How to Spot Influence in an Interview, Before the Resume Says a Word

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Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of The Aspire for More with Erin podcast. Today we're going to talk about hiring for influence, not just hiring for skills, influence is going to lie in those soft skills, which is what we're gonna talk about a little bit today. And remember, the main goal for this podcast, every episode, is to be a podcast that mentors motivates and builds momentum for senior living leaders like you. The reason that we wanna hire for influence is because you don't just need people who do the work. The leaders inside of our communities need to be the people who are willing and able to develop others to do the work. People who multiply trust, impact, and leadership across your entire community. This is what we're doing wrong. We are focusing on all the work which keeps us stuck. But when we focus on developing more people who can do more of the work, we're creating more freedom. We're multiplying our impact, and we're creating a growth environment inside of our community, which I will tell you is lacking. And the more that we can grow people in our environment, the more accountability. The more influence, the more positive culture we have. The culture, that culture is what sells the community. It really is a cycle of positivity and growth that's certainly not full of problem free living, but understands that every problem, as cliche as this sounds, is an opportunity to grow. And that mindset is a choice. It's a choice you make every day because if you learn from it, that problem will eventually turn into another problem. And the better at solving problems you are the less power it has over you. And that's why hiring for influence is important. Because you can create other people to solve the problems the right way. So story time. How did Aaron learn this lesson? Oh, you know, the hard way, I mean, we all have positions in communities that turn over and over and over again, and I am no different. I struggled mightily with same problem over and over again. Hiring people that I knew that I would have to carry a lot of the weight. And I was willing to do that because I wanted to have the position filled rather than having a void at some degree, you stop wanting that and you start looking for not somebody who can just put pen to paper or data entry of assessments and different resident care updates that have to be done or sales, and you find somebody who's willing to do the deep work to make it better for everybody. And I did that and there were two positions that turned over quite a bit. And I learned, number one, I don't wanna have to carry the load for somebody. It wasn't worth it. I wanted to find somebody who could carry. The load themselves and come to me when they needed help. That was the leader I was looking for, or in another department. It was somebody who understood that sales was hard and sales and senior living is not a 30 hour job a week. It's a lot of hours of work in a week, and you have to want to sell this team the way that it is. And the sales director had to be a good representation of our passionate community, which meant that you needed to sell, not just be a face. And there's, two different departments, a lot of turnover until I started looking for the right things, not someone who was just going to do the tasks, be in the chair and show up. But someone that was willing to take the time and understand who we were as a community and add value to it. Someone who doesn't just exist, but someone who wants to thrive, and that takes somebody who understands their strengths. Take somebody who wants to make an impact in people's lives and who understands that at the beginning it's going to be difficult. We're going to understand all the details. We're gonna do the same things over and over again until you can build on it, and then we can identify the problem that's happening over and over again and solve it. Understand, being able, someone who understands that the value of connection is just as important, if not more than the value of competency. And that starts with the hiring manager, you know, someone to ask the appropriate questions to figure out, can this person develop people on this team, add value to this team, and grow this team to new heights of success. It sounds like a lot whenever you just want this position filled, but think about. You for a second. Do you want just anyone or do you want somebody who can make a difference? And if you become really intentional about what you want, you will find it. It is because you are not intentional with what you think. What you know that you want is why we make decisions. That do not serve us. The more intentional you are, the more you will see what you're looking for and what you're not looking for, which is really, really important. So the biggest mistake we make, and I'll say this again, is that we hire for competence and we forget to understand the value and the importance of connection. Managing will get the tasks done. But influencing is about building more people, developing more people into, to teammates that can carry the load and support each other. I remember in a community that was struggling after a really bad survey, the consultants that we had in the community would remind us, remind our caregivers, forget about the tasks. And focus more on the care of the residents and the memory care that we were in. Each hall had their own dishwasher and their own steam wells. They were responsible for serving the food, and they would get so caught up in the tasks of cleaning the plates of sanitizing, the tables of sweeping the floor, that it was hard, that sometimes the