It is good to be back in the office today after a huge week in Sun­river. Some of you might know that we just fin­ished The Build­ing Cham­pi­ons Expe­ri­ence, which is the real crown jewel event for our com­pany.  It con­sists of four days of busi­ness and life coach­ing with over 225 atten­dees, and it‘s a ton of fun for our team!

Dur­ing the Expe­ri­ence, there are main-stage lessons and small break­out ses­sions on top­ics rang­ing from life plan­ning to excep­tional cus­tomer ser­vice to best prac­tices for strate­gic think­ing. With this wide range of top­ics, there was one ques­tion I was asked more than any other dur­ing the week, and it is the basis for this post.

“How have you assem­bled such an amaz­ing team of car­ing and incred­i­bly tal­ented people?”

I know why they asked this ques­tion. Given the chance to see our team in action, as they did dur­ing the Expe­ri­ence, it becomes obvi­ous that most of them have tal­ents and skills that exceed my own.

Over the years, I have found that when you’re look­ing to add new peo­ple to your team, they either have IT or they don’t. What is IT? Here is a series of ques­tions that have really helped me to find IT people.

• • Are they really pas­sion­ate about the prod­ucts or ser­vices you offer? They have to really dig IT!
• • Would they build IT, sell IT, account for IT, sys­tem­atize IT, or do IT for free? If so, fig­ure out how to pay them well for doing IT.
• • Do they want to serve oth­ers on the team in order to make IT awe­some? They must want IT to be done more than they want recognition.
• • Are they will­ing to fight for IT? They have deep con­vic­tions about how IT makes busi­nesses, peo­ple or the world better.
• • Is there more to them than just IT? Hire peo­ple who are well rounded and place a high value on peo­ple and inter­ests out­side of the IT fac­tory or office.
• • Do they have fun in life? If they do, they will bring more energy to work, and will do IT better.
• • Do they want to be the best at IT? Hire life­long learn­ers who are hum­ble enough to admit they will never have IT truly mastered.
• • Do they want to share IT? If they don’t want to tell their friends and fam­ily about IT, they don’t really believe in IT.
• • Do they keep pur­su­ing you because they want to play their role in mak­ing IT hap­pen? Hire those who know that great things are worth pur­su­ing relent­lessly over time.

I hope this helps you to build and grow your own tal­ented team.

Do you get IT?

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Related posts:

1. They Must Leave Bet­ter Than They Arrived
2. Ques­tion­ers and Truth Tellers
3. Asset or Advantage?
4. How Hand­held Knowl­edge Has Changed Leadership


Tags: Culture, Hiring, Recruiting, Teamwork, The Experience

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 at 8:01 am and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.