Hire for Results, Not Potential

Issue 09

By Debbie Lawrence

Read Time: 8 minutes

Nicole

The interview with Ashley was amazing.

Nicole left the meeting buzzing. Ashley had been energetic, eager to please. She had said all the right things: “I’m a quick learner! I love a challenge! I’m ready to hit the ground running!”

Nicole’s business partner, James, was less convinced. “Did she actually demonstrate she can do the work? Because I asked her to walk me through her process for compiling and analyzing the daily sales reports and she gave really vague answers.”

Nicole waved it off. “She’s just nervous. Did you see her energy? She’s going to be great!”

“But has she actually done this work before?”

“She did something similar at her last company. She has potential.”

They hired Ashley.

Week 2: Ashley was still “learning the systems.”

Week 4: Ashley needed a lot of guidance.

Week 6: Nicole was spending 15 hours a week training Ashley.

Week 8: Ashley still couldn’t complete basic tasks independently.

Week 12: Nicole admitted to James: “I think I hired the wrong person.”

James said, gently: “You hired for energy and potential. We needed competence and results.”

Three months in, Nicole was doing Ashley’s job and her own. Ashley’s enthusiasm hadn’t replaced skills she didn’t have. “Quick learner” had turned out to mean “I’ve never done this, but I’m willing to try.” Energy, it turns out, doesn’t deliver specific outcomes for a customer.

What Nicole didn’t see yet was how she’d hired someone she liked. The job required someone who could do it.

The oldest trap in the book

Nicole’s pattern isn’t unique. I see it a lot.

Leaders make hiring decisions based on energy and potential, then spend months wondering why the work isn’t getting done. And they do it for completely understandable reasons.

“She has so much potential.” She might. Potential is real. The problem is it doesn’t service your clients, fill your calendar, or meet your deadlines. Someone who might be great in eighteen months leaves you doing their work for the next eighteen months.

“She’s a quick learner.” Possibly true. Quick learning still takes time. If you need results in 30 days, six months of development isn’t a plan. It’s a gamble.

“She reminds me of myself when I was starting out.” This one is the most dangerous. Your younger self had you alongside her. This person doesn’t. Your growth took years, mentors, and mistakes she won’t get to skip just because you’re rooting for her.

“I liked her so much in the interview.” Of course you did. Interviewing well is a specific skill. Some of the best performers I know are terrible interviewers. Some of the worst hires interview brilliantly. Liking someone is useful information but it doesn’t predict whether she can do the work.

All of these are real thoughts. None of them answer the only question that matters: can she do this job, right now, at the level you need?

I learned this before I had a full-time coaching practice

Early in my career, I was head of the Business Faculty at a post-secondary institution. Part of my role was sitting on hiring panels for new instructors.

We were interviewing for a teaching position. One candidate had an impressive resume. There was ample industry experience along with solid credentials. He talked about his desire to pass along what he had learned. He demonstrated genuine enthusiasm for teaching even though he had no teaching experience. On paper, he offered everything you’d want.

As part of our hiring process we asked potential instructors to teach a lesson as if we were a group of students. I sat through his teaching practicum.

He couldn’t teach. Full stop. He knew the content but had no instinct for how to convey it, no read on whether students were following him, no capacity to adjust when he lost the room. I could see it clearly, even early in my career.

When we talked about his lesson plan, he didn’t convey a solid understanding of what a lesson plan was. He had a general idea but he didn’t have a specific plan to guide this teaching practicum. He also struggled to simplify complex concepts. Even when we tried to redirect him, he wasn’t able to make the adjustment and this was just the teaching practicum. I worried about how that would all translate when he was in front of a lecture room with forty students.

Back in the hiring room, we had some frank discussion about his weak delivery as a teacher. I shared my concerns about how there are things that you can train someone to do and there are things that they just need to instinctively know how to navigate. I also expressed concern over what an instructor should be able to do as they hit the ground running versus what would be reasonable for us to provide additional support and training around. I felt like I was a lone voice in a room that was dazzled by his credentials. The rest of the panel was energized. “Look at that resume.” “The industry experience is incredible.” “He’s so passionate about teaching.”

Then came the point in the conversation I still think about. It’s the part where somebody likes someone so much that they look past what is and completely focus on what could be. “We can work with him. We can build those skills. We can develop that instinct.”

