My how: Focus on attitude, aptitude, and transferable skill

As leaders, the most critical decisions we face in determining our success is how we build our team. Every situation leaders enter will have some level of uniqueness and require something slightly different which likely could require a slightly different team-building strategy. Brilliant strategies, amazing tactical plans, and continuous improvement projects will all go astray if you don’t have the right team in the right place at the right time for the task at hand. As someone who has both inherited and constructed teams from scratch, I have developed a core belief to guide the process. I believe that while the situational strategy for evaluating team members (existing and new) may vary, there is a repeatable philosophy that will help you build a team that is ready for the moment…and the moments that will happen in the future.

There are 4 pillars in the philosophy required to keep your team’s roof raised:

• Role Qualification
• Attitude
• Aptitude
• Transferable skill

Role Qualification: This is meant to be the table-stakes evaluation for a person into a role. Every role has some basic competencies that are non-negotiable. If you think of the hiring process, these would be the minimum competencies that a recruiter should screen. For example, when hiring a team of software support agents for customers in Brazil some basic qualifications could include: must speak and write Portuguese and must have some basic computer experience as a user. If an applicant can’t speak Portuguese (when 95%+ of the customers do), they have no chance at success at the role. Sure, you could spend months teaching them fluent Portuguese, but that falls outside of the purview of the organization. The qualifications for a role should simply be basics that will help make sure everyone who is either in a role or vying for the role has the potential for success. The bar will be set higher or lower depending on the expectations of the role – and the bar would be considered prior to any planned training for the individual. (You’ll note that while I said “some basic computer experience”, I did not require experience in my company’s specific software as we’d train any new hire to build that knowledge so long as they had the fundamental computer skills to follow along and learn.) One an employee or applicant has been deemed “qualified”, then the deeper evaluation must begin.

Attitude: While this is a single point on the list, it encompasses many different areas. Each of the following questions may weigh more or less on your decision depending on the specific role and the current composition of the team.

• Are they excited about the organization and team?
• Are they comfortable with situation of the organization? (stages of growth, maturity, etc.)
• Are they aligned with our values? (Note: this is not hiring for “cultural fit” which is often a significant cause of unconscious bias, but instead a focus on specific attributes that are core to a company and team – things like willingness to collaborate, openness to feedback, etc.)
• Do they like to learn, both by choice and out of necessity?
• What kind of environment do they thrive in? (pace, structure, level of autonomy, level of change, etc.)
• What are their career aspirations?

You can likely add 5 more questions to your list! The idea…you not only want to find someone who meets your qualifications, but someone who will be content and adequately challenged in the role that is offered. For example, if you have a near perfect candidate – all the knowledge, skills, and aligned answers on all the above except they prefer a highly autonomous role and the organization itself is much more hierarchical and collaborative in it’s decision making, then that is a topic to really dive in with the candidate/employee and see if it is truly a good match. If the attitudes don’t align, the odds are that the impacts of that person won’t align either.

Aptitude: Once over the hurdle of the basic role qualifications, aptitude is a great predictor of runway for employees/candidates. Let’s be clear – not every role and every hire has to be on a path to be the next CEO. It is completely fine to have a portion of the team who are in their apex role so long as they are content and performing consistently. Building a team is about balancing folks who are content in doing today’s role with those who aspire to more. Aptitude is often one of the key characteristics that will help separate those who simply aspire for more from those who can and should do more. Aptitude can manifest in many ways. The two areas I focus on are (1) ability to focus deeply into a topic creating expertise and (2) ability to go broad and learn significant information across many topics. Both are measures of aptitude that will help define a path for an employee/candidate over time. You can often learn about this in the early stages (interview or early conversations with employees) and then probe on it through the relationship. Interestingly, many folks (but not all) are one “type” or the other – specialists or generalists – and some folks are neither – they are content doing what they do with the level of knowledge they have. None of the above are “right” or “wrong”. It’s as simple as making sure you have a design for your team’s roles, the proper supporting mix of employees, and an eye for the future with aptitude being a key lever.

Transferable Skill: The last, but not least, characteristic I like to evaluate is transferable skill. It’s exactly what the title implies: do you have a skill that may not be directly aligned with what is needed, but is related enough that it could benefit us in the role. Ill give a couple examples to explain. First, a simple example. When trying to hire a technical writer for a software company, you very easily could look at folks with a background in literature, teaching, publishing/editing, or even law students, amongst other things. All of the above should have developed many of the basic skills needed to be an effective technical writer (understanding of structure, ability to convey thoughts clearly, familiarity with explaining concepts in different terms to better relate to an audience, etc.) regardless of their knowledge of the specific topic you need them to build the technical documentation.

Another example – If you go back to the “role qualifications” section, you’ll recall that there was a requirement that the software support applicants be Portuguese-speakers. If an applicant speaks only French, then they would not meet the necessary requirements. However, if they spoke Portuguese and French, the transferable skill of learning a secondary language would make them an attractive candidate. If they can learn a second language, then they very well could have the ability to process information quickly, focus intently, and creatively problem solve – all of which are highly useful transferable skills in the world of customer support – even if they have very minimal software exposure.

To wrap it all together, when I build a team I make sure to match my design to the situation of the team and organization with a complementary mix of folks who are content where they are and those that aspire for more (either in depth or breadth). To evaluate both existing folks and new folks, I focus first on their ability to meet the requirements/qualifications for the role. Once that is established, then understanding aptitude, attitude, and transferable skills can very quickly and very effectively shape their current and future trajectory to match the person to the role and to the design of the organization. Always be thoughtful in making those matches between design and employees relative to the points above, because if you aren’t you’ll have an unhappy employee, a suboptimal or dysfunctional team, or both.