residents would get lost in the transition it was, don't focus so much on the tasks that we forget to connect with the residents. Focusing on tasks, we get lost because it's easy or checking stuff off the list. And if we forget about the connection, we can forget about influencing people if we're just gonna sit in the office and. Hit the check marks of all the tasks that we got done. There's so many other things that we missed out on when we're talking about influencing and developing people into higher levels of leadership or growing people up to be able to enter different levels of leadership because leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. Sales is influence. Nothing more. Nothing less. That's why I think that leadership and sales are the same. We have to be able to influence the people, our teammates, to want to do better, to want to be a part of a team that impacts lives in the community, that want to grow themselves. Can we create a growth environment inside of our communities? Yes, we can. We just have to be intentional about it. We have to focus on when we do our tasks and can we get those done quickly. And then can we get out on the floor and start adding value, influencing and growing people to understand more what they can do to make a bigger impact in this community. And it starts with hiring the right leaders, right? If we want thriving communities, if we want more freedom in our leadership. We need to start hiring leaders who lead with influence, not just authority. So when you are interviewing somebody, think about the best leader in your life, in your community, someone who's impacted your life in a powerful way, someone that you admire. Somebody that if we had more of that person, we would have. More leaders in our community, in our industry, in our company. What does that look like for you? What things would you look for, would you say? What would you name about that person that you would want to find in a new hire for a leadership position? For me, it would look like they were kind. They were loyal, funny, coachable, optimistic problem solver. You might even say creative problem solver. Willing, prepared. But what are all of those characteristics? Are they gifts, attitudes, or skills? Well, those aren't gifts. Because gifts are talents and we're born with those. They could be attitudes and they could be skills, but they're hard to measure, and so they would follow under soft skills. But even more than that, if they're a choice, attitudes and skills are a choice because you can learn how to do both of them. And when you hire people, when you hire leaders for influence, you wanna hire people that are coachable, that are honest, that are problem solvers, that they're planners, and they're willing. These are the things that are hard to measure, which is why they're called soft skills. Hello. They are the skills that are hardest to find right now. So maybe we should call them the hardest to find skills. I don't know. We only call them soft skills because they're hard to measure, not because they're hard to acquire and hard to strengthen. When you're looking to hire someone, we want to look for people who can build trust, who have accountability for their story, their life story. Accountability is key, and who can make connections with other people. So how do we know if they're trust builders? They're gonna say words, and you're gonna look for hints of words of transparency, consistency, and care. They cared about things in, they cared about people and opportunities in other places, they are consistent. You see that in the hiring process. You see that in their follow up process. You see that on their resume, and you ask questions about consistency because consistency builds trust, period. Consistency in the bad will clearly break it. Consistency in the good will build it. And then being transparent. Are they too transparent, which is a problem, Or if they're just the right amount of transparency, which is critical when we're looking at somebody who can build trust. And every department inside of our communities need to be able to build trust. To me, when you own your story, that's accountability. When you own your story, you embody the mission and you can align your personal values with the organization's values. I think a great question to ask is to bring up the company's core values. Maybe even bring up your own core values, like what's important to you, and then asking the applicant, what are your values? What do you value and how do they show up in your work? That question alone will tell you a lot about how they own their story and about do they understand their values and their strengths? Because if you are a leader who is focused on managing and leading through your strengths, you create influence and that means that it's easier to make connections. And when in order to make connections with your team, you're able to coach them, which means creating a growth environment, allowing them to see problems as opportunities to grow. That's coaching people through the process, not scolding them, not shaming them. It's okay, we have an opportunity to grow here. Let's talk about it. Coaches ask great questions and they listen and they develop others. Lou Holtz, the coach for Notre Dame, asked a lot of questions before he ever changed anything when he went into a new program, and he says, you can't learn anything without asking questions first. So remember, a good coach asks great questions. Because that's how you learn where your team is at and that's how you can figure out how to get them to follow you, where you want to go. And so it's the same thing for the hiring process. You gotta ask the good questions so you know, is this a task oriented person or is this