Who can you trust? 3 lessons on how to anticipate — and avoid betrayal in your

Anticipation is power. When it comes to running a business, this couldn’t be more true. But you can’t see everything, because you’re not superhuman – you can’t be everywhere, all of the time. You need a team to help carry the business and to help it grow. Unfortunately, not everyone will be honest about what’s happening when you’re not looking.

The stories are everywhere: cases where business owners have had the rug pulled out from under them, been taken advantage of, or “bamboozled,” when they least expected it. What is required for building trust in the workplace – building trust in teams and the people you entrust with your business’ success? Here are three lessons from Tony you can use to avoid those damaging situations.

Lesson #1: Know your partners

“I’ve had partners I got in business with who are well-qualified, and they turn around and they lied about what they had.” — Tony Robbins

One of the most important components of learning how to build trust and confidence in the workplace is understanding that partnerships can be highly beneficial to businesses. Partnerships allow you to take on new feats and collaborate with like-minded individuals to turn something small into a larger success. But partnerships can also be tricky and they require one thing above anything else: trust.

Without that five-letter word, you don’t have a partnership, you have a shakedown. In order to avoid an unfortunate result, do your research. Dig into your potential partners’ credentials and do a thorough check of their background. And keep this Tony tip in mind: Just because someone comes to the table with money doesn’t mean they are credible. Building trust in the workplace does not mean you need to be naive. Rather, do your homework.

Lesson #2: Put people in their place

“I can remember vividly coming home from one of my seminars early in my career, my little company with 12 employees, and 11 of them showed up at the airport to tell me that if I didn’t fire the person who was running the show they’d all leave even though they loved me. And then I came back and found out that she spent all the money, and I needed $50,000 to keep the doors open, and I didn’t have $50,000. I needed it by Monday, and it was Friday.” — Tony Robbins

Character is something we develop as we grow into adulthood. It’s influenced by many factors, and without any real effort, is unlikely to change. As Tony states above, not all of the people you hire will have a character that aligns with your values or beliefs. When that is the case, they might think a certain behavior is acceptable that you clearly think is not. Part of building trust in teams is hiring people who align with your own values and beliefs, and the conflict of questionable character will cease to exist. Meanwhile, putting the wrong person in a position of power can be detrimental to your company, so be careful to hire the right people and put them in the right roles.

Lesson #3: Build muscle

“Life gives you pain until you build enough muscle so that it no longer can take you down. I used to try to figure out how to deal with $50,000, and then I had a ten million dollar thing, and now I’ve got a hundred million dollar thing. So when you learn how to do a hundred million dollar thing, you make $500 million. It’s all a psychological threshold of control. The more you can handle, the more is given to you.” — Tony Robbins

From questionable partners to money-embezzling employees, these people will only help you to identify what you’ve been doing wrong so that you don’t make the same mistakes again. It’s these lessons that help us to build the muscle we need to make our business rock-solid. Although it may sound counter-intuitive, learning to say no is actually key to building trust in the workplace. That is, in learning to deal with our errors of judgment in who we select as partners, we develop the stamina necessary to made difficult decisions and cut off people who harm our business instead of helping it. Of course, if you can be vigilant about these common misfortunes ahead of time, and take heed to Tony’s lessons, you might save yourself a significant amount of loss of both time and money.

Building trust in teams is smart business

What does building trust in teams have to do with your broader business strategy? Is building trust in the workplace merely feel-good fluff, or is it a practical component of a strategic plan for keeping your business healthy and profitable? Let’s look at the statistics.

Forbes reports that a whopping 55% of CEOs believe that a lack of trust in the workplace is not just unhelpful; it constitutes a “foundational threat” to the company’s viability. Academic studies concur, revealing demonstrable correlations between businesses building trust in the workplace and achieving economic success. The correlation makes sense, given the trust-based nature of the human psyche. Anyone, whether they are a CEO or a part-time employee, is unlikely to convey all their resources of time and energy to someone they don’t trust. So, when there is a lack of trust in the workplace, you’re not going to be able to maximize on your team’s full capacity. Conversely, when trust is part of a company’s culture, people can relax and collaborate, thereby leveraging their (and the company’s) full potential.

If logic is not convincing enough, the numbers are clear: Compared with companies low on trust in the workplace, employees of high-trust companies report feeling more energetic at work (by 106%), more engaged with their jobs (by 75%), less stressed out at work (by 74%) and more satisfied with their lives in general (by 29%). And, employees of high-trust companies take 13% fewer sick days than employees of low-trust companies. So, take action today to learn how to build trust and confidence in the workplace.

“Hire superstars only; don’t settle for average…The best predictor of their future performance is their past performance, actually.” – Eben Pagan

Running a successful business is not just about selling a product or service. To get to the top of your industry and stay there, you must learn how to hire employees who will stick with your company for years to come.

The cost of hiring the wrong person is high, but the cost of keeping the wrong person is even higher. According to one well-known recruiter, the real cost of bringing on a new employee is $240,000. But if you keep the wrong employee for, say, two and a half years before firing and replacing them, that bad hire will have cost you close to $840,000 when you factor in total compensation, hiring, disruption costs, severance and so on.

