Tag Archive for: Employees

Hiring for Slope Versus Intercept

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Are you hiring for slope or intercept (the difference can significantly grow your business)?

Former Zappos executive Alfred Lin made this observation during a podcast. When building great teams, the difference between long-term success and short-term fixes often comes down to how you evaluate candidates. Are you hiring for where they are today or for where they could go tomorrow?

This distinction is crucial for trailblazing leaders of growing companies. As your company evolves, you need employees who not only meet current demands but also have the potential to thrive in the future.

Why Hiring the Right Talent Matters

Hiring isn’t just about filling positions; it’s about building a team that aligns with your vision. The right people:

  • Embrace accountability and growth, contributing to the company’s momentum.
  • Adapt to change, keeping pace with your business’s agility.
  • Reinforce your culture and uphold your standards.

On the other hand, wrong-fit hires:

  • Resist accountability, becoming a drain on energy and morale.
  • Struggle to keep up with growth, creating bottlenecks.
  • Undermine your culture, impacting team cohesion.

Turnover, disengagement, and misalignment often cost far more than the time spent recruiting, making it essential to refine your hiring approach.

Slope Versus Intercept: The Key Difference

  • Hiring for intercept focuses on today’s needs. You look for someone with the exact skills to solve a current problem, such as filling a technician or sales role. Candidates with resumes tailored to your job description often perform well in this approach.
  • Hiring for slope focuses on tomorrow’s potential. You look for evidence of initiative, self-development, and professional growth. These candidates demonstrate behaviors that align with your company’s values and show the capacity to grow with your business.

The key question is: Are you solving an immediate problem or investing in the future?

How to Hire for Slope: Actionable Strategies

  1. Look Beyond the Resume:
    Resumes are often polished narratives designed to align with job descriptions. Instead of focusing solely on past roles, dig into how candidates approached challenges and grew in previous positions. Ask:
    • Can you share an example of a time you took the initiative to solve a problem outside your role?
    • What skill have you learned recently, and how did you apply it?
  2. Behavioral Interviewing:
    Evaluate candidates’ alignment with your standards and values by focusing on behaviors. For instance:
    • “Tell me about a time when you had to learn something new quickly to succeed.”
    • “What do you do to ensure consistent professional growth?”
  3. Test for Potential, Not Perfection:
    Consider including practical assessments that measure adaptability, critical thinking, and initiative. For example, instead of asking for a sales pitch, present an ambiguous scenario and see how they approach problem-solving.
  4. Prioritize Culture Fit:
    A candidate aligned with your culture will often outperform someone with perfect skills, but a poor fit. Look for individuals who resonate with your company’s mission and standards.
  5. Use References Strategically:
    When conducting reference checks, focus on growth indicators:
    • How has this candidate evolved during their time with your company?
    • Would you rehire them, and why?

Zappos: Hiring for Slope in Action

When Zappos prioritized hiring for Slope, they sought employees with a customer-first mindset, regardless of their retail experience. One candidate shared how they had self-taught coding to improve customer service processes in their previous role. Though they weren’t from a retail background, their growth trajectory aligned with Zappos’ culture, leading to a hire that contributed significantly over time.

In contrast, companies that prioritize intercept hires often find themselves in cycles of turnover. For instance, a construction firm hired project managers based on experience and technical skills alone. These hires often clashed with the company’s collaborative culture, creating friction and frustration and requiring re-recruitment within months.

A Visual Model: Slope Versus Intercept

Imagine your growth needs as a graph:

  • The intercept represents where a candidate is today—their current skills and readiness for the role.
  • The slope represents how quickly they can grow and adapt to your company’s future needs.
Hiring for Slope Versus Intercept graph.

Hiring for Intercept may feel like solving a problem, but hiring for Slope ensures the solution grows with your business.

Making the Transition: Shift Your Mindset

Changing your hiring philosophy takes time and intentional effort. Start by:

  1. Revisiting your job descriptions to emphasize potential and cultural alignment.
  2. Training your hiring managers to evaluate growth-oriented behaviors.
  3. Using your onboarding process to reinforce your company’s standards and expectations.

