Hiring a top-performing team is no easy feat. The people engine of your business is a critical component for a healthy, growing company. In today’s environment and working culture, developing systems for effective hiring is paramount. Despite current trends of unemployment, many industries are struggling to hire great team members. In addition, many also struggle to compete in the market for the best hires. Every orthodontist wants a winning team of the best people they can find instead of bodies to fill the open slots on the team. So how do we find these best hires?
The Chess Master
The first area we should consider is that we want a diverse team. A monoculture of sameness, although it can seem to fit “our culture,” goes against some great advice to hiring managers from Marcus Buckingham: “Average managers play checkers, while great managers play chess.” Great teams realize that hiring should be like a chess master putting together game pieces with special skills. Unlike checkers, which is a game where every element is uniform and follows the same direction, chess is a game of unique pieces. These special pieces have novel moves in the gameboard that allow for high performance.
The challenge is finding these specialists and learning how to leverage them in your team. Most leaders tend to generalize and find commonalities in the group. Organizations do need to be well-rounded, but individuals need to bring their best skills into practice. Great leaders analyze the skills of each team member and challenge them to harness their skills in their special way.
“In chess, each type of piece moves in a different way, and you can’t play if you don’t know how each piece moves. More important, you won’t win if you don’t think carefully about how you move the pieces. Great managers know and value the unique abilities and even the eccentricities of their employees, and they learn how best to integrate them into a coordinated plan of attack.” — Marcus Buckingham