Your investment in learning how to find good employees far outweighs their contribution. Even if you go through all of the right processes to hire the right person, you may end up with someone who interviews well but isn’t an outstanding performer. That’s why entrepreneur Eben Pagan says, “Hire slowly, fire quickly.”

The bottom line of a business is not its monetary bottom line – it’s the people whose energy and efforts make the company what it is. Your people are part and parcel to your strategy for building a profitable business. Unlocking the keys to how to hire employees – from finding good candidates to evaluating performance post-hire – will save you the time and expense of a bad fit.

How to hire great employees

Instincts alone aren’t enough to properly find, hire and evaluate employees. You also need the right skills and strategies.

1. Understand your company values

Before you can determine how to hire employees who are a good fit, you must understand who you are as a company. As a leader, you set the bar for your company’s culture and core values, which are readily apparent in your customer’s experience. When you run a business, you’re leading a group of people with needs and feelings as well as skills and job roles. Without the capacity to communicate your vision and what your company stands for, your recruiting process falls flat. 

2. Leverage your network

Leverage is a key business concept that means using the resources you have in order to achieve your goals. As Tony Robbins says, “It’s not the lack of resources, it’s your lack of resourcefulness that stops you.” In terms of learning how to find good employees, resourcefulness means looking to your network, including referrals from your current employees, mastermind groups or mentors and even social media. Surround yourself with smart, hard-working people – then encourage them to share your job posting.

3. Look for a fit with your team

In one study 86% of executives said poor collaboration is a major cause of business failure. They understand that teamwork has a direct effect on productivity and profitability. Use the DISC assessment to evaluate your current team, then use it as a tool for how to hire great employees. It will help you understand the soft skills, personality type and communication styles each potential hire might bring to your team.

4. Prioritize communication skills

When it comes to mastering how to find good employees, research shows that employers prioritize a recruit’s communication skills over any other attribute. Researchers surveyed nearly 1,000 recruiters who solicited potential hires on business school campuses. These recruiters put communication skills like speaking, listening, writing and presenting at the top of their list of desirable traits.

Why does a so-called “soft skill” like communication play such a pivotal role in learning how to hire great employees? Communication skills are more elusive than hard skills like technical knowledge, distinguishing average talent from rockstar talent.

5. Evaluate new hires

Your responsibilities don’t end once you’ve decided on the ideal candidate and hired them. You must follow up – and you must go beyond the typical questions to ask new hires and dig deeper. Eben Pagan has created a straightforward system to determine whether your new hire’s performance meets your standards as quickly as possible – it’s called the daily update.

In this interview, available in its full length in the DVD set of The New Money Masters , Eben teaches Tony Robbins his questions to ask new hires as part of his system for evaluating new hires. Embracing the communication strategies behind Pagan’s method is one of the most effective ways to learn how to hire employees.

6. Engage in daily communication

One crucial trait of the daily update is that it happens every day for the first 30 days. By engaging in daily communication with new employees, you’re able to pinpoint and solve problems and determine if they are a superstar – or cut ties if the fit isn’t there. Ask your new hires three questions at the end of each day:

What they did that day and the results they got Any problems or challenges they faced Questions they have for you

By soliciting your new hire’s honest feedback, you’re also able to pinpoint areas where your training processes or overall operations need revamping. This straightforward and efficient tool could save you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 7. Work on your leadership skills

A business is only as strong as the psychology and skills of its leader. Discover your business identity to understand yourself more fully and build a team that will propel your company to the top. Learn how to build better connections – one of the most fundamental ways to hire good employees, since it’s this rapport that ultimately cements the relationships that hold your company together. Work on your communication skills to create a culture of strategic innovation where creativity and problem solving can flourish – and that creates raving fan employees who want to bring in more superstar talent.

Your hiring practices can make or break your business. When you understand how to hire employees through a careful and strategic onboarding system, you’re able to create a passionate, cross-functional team that thrives.

How do I get (and keep) the people that will grow my business?

Hiring employees: Does it strike fear into your heart? You’re not alone. Even some of the most accomplished entrepreneurs and managers have a tough time when it comes to learning how to hire employees. Hiring the wrong people can drain your team’s enthusiasm, productivity and morale while cutting into your bottom line. But with a strategy in hand, you can minimize the chance of error and create a winning team. Your first step is creating a hiring-an-employee checklist to guide your staffing decisions.

The process of hiring employees is one of the biggest (and most expensive) pitfalls for any business looking to build a team that works. A well-known recruiter estimates the cost of bringing on a new employee as roughly $240,000. However, hiring the wrong employee can cost upwards of $840,000. The process of firing someone can be trickier than hiring, so you need to take pause before bringing someone on board. So how do you develop a strategy for hiring employees that will result in team members who will turn your company into an even better place than it was when they started working for you?

No matter how many interviews, tests or evaluations your team devises, if you’re not looking at the right metrics or asking the right questions, you might hire someone who ultimately will leave in a matter of weeks or months. Even worse, you could hire a toxic employee who ultimately erodes your company culture. This will force you to start the search all over again and might even involve some damage control that wastes time, money and human resources.