Are You Ready to Build a Slope-Oriented Team?

Hiring for Slope is about building a workforce that positions your company for sustainable success. It’s an investment in potential, culture, and long-term performance.

Let’s Have a Meaningful Conversation

Would you like a strategy call about closing the gap between your performance and potential? A strategy call has two main objectives. First, and most importantly, is to deliver value to you. By the time we’re done, you will have gained something of significant value – an idea, some perspective, or an insight into your situation.

Once we’ve had that part of the discussion and you feel that you’ve gotten that value, we can address if and how I might be able to support you. There’s no pressure. Does that work for you? If so, schedule a time.

Automation Makes Your Employees More Important than Ever

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Don’t neglect employees and quality leadership in the age of automation.

It’s tempting to believe people are losing importance to your company as automation replaces humans with machine labor. You would be correct in that the numbers of employees tend to decline with automation.

The flip side is the scarcity principle: these remaining employees become more critical to your company’s success as their expectations of you rise.

Amazon is a good example of automation. Their fulfillment centers traditionally employed people to sort, pack, and transport goods, but robots like Robin, Cardinal, Sparrow, and Proteus have automated these tasks. For instance, Sparrow can handle items from bins, and Proteus assists with moving carts. These robots have improved efficiency and reduced the need for manual labor.

Examples Abound: 20 Years Ago Versus Today

20 Years Ago: Dozens of workers were needed on assembly lines to manually weld, paint, assemble parts, and inspect vehicles. Today, robots handle welding, painting, and assembly with greater precision and consistency, supervised by a few technicians and engineers.

20 Years Ago: Workers operated multiple looms, monitored machinery, and performed quality checks manually. Today, computerized and automated looms produce textiles with minimal human intervention, requiring only a few operators to oversee the process.

20 Years Ago: Workers manually fed metal sheets into stamping presses and performed secondary operations like polishing and cutting. Today, robotic arms perform metal stamping and fabrication with higher efficiency and accuracy, monitored by a small team of operators.

20 Years Ago: Workers sorted, processed, packaged, and labeled food items manually, often in assembly-line formats. Today, automated conveyor systems, sorting machines, and packaging robots perform most tasks, requiring fewer employees for oversight and maintenance.

Your Workforce Is Getting Scarce

It’s tempting to believe the importance of your people reduces as automation increases. The opposite is the case. 

Employees with specialized skills become harder to replace. Fewer workers mean each has broader responsibilities impacting operations, quality, and efficiency. Losing one in twenty employees has a small impact. Losing one of two is significant.

You will rely on fewer employees to identify problems, offer fresh ideas, and try new things, so building their psychological confidence is vital for quality assurance, operations, and customer interaction.

Customer-facing roles remain high-touch, even as your processes become more high-tech. Employees in these roles maintain the company’s reputation and revenue.

Long-term employees often carry valuable institutional knowledge that cannot be automated even as they help integrate new technologies into existing processes.

As the human workforce grows more scarce in manufacturing, the importance of the people you retain skyrockets. Their expectations for quality leadership are higher than two decades ago and increasing. Is your company’s leadership quality rising at the same pace?

I created a new program, Building an Inspiring Culture®, that positions you to lead tomorrow’s workforce by giving you practical tools to develop a shared mental model for your culture, identify your company’s standards, gain buy-in, and create accountability that continuously improves future performance. You can check it out here.

I often use this program for group coaching because owners and CEOs have found that having a shared mental model, toolset, and dictionary puts people on the same page, improves trust, and strengthens communication. Please reply to this email or schedule a call to see if something like this would be a good fit for you.

Is it time to dismantle your DEI and ERG programs

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Are your DEI and ERG programs serving their purpose, or is it time for a radical reevaluation?

How to turn discomfort into growth.

Valuing Discomfort 

One of the most transformative experiences of my professional life was attending graduate school at the University of Wisconsin as a U.S. Army captain before teaching at West Point. As the only active-duty officer in the student body, I was immersed in a very different environment than I’d experienced in the past. 

