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If you hire or manage people this will save you MONTHS of headache.

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

I just had a hard conversation with a client.

Their talent was failing.

We had 2 weeks to fix the issue.

Why?

The communication was horrendous.

But it actually wasn’t the talent’s fault.

See, their last company prioritized deep work (they wanted fewer updates).

So the talent ASSUMED that’s how his new company operates.

Now the founder of the new company is the opposite.

He prioritizes iterations. So he needs rapid updates.

The founder ASSUMED that’s how the talent knew to communicate.

The two had a rough start.

So we hit the emergency button to solve it.

How?

I’ll share the solution at the end.

Today’s issue is for you if you hire or manage a team.

We cover the mistakes that you make (without realizing it) when your new hire joins. Btw - the effects from these mistakes last for the lifetime of the hire.

🚨 Warning:
It’s nerdy. It’s in depth. But the next 5 min will save you MONTHS of headache.

Let’s dive in: 👇

So what went wrong the first time?

Every time I see one I write it down to help future clients avoid potholes.

I found seven problems that come up consistently.

This client hit almost all of them.

And when you hit these problems, talent:
➟ Fails tasks
➟ Doesn’t communicate
➟ Doesn’t work with your values

I can get you the best talent in the world - but if their environment isn’t set up to succeed, they’ll fail.

Ready for the problems? 👇

7 landmines you hit when they hire overseas:

Mess these up and you’ll be frustrated with your talent:

Mistake 1: You make the role seem fun and easy during onboarding (then reality hits harder)

If you set expectations that it’ll be easy, they’ll be demotivated when they find out it’s hard.

Instead, brace them for the challenge.

Make sure you let them know you’ll support them every step of the way.

Mistake 2: You don’t give talent resources to answer their own questions

You hired offshore to buy your time back and build leverage.

Leverage is when you do something once and the results last forever.

If you don’t build resources for them to answer their own questions, you’ll need to re-answer the question every time they forget (or you hire someone new).

Behind the scenes example (from TalentHQ):
I have an internal wiki that answers our team questions.

Anytime the team has a new question I ask the team to research the answer and put the answer into our wiki.

That’s leverage.

Mistake 3: Your 1:1s are too short

Most people do 30-min 1:1s.

Too short.

Because if it’s that short, your team will make things quick and to the point.

Normally you want that.

1:1s have 3 main goals:
1) Fix talent issues (train + motivate)
2) Find problems in your business you don’t know about
3) Find problems with your leadership

Most people only think about fixing talent performance issues. If that was the only goal for a 1:1 is then it could absolutely last 30 min.

But it’s not.

➟ You need your team to tell you the real reason they’re de-motivated.
➟ The hard truth about the problems in your business.
➟ The tough love in where your leadership isn’t great.

In a 30-min meeting, they’ll feel cut short. They keep things to the point.

You won’t find the problems deeply rooted in your business.

Mistake 4: You don’t train often because it’s an expense (not an investment)

Teach your team once… they’ll do it every day. For years.

That’s leverage.

But people only think about the time they spend training.

So they keep training sessions too short.

Talent doesn’t learn.

They get frustrated with the talent not improving.

At TalentHQ we do lunch & learns:
➟ How to communicate (with clients / internal)
➟ How to problem solve
➟ How we use tools (e.g., Notion, Asana, GHL)
etc.

To be clear;
If you can Google it, we won’t talk about it.

We hire problem solvers. It’s our core value.

BUT there’s “Ways of Working” that’s unique to your business.

And if you get individuals rowing the wrong way the whole thing breaks.

Here’s an example (from task management):
We use Asana:
➢ Do you chat about that task in Slack? or in Asana?
➢ Do you get them to agree to the task first? Or just assign it?
➢ What details do you need in the description so there’s no back-and-forth?

Teach them how your team works, and everyone rows in unison.

Mistake 5: You keep onboarding too high-level (& “assume” clarity)

Aligning on expectations is uncomfortable.

Because you feel like you’re beating a dead horse.

I repeat myself. A LOT. And sit in the discomfort.

Ask awkward questions like “what does this value mean to you?”

The opposite is just saying it out loud, no one remembers it. People ASSUME incorrectly. Then everyone is frustrated.

Want an example?

A core value at TalentHQ is speed.

Here’s how most explain it to a new hire.

Most onboarding:
“Our core value is speed. We want you to be as fast as you can. Got it?

Okay the next value…”

Onboarding at TalentHQ:
➟ Is speed different internal vs with clients?
➟ What does speed mean? Minutes? Hours? A day?
➟ How do we know which tasks need quality vs speed?
➟ Are default tasks done end-of-week? Or end-of-day?
➟ Is response time different based on channel (Asana vs email vs slack)?

Seriously.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
It feels obnoxious. But you actually have the answers to the questions implied in your head.

They’re expectations that you don’t tell your talent. You just expect them to know.

Then people get frustrated when there’s miscommunication.

Mistake 6: You only use “on-the-spot” feedback

It’s important to tell feedback on the spot.

But it’s just hard for you (& your talent) to remember all your feedback.

You just get frustrated when you repeat yourself.

So what I do is I keep a notepad with all the feedback I’ve given.

Bucket the feedback into 3 improvement areas.

And go over the improvement areas on every 1:1 until it’s been solved.

Track progress to make sure the talent gets better with each session.

Mistake 7: You don’t let them know how they get fired

This one is uncomfortable.

If you fire someone without letting them know it’s coming, it’s your fault.

Your team feels it’s random. They worry it could happen to them. Everyone gets de-motivated. You lose trust with your team.

It’s a mess.

You need to make the firing process clear.

And let them know you’ll give the talent fair warning for any “fireable offenses.”

That means you tell them directly:
“Your job is on the line. If you don’t fix XYZ in 3 weeks, you will get fired.”

Brutal conversation.

Everyone on your team needs to know:
1) What the fireable offenses are and
2) What the firing process is

Make the firing process clear from day #1 and they know it’s not random.

It keeps morale high and your team trusts you as a leader.

So how did we solve the client’s talent issue?

The client hit most of the landmines when he hired his talent.

So we had to start over.

We “re-onboarded” the talent.

The client called up the talent and said:

“Hey we didn’t set expectations right the first time. Let’s meet to clear expectation setting and define what success looks like here.”

Get onboarding wrong and you waste time micromanaging daily.

Get this right and your talent gets MORE than the results you want.

EVERY week.

52x a year.

Now that’s leverage.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
[email protected]
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TalentHQ

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