Here we look at how to hire employees effectively and how to ensure you get the right staff in the right places. It breaks down to just three parts: Can Do, Will Do and Team Fit.

When you’re ready to add to your team, knowing how to hire employees to work for your company is crucial. Many business owners have no idea how to employ an effective process for hiring employees. You’re worried that you’ll bring someone on board who doesn’t have the necessary skills for the job or isn’t a good cultural fit, but that must not be your focus. It’s not the person you hire that destroys a company in the long run – it’s the person you fail to fire.

The wrong people can take an exceptional product or service and destroy it. Have you ever gone to an incredible restaurant where you received terrible service? Think of that server at the five-star restaurant who basically ignored you during the entire meal; even if you still enjoyed incredible food, the experience was ruined by your rude waiter and you most likely won’t be back.

On the flip side, hiring employees who excel at their jobs can take a mediocre company, product or service and make it amazing. This is why understanding how to hire employees is a skill that sets great companies apart from the rest and makes them talkably different. The same logic applies to intimate relationships and friendships – it’s also the reason why so many of us go through multiple partners and friend groups throughout our lives. You need to select the right people and have them in your life at the right time. And whether it’s within your romantic relationship or a potential employee, before you bring someone new into your life, you need to learn how to recognize a good fit – and this all starts with knowing the right questions to ask. Good questions can lead to insights and breakthroughs within yourself and can also lead to uncovering crucial details about potential employees.

Marketing expert Jay Abraham suggests employing “Socratic interviewing,” a strategy for hiring employees that involves asking potential hires questions no one has ever asked them before. These questions tell you more about them as unique individuals and not only reveal their working style, but it also makes them feel valued as people and not just potential employees. If you listen deeply to their answers, you can also learn a lot – not just about them, but about the position you’re hiring for, their perspective on your industry and a number of other topics. According to Jay, giving them the chance to talk deeply is a great gift – it’s rare that a potential employer acknowledges them on this level. With the Socratic interviewing process, you’ll build a team of raving fan employees who will do a lot of your recruiting for you. Hiring an employee: Checklist questions

Obviously you’ll have to ask some practical questions to determine if the person you’re interviewing is a good fit. When hiring an employee, checklist questions aligned with the Can Do/Will Do/Team Fit model will provide all the information you need to make strategic staffing decisions. When you’re in the process of hiring an employee, checklist the following items. 

Question 1: Can this position be outsourced?

Before you even begin recruiting new hires, determining the positions they will fill is a critical first step. If your first hires tank, you’re back at square one before your hiring process even got off the ground. When you’re strategic about it, outsourcing is an excellent strategy for delegating so you don’t wear yourself or your team too thin – or hire for an unnecessary position.

To outsource your company’s work effectively, first determine what duties and outcomes must happen on a regular basis, from streamlining operations to increasing your sales. Then, determine the skills, abilities, assets and weaknesses of your team and yourself. With this information in place, you’re able to determine who’s best suited to what task. From there, hiring employees becomes a matter of filling in the gaps. And when you understand what the position you’re hiring for entails, you’re able to create a compensation package that will attract rockstar talent. 

Question 2: Does their personality match their résumé?

Part of learning how to hire employees is discerning whether someone’s real-life personality matches their on-paper persona. A potential employee who looks great on paper but doesn’t live up to that persona is not likely to last long. Even if a candidate has years of experience in the position you’re hiring for, if they’re not equipped to take on the interpersonal work of fitting into your company’s culture, you’ll be restarting your hiring process soon. Use your own interpersonal skills to build rapport and create connections with potential hires so you can discern what’s real from what’s manufactured.

Question 3: Can they do the job?

Usually looking at a résumé and reviewing a person’s background tells you if someone has the experience needed to perform any given job – that part’s straightforward. If they truly have the skill sets needed, this question can be answered quickly when hiring employees. Can they perform the task at hand? And if the person doesn’t have the right skill set already, ask yourself, can they learn it – or will they struggle to understand and execute effectively? More importantly, does your company have the time and resources to invest in getting this person up to speed? You might be more likely to invest in training someone who you see as a great cultural fit for your organization, regardless of their past experience.

There’s much more to learning how to hire employees than just knowing if the potential employee can complete the necessary tasks. When you’re considering hiring an employee, checklist questions must also uncover their fit in the long term.

Question 4: Will they do the job well long-term?

When it comes to how to hire employees who are right for your company, the question of their long-term fit becomes a bit more complex. After all, you can’t know for sure what the future holds. But don’t spend too much time worrying about a future you can’t control – you just need to know if this person seems like someone who will be committed to your brand for the long haul. To figure this answer out, you need to understand what the person’s goals are as well as their true nature. If the job feeds that nature, chances are they’ll stick around. That’s the secret to hiring employees who will stick around for the long haul.

For example, can an introverted person serve as an effective salesperson? Of course. Will they sell effectively long term? No. Why? Because people’s natures rarely change. When you find a position where a person’s nature is rewarded by the job itself and they possess the necessary skills, you’re well on your way to making a good hire­ – but the prospective employee needs to pass the final question to really fit into your hire strategy. You must learn how to hire employees who fit your company culture like hand-in-glove.