I grew up in a conservative household, attended West Point, and served in the mostly conservative military. Madison’s liberal faculty and student body took me outside my comfort zone, and initially, I felt like a fish out of water. 

One professor remarked, “We don’t teach military history,” as if I could not study anything else. 

Stepping out of my comfort zone, I found myself among people who engaged in agreeable disagreements on various topics. This experience of embracing viewpoint diversity expanded my intellectual horizons and challenged me to reevaluate ideas I had previously held without much thought. 

Along the way, I developed the ability to listen without judgment to someone’s point of view and ask open-ended questions that helped me understand where they were coming from. 

Doing so develops your empathy skills, which, years later, helped our unit motivate a large insurgent group in Afghanistan to stop fighting and become allies. 

Those skills proved vital when I participated in unofficial meetings with Taliban representatives in 2017-8, resulting in the group writing an open letter to the American people requesting peace talks.

I wonder how differently I would have developed had I accepted loads of unsolicited career advice to avoid teaching at West Point and do what everyone else was doing.  

Taking off the Body Armor

I worry about the trend where people seek safety by bubble-wrapping themselves in their comfort zones. 

Like attracts like, and people naturally gravitate toward others who look, think, and act like them, creating comfort zones that can become exclusionary, even hostile, echo chambers.

Listening to new ideas and ones you disagree with takes courage; screaming at people from inside your comfort zone does not. 

Building bridges with people who look, act, and think differently than you do takes courage; fortifying your bubble wrap does not.

Joey Hutto, a captain during our 2007-8 deployment to Afghanistan, exemplified courage when he accepted a dinner invitation from village elders who’d been supporting the insurgents. Joey removed his helmet and body armor, handed his weapons over to his patrol, and walked with his interpreter into the home.

We were new to the area. The elders told Joey why ninety-five percent of the people were fighting us: years of civilian casualties and government corruption convinced them that the insurgents were the lesser of two evils. 

Joey listened to their point of view and asked follow-up questions so they knew he understood their message. “We cannot change the past,” he said. “But we can find ways to fix these problems and work together for a better future.” 

And they did.

Transcending Comfort

Strengthening your self-awareness and committing to growth are a good places to start if you want to become an ever-better version of yourself.

Knowing yourself, learning how others see you, and understanding what others need from you helps you approach people and situations with an open mind. This allows you to combat comfort zones that limit your exposure to new ideas and experiences. 

Chris Kolenda: Is it time to dismantle your DEI and ERG programs

Self-aware people recognize that growth requires entering their discomfort zones. Having guides (mentors, coaches, advisers, friends, etc.) to help you through vulnerability turns your discomfort into your growth zone. 

That successful journey leads to your transcendent zone, creating a new comfort zone for growing beyond.

Are you transcending or entrenching your comfort zone? 

  • When was the last time someone disagreed with you? 
  • How did you respond?

If your direct reports do not flag problems, offer new ideas, and try new things several times per week, you’re probably sending signals that you don’t brook disagreement. 


Employees may believe you lack of curiosity, react poorly when someone disagrees with you, or punish those who take a risk and fall short. Either way, people will self-censor, and you and your company won’t grow to new heights.

What discomfort zone are you entering next? Email me to let me know.

Is investing in your culture worth it?

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Should you invest in that off-site or training program that promises to strengthen your culture? 

I admit that I am a bit biased because I’m a believer. I support my clients in these ways, and I even have a trademarked program called Building an Inspiring Culture®. 

To give you a concise report, I asked my chatbot to outline the business case for Building an Inspiring Culture®.

Taken together, these studies suggest that investing in your culture can have a huge payoff, provided you invest in quality. 

The Wall Street Journal reports that culture drives employee retention, more so than pay and benefits. In a 2024 study, over seventy-five percent of job stayers reported satisfaction with their company’s culture, while less than twenty-two percent of leavers reported the same. 

