key to recruiting great people is to be clear about what you’re looking for in others. What are the characteristics of people who succeed in your team? Do you actively look for those characteristics in the people you’re looking to hire? (By George Ambler on the Practice of Leadership)