Question 5: Are they the right team fit?

Many companies have vague wording or concepts about what “team fit” means, but it’s important to dig a little deeper when it comes to your process for hiring employees. At its base, fit comes from a person meshing well enough with the rest of the department or business at large to be a valuable contributor and productive asset to the whole. You want to hire someone who is engaged with not only the tasks associated with their role, but someone who can seamlessly integrate into the social aspect of your office as well. Having variety is crucial for creating a cross-functional team, but if the person drags down the whole company because of their dramatically different personality, habits or viewpoints, they’re not a fit. When it comes to mastering how to hire employees, you must know that person’s career goals for the position.

Take how Tony has changed the way he hires his personal assistants. Over the years he found that if he went to a Hollywood-based association of personal assistants and hired someone, many of them did not last very long. The reason? Their real goal was not to be a personal assistant. Their real goal was to become an actor, actress, director or writer of TV or films. They loved the job because his network connected them with a lot of important people. They did the job, but they did not perform well or stick around long term because ultimately their goals were different than what the job was about.

Ask prospective employees where they see themselves in five, 10 or even 20 years. What does their response tell you about their priorities? Do these values align with the nature of your business? This is also the step in the process of hiring employees where Jay suggests you encourage your potential hire to ask questions as well. If they aren’t asking lots of insightful questions about your organization, your company vision and how they fit into the future plans of the company, they may not be a good fit. Jay will even give his potential hires good questions to ask if they can’t come up with them on their own. He explains he does this because hiring the right person is not a one-way street. You should be looking to build a relationship with your new hire and it’s important for both of you to be as honest as possible about your goals, values and projected future.

Determining fit is a critical component of creating a hiring-an-employee checklist that helps your company soar. If you don’t start the relationship off on the right foot, it’s likely your new team member will be unhappy in the position and will not be effective in helping you deliver the ultimate customer experience.

Knowing how to hire employees starts with knowing yourself

Of course, evaluating someone else becomes even more difficult if you have no sense of your own nature and patterns. How can you think about creating an effective process for hiring employees if you’re unclear of how you work yourself? Learn about what excites people and understand what inherently drives you. This is the root of hiring strategically. What’s also crucial is understanding business identity types that are different than your own – all are key components of becoming an effective leader. And when you’re a better leader, you become better able to recognize the potential and drive in others. 

Knowing if you’ve hired the right person

A strategy for learning how to hire employees does not stop after that person has accepted your job offer. There are plenty of employees who looked great on paper and in the job interview then fail to be good additions to your company. The key is to find out as soon as possible if your new hire was a good choice.

You’ll be incredibly effective at hiring employees when you start getting immediate information and feedback about how your new hires are doing in their positions. At the end of each business day, ask your new employees to send you an email that details the following three pieces of information:

1. What they did that day and the results they got

2. Any problems or challenges they faced

3. Questions they have for you

Not only does this help you develop a quick connection with your new team member, but it also helps you identify red flags early on and gives you a better read on the office environment in general. It can also help you identify your new hire’s communication style, which will assist you in talking to them in the future. As part of your hiring process, ask your new team member to send this email every day for the first 30 days. This will help you see if you’ve hired a superstar or if you need to cut your losses and find a better fit.

Hiring employees who will fit in with your company should be at the top of your list when it comes to being a business owner. When you know how to ask the right questions and develop a good strategy for determining if they’re the right fit, you can strengthen your company and build a stronger team.

Learning how to hire employees effectively is one of the most powerful moves you can make for your business and brand. Tony Robbins’ free audio on making tough decisions is your resource for getting to the bottom of who to hire for your company’s success. With the right information and support, hiring employees is an empowering process that takes your company to the next level.

6 proven recruitment strategies How to get the talent you need to achieve geometric growth Getting the right people in the door is a perennial challenge for business owners and leaders. Common complaints – from Fortune 500s to early stage startups – center around the lack of effective recruitment strategies and how long the process takes in order to find good people.

Employee recruitment strategies

The goal for every business owner should be to hire a team that not only works, but also one that is made up of raving fans of your business. This does not happen by accident. If you hire like everyone else does, you’ll get the same type of employees – some who may be committed to your company, but many who come to work for the paycheck and who are not passionate about what they do. The goal of effective recruitment strategies is to attract superstars – those who treat your business like their own and who find purpose and value in what they do every day. Not only will this improve your organizational culture, but it will also strengthen your brand and make your company talkably different.

The exciting news is that when done correctly, recruiting can be simple and it can drive your business growth. These nine proven employee recruitment strategies will help you get where you need to be in terms of hiring – all you have to do is change your mindset and incorporate a few small steps into your process.

Types of recruitment strategies

There are a number of recruitment strategies you can choose from. The most effective plans blend a variety of types to come up with an overall approach. Here are some of the most common:

Referral recruitment strategies

When your current employees are happy, they’re likely to encourage friends and acquaintances to apply when job openings arise. You can encourage these referrals with bonuses or reward programs, but the key to this strategy is treating your current employees right.

Social media recruitment strategies

Social media is not only good for fundraising and connecting with customers – it’s also an excellent recruitment tool. Having a solid brand on your social media platforms and getting employees involved is a good way to create an online community that is responsive to job postings.