a leadership oriented person? And even better can we get them both there if they or one or the other. Because that would be the dream, wouldn't it? So how to spot influence in an interview. So how do we do that? We go into an interview and we want to make sure that we can hire a somebody who has the potential to be an influenced based leadership. We wanna hire somebody who has the ability to be an influential leader that can create a big impact inside of your community. How can we find that? To me, a great resume will tell you what someone has done. Yes, that's what a resume is for. But great questions. This is how they show you. How they can lead. And so here are a few influence based questions that you can ask in every interview. If you want these questions and a few more, I can send them to you in an email. You just let me know. Um, there will be a link, um, on the show notes of this podcast. But here's the first question. Tell me about a time that you led through adversity and what did you learn? Now when you listen to this, you're going to listen. Do I hear building trust? Are they being transparent with me? Do they show that they care? Did they get coached and listen? Did they develop others or are they talking about it in a negative way? And is there a lot of blame and no accountability then you're gonna wanna ask more questions and you're gonna wanna listen to the rest of the interview because blame does not equal accountability. I can say a lot about a lot of different scenarios inside of senior living, and I would be right, but none of that matters because. When I blame people, I lose control of the future that I want. I stay stuck. But when I am accountable for my actions that contributed to whatever adverse circumstances going on in my life, I am empowered to learn from the circumstance. And so you want to listen for empowerment or blame. That's key. Because we want people who will build trust, who will own their story, which is accountability and who can make connections. Another question is, how do you encourage resilience in your team? How do you encourage resilience in your team, which is how do you teach your team how to overcome challenges and to keep going, how to rise above. What's going on in the community? How to overcome a negative interaction with a resident and turn around and be able to care for another resident who is actually loving and appreciative of the work that you do. That's resiliency. How do you teach that? That's an excellent question. To try to figure out can they build trust? Do they own their story, and can we help and coach people to rise above? What motivates you to invest in others? Now if you are looking for a leader who will invest in others, what motivates them to invest in others is a key question to see. Have they ever invested in someone? Do they even know what that is? Do they know how to answer that question? That's a critical question to figure out if there are influence based leadership skills in this particular hire. Can you give an example of how you modeled generosity as a leader? That is a great question for someone that helps you understand, do they know how to coach? Do they know how to listen, and have they developed others into better leaders? Every leader who works in senior living needs to have a desire to develop others underneath them. And to be able to delegate tasks to them so the leader can have more time to focus on developing others and growing people up. Because the further we get down into, you know, the next five and 10 years, the more that we're going to have to build the bench of our leadership team from the people who are currently working inside of our community. What is the plan in doing that? Have you ever coached someone who passed you up professionally and what was that like for you? It's a tough question, right? That certainly will help you find out can they own their story? Can they take accountability? Are they transparent? You know, are they happy for people? One of the reasons why I think leaders do not develop people the way that we should inside senior living is really for this very reason. I have had people who worked as a manager for me get called up to be a specialist within their department. Yeah, it hurt. But I was so happy for them. I had a regional director who was my counterpart at a community nine miles down the road. That hurt too, but it was a choice for me to choose to support her rather than. Resent her and it was the best decision I ever made, and it really brought me to a new level of maturity. That whole, I don't wanna yank her crown, I want to fix it. Type of mindset. How people answer that question is important for you. I was just transparent. It hurt. It stung. Actually, I've been honest about that in the past, but I deeply cared for both of those people and I wanted them to succeed. And I embodied the mission that this was my story. I am a community level leader and I bought into that, and my goal is to develop more leaders. So they can go and be better leaders making a great effort inside of the community, inside of our profession. That thought wasn't there consistently all the time, but it certainly stayed consistent after I got over the hurt. And if somebody can be that transparent with you. Then I believe that person is the influence based leader that you want. And it doesn't have to be obviously that extreme it, it can be, you know, in a different scenario where they became a team lead or somebody graduated before they did or to something to that degree. If you see transparency and you see growth in the answer. How they had a situation that could have been negative, but yet they turned it into a positive and they grew from it. They are your people if you trust what they're