I didn’t feel comfortable saying more than I had already highlighted about my concerns. I was young, and it felt like the room wanted what they wanted. So we hired him and the expectation was that we could mold him into what we needed.

You know how this ends.

Student complaints came quickly. They voiced frustration about what they weren’t learning. Students with friends in the same course with a different instructor couldn’t reconcile the gap between their experience and their classmates’. The comparisons were damaging and inevitable.

What the panel had done was convince themselves his potential was enough. His resume was enough. His passion was enough. Nobody really heard me when I asked: Can he actually teach?

What was affirmed for me about that situation was how having that teaching instinct isn’t something you build from scratch in someone who doesn’t have the foundation. Some things can be developed. Some things can’t. And the most compassionate thing I can say, even now, is that it was a fit problem. He was in the wrong role.

He was in that role for one semester only. To this day I don’t think he understood how much of a poor fit it was but I clearly saw that he did not have the ability to deliver the results that we needed. It was unfair that our students had to be the guinea pigs for this experiment in “could we grow him into this role?”

What became even more evident in the post-mortem conversation that we had was that there was a lack of clarity amongst the hiring panel about exactly what we needed from an instructor for this subject matter in this situation.

That experience was one of my earliest lessons in being crystal clear on what the results were that we needed, and on whether the person in front of you can deliver them.

What hiring for results looks like

Most leaders never do this work before anyone sits down across from them. They know they need “someone great” in the role of a retail coordinator or an administrative assistant. They have a general sense of what the role involves. Then they sit in interviews and make decisions based on how the conversation feels.

Here’s what I do instead.

Define the results before you write the job posting. What does this person need to have accomplished in 90 days for you to say “great hire”? Write it down. Traits don’t count. “Great attitude” and “strong communicator” aren’t results. Client files closed with feedback ratings at 95% or higher, accurate and thorough reports delivered on time, tasks completed without errors. Those are results. If you can’t name three concrete outcomes, you’re not ready to post the job yet.

Ask for demonstrated results in the interview. “Walk me through a time you did exactly this kind of work” is worth more than any personality question you’ll ask. Vague answers are data. Someone who has done the work describes it specifically. Someone who hopes to do it speaks in generalities.

Know how you’ll measure them. Telling someone what results you need is one half of the equation. The other half is knowing how you’ll track whether they’re being delivered. If you can’t describe how you’ll measure success at 30, 60, and 90 days, you’re setting both of you up for a vague, uncomfortable conversation later.

Be honest about your timeline. If you need someone to be productive in 30 days, say so. If you’re willing to invest in a longer ramp, say so. Be clear with yourself first. Hiring someone who needs six months to get up to speed when you need results in four weeks isn’t giving him a chance. It’s setting both of you up for failure.

Here’s what I do now when it isn’t working

When you’ve made a hire and it’s not going well, there’s a question I come back to:

“If this person gave notice tomorrow, would I feel relieved or devastated?”

Your gut answers before your brain can rationalize. The first feeling is your answer.

If it’s relief, you already know they’re not the right fit. What’s left is finding the courage to act on what you know.

When I need to make an exit decision, I’ve found my own version of a compass. When I put my head on the pillow at night and feel settled in my body about the decision, I know I’ve made the right call. Settled, not comfortable. Those are different things. Comfortable means easy. Settled means true.

The lesson from that hiring panel years ago is fundamental to leadership. Get clear with yourself, earlier, about what the role requires. Be specific and know  precisely how you’ll be measuring the outcome. And be honest about whether the person in front of you can deliver that.

As always, clarity is kind. Vagueness is mean.

Your turn

Think about the last time you hired someone, or the hire you’re considering right now. Or maybe you are in the middle of a situation where you hired someone and they’re not producing the results that you anticipated they would create in this role at this point in their tenure.

What are the three specific results this person needs to deliver (or should have delivered) in the first 90 days?

If traits are showing up on your list, “self-starter,” “great communicator,” “positive attitude,” redirect. Write the outcomes. Be specific enough that you’d both know, without question, whether they happened.

This week, write the results, not the job description. What does success specifically look like in this role?

Comment below and tell me: when you hired for potential instead of results, how did it play out?

I read and reply to every response. And I love hearing from you.

You can also listen to this issue on The Compassionate Leader School podcast episode, which drops the same day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms. Click here to explore all the episodes.