Event recruitment strategies

Getting out in the community is an excellent way to find candidates and promote your company. Job fairs, networking events and college campus visits are all effective ways to network in-person at events.

Recruitment strategy examples

Looking for more specific recruitment strategy examples? Incorporate several of the following to create a cohesive plan to find and hire superstars.

View how to recruit employees as part of the business

Employee recruitment strategies are often viewed as a challenge because business leaders separate the act of hiring from the rest of the business. Urgent tasks like generating revenue, increasing profits and growing market share take immediate precedent; hiring is often relegated to the back burner.

In reality, learning how to recruit employees can make or break your business and should be one of your core business practices. When you add a person to your workforce, you aren’t just pulling their skills into the mix­ – you’re also adding an entirely different personality with its own set of expectations. You hope they’ll fit in with your existing employees and perform, but failing to do so can severely upset the performance of the business and the company culture – and it’s expensive, too.

Darren Hardy, author of The Entrepreneurial Rollercoaster, notes, “When you’re hiring the wrong person, you’re not only paying them, you’re paying them to light piles of your money on fire, spread a cancer through your building and run your rollercoaster [business] right off the tracks and into the ground.”

Stop seeing recruitment strategies as something entirely separate from your business. Recruitment is your business.

2. Treat recruitment strategies like sales

Employee recruitment strategies are similar to a sales process. Think about it: Your customers and clients buy your products and services because of the value they add to their lives. You reach your target audiences by understanding who they are, what they need and how they communicate. You meet the customer where they are and offer them things they can’t access on their own.

You can apply the same logic to your employee recruitment strategies. Talented candidates are looking for the opportunities and experiences that working in your company can provide. Do you know who they are? Designing a persona for your ideal candidate – including experience, interests and cultural fit – can help you more objectively evaluate applicants. Are you looking for these individuals in the right place – at conferences instead of job boards, for example? Are you using language that speaks to the talent you seek? Are you recruiting on sites or at events that attract talented people in your industry?

You also need to make sure you have a consistent brand. If you have a culture of innovation and collaboration but your website reads more like a tax code, you’re not going to bring in the talent you want.

Meet your talent halfway. You need to locate people who will contribute to your brand; at the same time, you must present your company as a viable option for them since most employees want to be part of a company that aligns with their values and goals.

3. Know your business

Proven recruitment strategies require a clear understanding of where your business is today and where you want to take it moving forward. By understanding these two things, you can prioritize which hires need to come first and where to allocate valuable hiring resources.

One of my clients is a co-founder of an early-stage online startup in the beauty industry. They’re on the brink of closing their first round of funding. The business has already achieved a certain amount of success, and to move the company to its next phase of growth, they have to quickly make additional sales and increase revenue. With that in mind, their first two investments in people once the checks clear will be in digital marketing and sales. Once you realize what you need to make your business stand out, you have a clearer picture of how to recruit employees.

4. There are two parts to every prospect

The best employee recruitment strategies involve seeing applicants in the right way. Picture your ideal candidate being made up of two main factors: skills and style. These are the two elements you need to gauge as you learn how to recruit employees. As you consider each candidate, ask yourself the following: Are they capable of executing the tasks they will need to perform the job well? It seems like a given, but if a hiring executive isn’t clear about what specific skills are needed, even this part can be a shot in the dark.

The second piece is style, or cultural fit. If your company is an energetic, collaborative and innovative place, someone who is a great individual contributor but doesn’t like working in teams isn’t going to fit in. You need someone who will seamlessly merge with your current workforce, collaborate with their peers and focus on the tasks at hand. Understanding their personality and working style is a vital part of your recruitment strategies.

5. Develop a hiring process

You’ve probably heard that employee recruitment strategies take up “too much time.” Yes, hiring can be time-consuming if you’re just guessing at it and deploying whatever ideas come to mind. However, by developing recruitment strategies that you can implement with each candidate, you’ll streamline your process immensely.

Companies often create low barriers for candidates to apply, resulting in wasted time evaluating candidates. For example, you post an ad on Craigslist that reads, “Looking for rock star salespeople who can produce great results and want to be a part of a fun team. Send your résumé to this email if you’re interested.”

What do you think you’re going to get with broad recruitment strategies like this? Hundreds or thousands of résumés from unqualified people that you or someone on your team has to review, that’s what.

Many companies that struggle with finding good employees have problems not because they can’t find candidates – it’s because they find too many who aren’t a good fit. Create a hiring process that has a high barrier to entry. When I ran recruiting for Dow Jones, we built a summer innovation lab for which we hired talented, creative college students. In addition to asking for a résumé and cover letter, we invited candidates to answer essay questions about their own creativity and innovation, as well as do recorded video interviews.

This process ensured that only the most interested and dedicated talent applied, and that those who we did invite for interviews were highly vetted before they walked in the door.

6. Put the interview process to work

Preparing more strategically for the interview itself can help you secure the right people and is a necessary part of proven recruiting plans. Interview time is often eaten up by “getting to know you” conversations. Trim out some of this social element and be deliberate about the questions you’re asking. We all know that asking the right questions is the only way to get the answers we need, so well thought-out queries are key when it comes to how to recruit employees in this stage.