saying. These aren't questions. These aren't just interview questions. These are influence indicators and there's something that you want to make sure that you ask about the soft skills that are important to you. What does your community need? Every community has a story, and if you are an executive director or you are a director of nursing, or you are a regional director, knowing the story of the community of your region each department head and understanding what the strengths are and what the weaknesses are, and the type of skills that this new leader needs to have is very, very important. People support what they help create, and if you want a team that thrives, start hiring people. Start hiring people who compliment your strengths and cover your blind spots. Start valuing relationships as much as results, and know that the culture is built on trust and not titles and metrics alone. It's built on trust. That they understand this senior living profession is just as much a relationship built business as it is a real estate built business, as it is a regulatory built business. Because if you can align all those things together, you have a leader who understands. If you can say that you're a hiring for a director of nursing and your nursing expertise is going to be vital, but it's not gonna be the only thing that's gonna make you successful at this community, what will make you successful at this community? It's understanding that you are a vital role in the sales process. That you're a vital role in building and developing the care team to where they feel important and valued at every step of the way. That you're a vital role in communicating what the maintenance department needs to do to keep people safe, that you're a vital role in communicating to our family members to make them feel safe. That is what success looks like in a director of nursing role here. That's what you need to hire for. That's what your community needs. So before every new hire, before every interview that you do, make sure that you know what your community needs, what skills, both soft and hard skills that you're looking for, and ask yourself, will this person lead when no one is watching? Because that's where the real work is. We all know that. And can I trust them to grow others and not just execute the tasks because we're moving into a time inside of this profession where it's much, much more involved. Where success is much more than tasks more than filling out an assessment or doing a fire drill or making a phone call. It's about creating impact. It's about communicating value, and it's about ensuring that we all understand the role that we play in success.'cause it's not a one person game. It's not a two person game. And it certainly isn't a three person game. It is the entire team working together to get it done, whatever it is. And so when you go to hire, you wanna make sure that you hire somebody that fits where you wanna go. As a leader in the vision that you have, and that can align their own personal values to the company or the community's values. It's really important soft skills or is what is required to succeed today in this senior living profession, in this modern senior living profession that we're living in. And you have to intentionally look for it. And when you focus on strengths. And leading from your strengths and hiring for weaknesses, letting somebody be strong in the areas that you're weak and allowing that to happen, that's when influence happens. These are the influence based leadership skills that you wanna look for, and you don't even have to hire that out from outside. Look for it from within your community. Start training for it now. Build your bench because we're gonna need it. So don't just hire people to do the job. Hire the people who will develop others to do it even better. The best leaders don't add tasks to your plate. The best leaders understand that their job is to build and multiply. Influence and effectiveness, so all of our plates can be freed up. The more we teach people how to grow and do the more freedom we will have. Your goal as a leader is to create the growth and environment and your community, grow your people. And watch your occupancy and NOI and retention rates grow shortly after you start growing your people. It is just something that is a cycle that doesn't stop and speak to the 20% in the room that actually do the work and move the needle of success. Speak hope. Speak life, speak possibilities, and watch how maybe 20% of the 80% that doesn't want to work grow to the potential in the room. It starts with asking the right questions. It starts with being intentional with what you're looking for, and it starts with a mindset shift from you that it will get better because you are getting better. And that's what it requires because a community is just a community. Until a great leader steps in, it makes it a great place to live and work. And that's you. If this conversation, this episode resonates with you, feel free to share this. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. We are opening up our next, new Ed's playbook cohort. I have a course out with Aaron Fish. It's called the New Ed's Playbook, building an Impactful Culture. This is certainly part of that, and if you know a new leader or somebody who wants to be an executive director or grow within their leadership in the current position they're in. Send them my way, I'll be more than happy to coach them. Um, a lot of great things are being done in the coaching realm in senior living, and it's been exciting to be a part of that. As for always to my listeners, aspire for more for you and if you own your story, you will create the future that you want. Till the next episode, have a great rest of your day.