Top Nine List To Reboot Your Teams
ByLast week I keynoted a CEO association meeting in Silicon Valley 
and was asked about my chapter in the book Building a Legacy of Leadership , which advises college grads to mashup and reboot their careers. The question gave me pause because it made me think about how I use my advice to hire or promote people.
I like to recruit people with experience from more than one discipline or industry, in order to leverage their divergent perspectives into teams that can deliver extraordinary results. Whether leading an emerging growth company or rebooting part of a Global 2000 corporation, creating the right team is critical to success. So when hiring anyone, from a student fresh out of business school to a business unit President—I look for similar core strengths in people. Beyond relevant experience and character requirements, I find these traits pivotal to creating a growth culture in companies:
1. Smart—about where our industry is going and what to do about it.
2. Worldly—a global perspective that can spill over into the business.
3. Entrepreneurial—will do whatever it takes, with a client/revenue focus.
4. Hungry—with an innovative streak an ability to outperform our competitors.
5. Curious—about how to do “it” better, and can add value in defined time periods.
6. Dissatisfied—with statusquo and have a need to help drive growth to be happy.
7. Funny—injecting fun and humor where helpful to humanize the seriousness of business.
8. Teamers—who love working together on the mission, creating and communicating as a group.
9. Passionate—for the industry, brand or product…with a non-workaholic life balance that is motivating.
For another perspective, here are some people traits you may want to avoid.
Dean,
Thanks for this. Very good traits, although I’ve narrowed it down to two: Curious and temperament (which I guess is a combination of your last three traits).
Of course, the other attributes you mention are important as well but, in my experience, those can be developed through training and motivation. Someone who is curious and easy to work with can be developed.
Also, you might also be interested in this article I wrote about developing talent: http://www.digitaltonto.com/2009/how-to-win-the-war-for-talent/
Greg