Hiring for Attitude, Coaching for Aptitude

I was reading a long story in The Athletic about how NFL teams fail their high-profile first-round quarterbacks, and it got me thinking about hiring tactics and coaching again.

The part that stood out to me was a comparison of how scouts and coaches view prospects:

Hasselbeck cites a disconnect in the scouting phase, when the two sides of an NFL building — personnel and coaching — clash on what they value most in a prospect. Scouts, he says, typically seek elite physical attributes that are unteachable, banking on the coaching staff to figure out the rest. Coaches tend to covet more polished players who’ll arrive with a higher floor and need less time acclimating to the pro game.

Shifting this from a sporting to a business context is quite interesting because many hiring managers do their own recruiting in smaller organizations and have to combine these roles. We don't have an equivalent of the NFL combine to easily evaluate all our candidates against identical tasks. Instead, we have to assess people based on their resumes, behavioral interview interactions, and reference checks.

While more companies are asking candidates to perform tasks as part of the process, many candidates do not like this request, as it feels like doing unpaid work. In addition, for many roles, such tasks are not good measures of on-the-job performance.

Elite Attributes

While office jobs don't evaluate prospects on "elite physical attributes," we do consider people on other elite attributes. These attributes take the form of intelligence and approach (or attitude). I think it is very, very hard to change someone's fundamental attitude, so it is critical to hire people who exemplify the values and approaches you want in your company from the start.

At Totavi, we selected a set of core values we strive to embody:

• Tenacity
• Opportunity
• Trust
• Autonomy
• Versatility
• Integrity

To take a single example, like tenacity, can you teach someone grit in the middle of their career? I don't know. I am not saying a person can't learn or acquire grit mid-career, but I think I would, as a manager, have a hard time teaching it to them.

As a result, when I hire, I am very focused on assessing people's core attributes. What I can do is coach skills.

Elite Skills

The quarterback article explores the idea that many NFL teams do not mold their offenses to fit their quarterbacks or train their quarterbacks to succeed in the professional league rather than the college league. I have never met anyone who magically performs at the top of their game in the office. Everyone needs skills development.

The challenge posed in the article that coaches expect quarterbacks to perform right away is very surprising. Even if I hire someone very experienced, I try to approach each situation as though we need to do training and align on the new role, the new company, and the current project. If any organization believes in continuous improvement and a true commitment to excellence, then it must accept that everyone across the entire organization needs coaching.

Building on strong innate attributes like honesty, hard work, curiosity, and a willingness to be trained are the core values on which elite skills can be built. If you have these values in mind, you can learn to do most anything in your chosen profession (you may not want to, but that's a different story).

Everyone is a Scout

Hiring is a group activity. Each person on the interview panel should be assigned different questions and areas of inquiry so that they can maximize the information acquired. The hiring manager and their manager are ultimately responsible for the new employee's performance and coaching. Everyone on the team should play the role of scout. A future post will be required to dig in here.

The hiring manager will be the employee's coach, but during the interview process, they must focus on the persona of the scout: What are the core attributes of this person? What are their skills and background? What is their potential?

Creating Opportunity for Success

The most intriguing lesson I took from this article is that many NFL coaches are simply not creating opportunities for success for their selected new quarterback:

• They do not flex to their quarterback's skills
• They do not provide time to settle into the system
• They expect immediate performance

Lest we forget, most first-round quarterbacks are 22 or 23 when. I don't know about you, but I was not as capable at 22 as I am today. I had a lot to learn. At 22, we're still learning and growing as people in so many ways.

There is tremendous pressure on these players to perform, given both their pay (astronomical!) and the demands of fans and team owners. However, the cost of failure is even higher. Many of the most successful players spent time on the bench behind a great quarterback (e.g., Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Steve Young) and had time to acclimate. In addition, many of these players benefited from coaches adjusting their offense to a style best suited to their players.

The best coaches are capable of producing the maximum performance of their players. It comes down to one of my favorite thoughts about working styles:

You may not do something the way I would, but that doesn't make it less valid if we achieve the same result.

In the end, I believe coaches (managers) are responsible for making the right scouting (hiring) decisions and coaching their players (employees) to top performance. The work is on both parties; the success belongs to the player, and the coach must be a teacher, supporter, and enabler.