If you know the role you are hiring for requires flexibility under pressure, creative thinking and obsessive attention to detail, have the candidate offer you specific, measurable examples of where they have demonstrated these three qualities. Don’t settle for answers that simply offer a yes or a no. “Tell me more” is a great way to dig into the information that will get you the talent you need to drive your company’s growth. Always have specific questions that align with an open role, and most importantly, don’t forget to keep your brand’s ultimate vision in mind.

The keys to hiring smart when running a family business

Nepotism in the workplace has always been a hot topic, especially in politics and business. Some examples are Donald Trump putting his daughter and son-in-law into advisory roles during his presidency and John F. Kennedy nominating his brother as attorney general. In the business world, Rupert Murdoch’s son, James, has attained a powerful role thanks in part to his father, while much of the Walton family has been involved in the running of Walmart.

Nepotism in the news brings up important questions: Is hiring family members always wrong? How can I spot and prevent nepotism in my business? As a business owner, you’ll likely face these questions at some point. Now is the time to get prepared. What is nepotism in the workplace?

Nepotism in the workplace is the practice of showing preference toward family or friends, and it often rears its head in the workplace when a higher-up at a company selects someone they know for a new position or promotion. Many people picture companies bypassing strong applicants for a position in favor of hiring family members who can’t do the job. Those relatives promptly take advantage of their position, taking much, giving little and generally poisoning company culture.

Despite this negative connotation, nepotism in the workplace is a common practice in the business world. It occurs frequently in politics, large corporations, non-profit organizations and small businesses. Types of nepotism include

Reciprocal: A family member accepts a position because they are financially dependent on the employer, they feel a sense of obligation and loyalty or nepotism has become a norm in their family.  

Entitlement: A family member accepts a position because they feel entitled to it. Their decision isn’t based on family ties, which can lead to more negative effects than reciprocal nepotism.

Cronyism: There is a difference between cronyism and nepotism, but they’re often confused. Cronyism is similar, but it is when you hire friends or give promotions to close colleagues rather than family. Cronyism often happens in politics.

Is nepotism in the workplace unethical?

Nepotism often provokes the image of a “good old boys” network where powerful executives bring in unqualified buddies or relatives, resulting in corruption and other issues. But hiring family members isn’t always unethical. When utilized properly, it can be a way for small business owners to create a legacy as large corporations continue to swallow up independent companies.

When someone hires family members to work in the business before turning it over to them, nepotism in the workplace transforms into on-the-job training for future owners. Rather than leaving the business to children who have no knowledge of the business’ inner workings, the owners can groom the next generation and ensure they are up to the task. Looking at it this way, nepotism can be a positive for a business.

What about as an employee? If you’re a hiring manager, can you get fired for nepotism? As long as you take a step back, look at things from a distance and make an objective case for or against hiring a friend or family member, rather than automatically hiring them, nepotism in the workplace isn’t unethical. Still, it can have negative consequences if not properly monitored. Negative consequences of hiring family members

As a business owner, you need to do more than ask “What is nepotism in the workplace?” You need to know how to spot it. Here are a few signs that hiring family members isn’t working.

1 Poor work performance

Taking on an individual who is unqualified (who may not even have the background necessary for the role) will cost you time and money. If this person is not a quick learner, your staff will end up covering for them – first explaining things over and over, then eventually taking on the tasks themselves when no action is taken against this hire. This will affect employee productivity as well as build resentment toward the company for keeping on those who can’t pull their weight.

2. Special treatment

The CEO hires a friend or relative for a high-powered role at a company where workers are expected to be at their desks and working by 9 o’clock every morning. This individual shows up first at 9:15, then 9:30 and then finally starts rolling in around 10. Everyone else is still held to the 9 o’clock standard. No discipline occurs; if the CEO notices the tardiness, they don’t seem to care. This treatment can also include perks that other employees at the individual’s level don’t receive, like a larger spending stipend or the power to accept and veto projects.

3. Career ceilings

Many employees fear that a “friends and family” hire will impact their own efforts to move up in the company. If they are up for a promotion and their competition is a close friend or family member of the CEO, they may assume that the relation will receive the promotion, and not even apply for it. This robs the business of talented potential leaders you could have otherwise nurtured.

4. Manipulation

If a business owner hires a friend or family member who has some measure of emotional control over them, they can be manipulated into doing things that aren’t in the best interest of the company. This could include growing too quickly, making policies that don’t take the rest of the employees’ well-being into account or allowing a toxic organizational culture to develop. When nepotism results in manipulation, it can mean the end of a business.

5. Lack of innovation

Developing a culture of innovation is crucial to growth and ensuring a business is not disrupted by others in the industry. Nepotism in the workplace can sometimes result in a large core of a business sharing the same thoughts and beliefs and not encouraging out-of-the-box ideas. Having a team that is a mixture of different backgrounds, cultures and ways of thinking keeps the workplace fresh and encourages innovation while nepotism can lead to stagnation.