Can’t afford to invest in your culture? These data points suggest that you can’t afford not to.

Are you ready to invest in your culture? 

Stay away from the goofy catch-me-while-I-fall-backwards gimmicks and one-off “morale-building” picnics.

Your best option is to invest in programs that provide you and your employees with simple processes that you can teach, evaluate, and improve.

Most leaders use unconscious processes that work to varying degrees. Because you cannot teach, evaluate, or improve an unconscious process, leaders get frustrated that employees are not picking up what’s intuitive to the leader. Employees get frustrated that the leader expects them to be mind readers and is not giving them the tools to be successful. 

What would be the impact if you had simple, practical tools to build your leaders and culture? 

The best places to find them are in my trademarked programs Becoming a WHY Leader® and Building an Inspiring Culture®. 

Becoming a WHY Leader® is a video-based program that moves you from being a “Hands-On” to an “Eyes-on, Hands-Off” leader, which is necessary if you want to lead multi-unit organizations and inspire people to contribute their best to your team’s success. 

Do you want to create a culture where people voluntarily meet your standards and expectations? Building an Inspiring Culture® is a video-based program that outlines the process for doing so. 

You can engage in these self-directed programs at your own pace and order. Do you want to improve your self-awareness or strengthen buy-in? Go directly to the module you want, watch a short video, and apply the process visual to get results immediately.

Each program retails for $997 or $1450 for both. 

I am offering lifetime access to you for $297 each or $397 for both until May 15th.

You can enroll in one or both of them using these links:

Becoming a WHY Leader®: https://sla.circle.so/checkout/becoming-a-why-leader

Building an Inspiring Culture®: https://sla.circle.so/checkout/building-an-inspiring-culture

Bundle It! Get both programs for just $397: https://sla.circle.so/checkout/why-leader-and-inspiring-culture

Do you want to license these programs for your organization? Send me an email, and we’ll set up a time to discuss.

How I learned to gain buy-in

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For most of my military career, gaining buy-in for change was pretty easy.

I had an excellent system for acquiring feedback, so I learned what frustrated my troopers and took action to address the problems. They readily helped me implement the changes. I presumed it was because they had confidence the game plan would work.

Afghanistan changed all of that.

In addition to clarity and confidence, people buy-in when they believe doing so leaves them better off. You can’t lecture people into that belief. They need to see it for themselves.

We were fighting for our lives against an enemy that seemed to get stronger even as we inflicted significant casualties. We believed people wanted us to attack the enemy and support the Afghan government officials. We were flat wrong. About 95% of the people we thought we were helping were actually trying to kill us, which is why their numbers swelled.

Three of our troopers were killed in those first sixty days of a 450-day deployment. More of the same was the safer choice regarding what the military expected, but it would not improve the situation. 

I’m a voracious reader and feedback consumer, so I looked to history, trusted advice, inputs from paratroopers and elders, and behavioral sciences for answers.   

To succeed, we had to build relationships with Afghans, especially those close to the insurgents. The challenges included getting our troopers to take risks in reaching out and convincing Afghans (many of whom were angry at international forces and the Afghan government) to reciprocate.

Asking troopers to go against years of training and Afghans to let go of decades of hatred toward foreign forces required clarity, confidence, and belief that change would make them better off. 

Chris Kolenda Drawing: 3 Elements of Buy-In

First, we had to clearly express what we wanted our troopers to do and the benefits of doing so. “X so that Y” is your formula for expressing clear guidance. We wanted to build relationships so that Afghans would see us as partners in their success, which would reduce incentives towards violence. 

Improving relationships with Afghans required trust-building. “Afghans hear with their eyes,” one elder told me—they believe what they see. We started with small measures and built from there.   

Our troopers and Afghans were confident the approach would work, provided the other side lived up to their commitments. Trust-building was essential for reinforcing confidence.

Inspiring belief was the biggest challenge. People have to believe they will be better off for making the change. Otherwise, they will undermine the initiative. Military tactics that seemed to improve safety, such as maintaining a threatening posture, aggressive driving, etc. actually increased hostilities thus heightening risk of injury or death. 

