Want to improve, get a coach

Getting a coach is the best thing that you can do. I’ve done four years with two different coaches, and it is just fantastic. There’s what you say and there’s what people hear, and the gap between those two is sometimes enormous. What really matters is what people hear, not what you say.

Being a manager also isn’t about trying to become perfect. You’re not going to stop making errors. But it’s about having a mature appreciation for the fact that you’re a flawed human being. Probably everyone around you is a flawed human being. What are your flaws and how are you going to manage around them? What are your strengths? How are you going to optimize those?

I also learned a good trick, which is to ask somebody, “How are you doing?” They’ll usually say, “Good.” And I’ll say, “No, no, really. How are you doing?” And they’ll answer, “Good.” But then I’ll say, “Tell me what would you say if you weren’t doing good? How would you express that to me?” And then they tell you things. It’s partly little tactics, but the more important part is making it clear that you want to hear what they have to say.

2 Job Interview questions asked by Private Equity

Q. What’s an effective question that you use in most interviews?

A. What’s the best and worst career advice you’ve been given in your career? That gets to the underlying point about what people think is important. The best career advice part gets to what they think is important; worst career advice kind of tells you whether the person is trying to snow you. I want to know if you’re trying to snow me under the stress of the interview and try to tell me things that you know aren’t true — that you don’t make bad decisions, that you haven’t gotten any bad career advice, that type of stuff.

The point is that the interview is uncomfortable, but so are budget review meetings and so are a lot of meetings in day-to-day life. We’re not a bunch of perfect people who work together. We’re all people with flaws. I want to know if you’re somebody who feels comfortable enough to talk about dumb things that you’ve done or dumb advice that you’ve taken. Phrasing it in the form of, “Hey, what’s the worst advice you got?” at least gives you a half-step of distance to it. It tells you something about the character of the person.

Q. What’s the best question people should ask in an interview?

A. When they ask you, “Hey, do you have any more questions?” ask them, “How do I help you get a gold star in your review next year?” The person who’s interviewing you had to go through a lot of effort to get this opening, particularly in this economy. Be empathetic and realize that they are hoping that this position is going to make their life better. Ask them how you can be a part of that.

The "how are you doing" job interview

The “How are you doing?” interview for private equity partnered firms has about a 50 percent chance of success. That kind of interview is just a social call, right? You’re not actually seeking to find out anything about somebody’s performance. All you’re talking about is vague generalities, some task ability and whether there is cultural "fit".

In the Loewen & Partners' Talent method, the structure is more, “What have you done in the past relative to what this job needs?” So if I’m hiring a CFO, we’ll have the CEO and the family business owner and two more in the interview committee, usually Board members. We’ll sit down first and say, there are 51 different areas that could be important that we’re looking for in somebody — a good coach, analyst, public speaker, all these different areas that could be important. 

We have to pick six, and it’s really interesting to have these discussions with your colleagues. In some cases it turns out that everybody’s got a different six, and that’s a problem.

Once you decide on the six characteristics that are most important for the particular job you’re trying to fill, then there’s a series of questions for each one, always focused on past performance. It’s no guarantee of future performance, but it’s the best predictor. What are the tasks to get done and has the person exposure to that work before.

Private equity management style is all about the deal

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Private equity is about the deal and the numbers, so interest in human side of managing is not as visible. I enjoy the people side of growing a business. So the management style that I have is first, share your passion. Explain to people why it’s an exciting idea and how they can be involved in it. In an entrepreneurial business, the most important thing, the thing that creates the most excitement and value and interest in the business is the big picture — where are we going. You can destroy little bits of it by all these little errors that you make. But if you fix all of them and you don’t have the big picture, then you’re never going to get there. Really engaging people in that big picture is way more important, I think, to success.

So I’ve learned to do the big-picture stuff, and I can be really great at the analytics — sitting down and running the numbers. What I’ve had to learn over time is the middle part about, O.K., how do you build a team? How do you assign a team to do something? How do you give them enough rope to be successful, and when do you take it back? The middle part has been trial and error for me.

5 Leadership commitments to make today

This list reminds me of Deming, the father of TQM, and his 14 point plan for top quality companies. The 5 Practices of Leadership come from a highly recommended book written by Kouzes and Posner. They identify what they call "five leadership practices common to successful leaders".
Kouzes and Posner go on to suggest ten practical "behavioral commitments" among those leaders studied. I liked the reminder and I know this will inspire you once you see that you are probably trying to do them already.
Here they are:

1 Practice: Challenge the process 
Commitments: 
(1) Search for opportunities and 
(2) Experiment and take risks

Practice: Inspire a shared vision
Commitments: 
(3) Envision the future and 
(4) Enlist others

Practice: Enable others to act
Commitments: 
(5) Foster collaboration and 
(6) Strengthen others

Practice: Model the way to the desired objectives
Commitments: 
(7) Set the example and 
(8) Plan small wins

Practice: Encourage the heart of everyone involved
Commitments: 
(9) Recognize individual contribution and 
(10) Celebrate accomplishments