6. Toxic organizational culture

It doesn’t matter what sort of job qualifications the person you hire possesses – people tend to believe that favoritism is at play whenever a relative is hired. If you don’t treat your family members like the rest of the team, allow them to come in late or leave early or promote them ahead of more qualified employees, your actions could cause a toxic organizational culture and ultimately hurt your business. Your other employees could start to wonder if you really value them, and your retention of key team members could suffer.

7. Unhappy employees

If your employees believe – rightfully or not – that they are being overlooked in favor of an undeserving family member, they won’t be happy at work and will begin to search for other opportunities where they have a chance for advancement. Even worse, they could stay at your company and become toxic employees who ruin the culture with their negative attitude. This sort of situation can start a ripple effect of resentment and frustration throughout the company, impacting both the performance of other employees and your ability to retain them.

8. Poor personal relationships

You also run the risk of hurting your relationship outside the business if your relatives’ employment does not go as planned and you need to discipline or fire them. That’s why it’s vital to talk to them before they are hired and explain that your personal relationship is independent of your working status. Having trouble getting through to them on this issue? It might be a sign they wouldn’t make a good hire. Positive benefits of hiring family members

The answer to “What is nepotism in the workplace?” isn’t always negative. If you have a position to fill and are considering bringing on a close friend or family member, you could experience positive benefits as well.

You may want to hire a friend or family member because you’re aware of their weaknesses and strengths, as well as their potential – particularly when compared to candidates you’ve never met. To build a team that works, you need a variety of different skills, backgrounds and personalities. Due to your relationship with that particular family member or friend, you’ll already know how they fit in with the rest of the team and can quickly integrate them into your daily routine.

They share your values

Families often share core values and belief systems, which translates easily to sharing a company mission statement. If your business is small and family-run, then the friend or relative you have in mind for the role may also have a good idea of their role and function. This means reduced training time and expenses when they’re brought on board.

They care about your business

Nepotism in the workplace also means you’re bringing on those who could continue your legacy after you retire or decide to leave the business. Many family members will have more of a vested interest in your business’ success than other employees, especially if they plan to run it one day. Even if they’re not next in line, they likely still want to see you and your business succeed – after all, they’re family, and in that sense it’s already likely their business too. This can lead to more dedication and an ownership mentality, which can set a good example for the rest of your team.

You can count on them

Because you know your family members care about your business, odds are you can trust them when it comes to sensitive information and confidential aspects of your business. You can also count on them to show up and fill in when you need them. Hiring family members often means gaining an employee who is willing to not only work long hours and accept less pay, but will buy into your dream and help you achieve it. Be careful here – the opposite can also occur, and you’ll end up with a lazy, entitled employee.

How to hire a family member

Still believe hiring a family member makes sense? While you can’t control how your other employees view nepotism, you can build a process around the way you hire family members to increase your chances of success.

Set expectations

To ensure your nepotism doesn’t backfire, make sure the relationship is on solid ground first, then set expectations for your new hire. Make sure you both understand that if the position doesn’t work out, they will be let go and that it will not damage your relationship outside of work. Tell them they will be treated like everyone else in the company and put them through the same training and probationary period as your other employees. Finally, be transparent with the rest of your team. Tell them you are hiring someone you have a personal relationship with and that if anyone sees negative effects of this nepotism, they can bring their concerns to you.

Make sure your team is solid

When nepotism in the workplace has negative consequences, you’ll face frustration from your other employees and from the person you promoted. You want to create an internal raving fan culture for your employees, not one of resentment. If your company doesn’t already have a solid core of dependable, dedicated team members who believe in you and the work you do, nepotism – especially if it involves a family member underperforming – can have disastrous consequences.

Ask the right questions

Do your relative’s passions align with your company’s mission? Will the position they fill leverage their skills and interests? Are they truly the best fit for the role you’re hiring for or do you owe them a favor? Have them take the DISC profile assessment to better understand what drives and ultimately fulfills them. The discussion is a two-way street, with both of you striving to figure out if this is a decision that will benefit everyone involved.

Gauge their personality fit

Personality is key when bringing someone into your business – whether it involves hiring relatives or not. Your close knowledge of your family member puts you at an instant advantage. While there must be a reasonable level of technical skill, it’s the soft skills – interpersonal skills, communication styles, thought processes and emotional intelligence – that can make or break your hiring decisions. Hiring family members whose behavior and values oppose yours and those of your company will, over time, erode your brand and destroy morale.

Examine core values

Core values are what a company stands for and they’re derived from your brand’s ultimate purpose. They are your company’s creed and culture and what every employee – including those you are related to – must embody. Before hiring family members, clarify your core values and make sure your relative knows what will be expected of them. The smaller your organization, the more important it is to define how these core values will be manifested in that particular position.

Know the law

While nepotism in the workplace is not illegal and nothing explicitly prohibits you from doing it, there are some issues to keep in mind. Declaring job openings and ignoring qualified candidates in favor of a family member may be crossing a line. And bear in mind that when hiring a relative, you are also required to disclose any potential conflict of interest to shareholders. Failure to make that information known could violate the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act and result in fines or other repercussions.