Small, incremental wins increased belief, which led to more significant measures in a virtuous cycle. Our troopers saw that stronger relationships reduced violence and improved security. Afghans saw that working together on mutually-agreed measures that they chose strengthened local governance and improved quality of life. Eventually, the top insurgent group in the area stopped fighting and switched sides.

You cannot force people to believe that they’re better off, they have to come to the conclusion for themselves. Discussing the potential change and asking your employees how they will be affected can reveal areas of opportunity. Giving people the agency to strengthen the positives and mitigate the negatives increases their sense of ownership and belief in the new policy or initiative.

How well is this process working for you? Email me to let me know. I love cheering your success and helping you get over obstacles.

Did you know that you read my newsletter over 50% of the time? I’m thrilled that there is so much value out in it.  

One of the ways you increase your value to others is by sharing what helps you grow. Whether it’s this blog or my newsletter or another, share and encourage your colleagues to experience what’s valuable to you. Sharing wisdom is like a rising tide lifting all boats.

6 Words you Should Never say to your Employees

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Can I give you some feedback?

Feedback

Those six words create anxiety in even the most self-assured and high-performing employees because they know what’s coming next.



The feedback sandwich.

Feedback employees

You hate giving feedback because you don’t want people to feel bad, so you try softening the blow by saying something nice up front and at the end while sandwiching the criticism in the middle.

You: “Joe, can I give you some feedback?”

Joe, cringing, “Uh, sure.”

You: “I liked your presentation. However, slide seven was too complicated; you said um and ‘you know’ way too many times, didn’t handle the third question very well, and seemed tired at the end. Nice work, overall, though.”

Huh?

That’s a classic feedback sandwich. The empty compliments are like the slices of bread; the criticism is the meat in the middle. No matter how you slice it, it still tastes like sh!t.

You feel better, but Joe’s ready to vote with his feet.

You might think the presentation was good, except for the points you mentioned, but Joe feels your compliments are insincere. You made the standard error of generalized compliments and specific criticisms. It’s easy for Joe to tell where you spent your mental energy and what you think.

It’s even worse because Joe believes you’re attacking him personally. Notice that you gave low-utility criticism. Joe cannot act on any of it. You’ve given him no way to get better.

Sound familiar?

What if you provided balanced, forward-looking feedback?

  1. First, you need a review after every presentation or significant action.
  2. You should provide compliments with the same level of specificity as the criticism.
  3. You must offer high utility: your compliments and criticisms should be actionable.
  4. Focus on action steps to sustain what’s awesome and improve what’s not.

You’re right back on track with:

  • “Let’s have our normal review.”
  • “Joe, slides 1-6 were terrific — tight, clear, and focused. Slide 7 was difficult to understand. In what ways can you make slide seven more like slides 1-6?”
  • “You nailed questions 1, 2, and 4 with specific answers backed up by data. What caught you off guard about question 3? What can I do to help you prepare for those big-picture questions?”

You get the idea. Your feedback (or feed-forward) needs to focus on improvement, not criticism. Joe needs to know you’ve got his back and want him to be successful.

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Get more action steps about leadership and accountability in these recent podcast interviews:

Conflict management and leadership in Wake-up Call hosted by Mark Goulston. https://mywakeupcall.libsyn.com/ep-370-chris-kolenda

Gaining buy-in: Modern Leadership hosted by Jake Carlson: https://jakeacarlson.com/288-biking-1700-miles-for-my-troops-with-chris-kolenda/

Leaders as exemplars in Get Uncomfortable with Shae McMaster: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-uncomfortable/id1557553154?i=1000575764193

How to get good at getting better: Getting Down to Business with Shalom Klein. https://anchor.fm/shalom-klein/episodes/Podcast-of-Get-Down-To-Business-with-Shalom-Klein–08142022—Chris-Kolenda–Chris-Kolenda-and-Kimberly-Janson-e1mbu0q