Make the right choice

If you do end up hiring a relative, you must hold them accountable and ensure that the standards and expectations you set are not just met, but exceeded. A high-performing family member who is held to the same standards as the rest of the employees will gradually be accepted as a valued coworker, not just the relative of the boss who was hired due to nepotism. This, in turn, can raise standards throughout the company and lead to organic growth.

Running a business is a complicated endeavor and hiring family members to work with you can make it even more so. Though there are plenty of pitfalls that can occur when you work with family, there are just as many upsides when it’s done right.

Who should you hire first? 3 guidelines to make your first employees the best ones

One of the most challenging aspects of scaling a company is the hiring process. Not only is it costly to commit to an employee’s salary, it’s difficult to know whether or not your investment will yield the return you’re after. In fact, the average cost of finding, hiring and training a new employee rings in around $4,000. Add to that the pressure of making payroll and the increased liability of having a full-time employee, and the excitement of growing your team is suddenly eclipsed by the anxiety of the added risk.

Fortunately, there are ways to navigate through such a challenging decision. From knowing when it is time to bring someone on board to making smart hires, there are fundamental strategies and tactics that you can implement so that you can enhance and empower your team and your business. Because the right employee can create a seismic shift in your company – helping you increase bandwidth, start moving faster (a lot faster), and grow in new and exciting ways.

OUTSOURCE WHAT YOU CAN

When you start a business, you’re usually wearing multiple hats – you’re handling marketing, sales, operations, finances, perhaps even production. And while you are still in the seedling stages, that makes sense, particularly if you are bootstrapping. But at some point, you’ll be stretching yourself too thin, and it becomes obvious that your business is suffering for it. This is when you have to assess what to outsource and what to hire for.

the right employee can create a seismic shift in your company - Tony Robbins

In the beginning, it’s important to narrow down your team to a handful of people who can help you get your company’s product or service to market. Then outsource the remaining positions. And while that may seem simple enough, it starts with asking yourself a few questions:

What are my own skills and abilities? What are my weaknesses? What duties in my business must be attended to regularly?

The answers, of course, will vary – depending on what industry you are in, where your business is located and what your personal strengths and weaknesses are. But conducting this assessment will help you get a better idea of what you should focus on in your business, and which roles you absolutely must hire for.

Then there is the question of what to outsource.

For many businesses, you will find that design work (such as web development and product packaging) is something that can be outsourced. Accounting is another area that can be outsourced, or even managed by software programs. And freelancers are an excellent source to tap for copy and even content.

As for marketing, see what you can do on your own before it is really time to make a hire. Innovative tactics and strategies such as influencer marketing and email marketing can be massively powerful tools that you can execute on your own. So get good at what you can.

The key here is to run as lean as possible until you have created a sustainable cash flow. Hire where you must in order to grow and prosper, and be tactical about what roles you outsource.

DON’T HIRE ON RÉSUME

In the nascent stages of a company, you aren’t looking to bring on high-level execs – you’re looking for uniquely motivated individuals, who are flexible and adaptable enough to potentially take on several roles in order to help your company grow. And while it may be tempting to choose the candidate with the impressive résume of Fortune 500 companies or years of investment banking expertise under their belt, that could actually work against you.

Those environments are highly-structured and contained. Working for establishments like that can mean the candidate is heavily focused on rules, regulations and fulfilling the functions of the role. Their positions serve as more of a cog in the wheel than a driving force that helps propel the company forward.

At a smaller company, there are often no strict rules or regulations when it comes to how to grow. Employees (even entry-level employees) are often encouraged to assume more roles, using their creativity to find solutions for the problems the company encounters along the way.

In your early stages, you need someone who can be a jack-of-all-trades – someone who can step into areas where that they may not necessarily have any expertise.

FOCUS ON CULTURE CONTRIBUTION

You know your business better than anyone else. You have established your brand identity, you know who your customer is, you have your mission. And now you are ready to grow a team that embodies every single aspect of your vision. But do you place the emphasis on skills or on culture fit?

Adam Grant recently spoke at Stanford University, addressing this very question. He asked the audience to consider Silicon Valley founders, explaining that they generally take one of three different approaches to hiring.

The first approach is all about hiring on skills – they have a job description, and want to hire someone who can competently execute each of the duties required of that position.

The second approach focuses on talent. This type of founder looks at the potential of the candidate – searching for the stars who have a lot of learning agility or raw intelligence.

Lastly, there is the approach that centers around culture fit. This founder may want skills and stars, but believes that all of that is a moot point if the candidate does not subscribe to their company’s values.

startups and small companies that hire for culture fit are less likely to fail - and more likely to IPO. *Adam Grant, citing a study of technology startups, Sandford University, Feb 2017 - Tony Robbins

When researchers examined 200 startups in Silicon Valley, they found that the businesses that hired for culture fit were significantly less likely to fail – so much so, that their failure rate was actually 0%. They also found that those companies were more likely to IPO. And that makes sense, when you hire for culture fit, everyone has the same values – they share the same mission, and are all motivated to help advance that vision.

However, there is one caveat – researchers also found that after going public, those companies that hired on culture fit also experience the slowest growth rates. Why is that?

Adam Grant maintains that while this hiring approach may be powerful in the beginning when you are trying to drive an original idea forward and need to be aligned, when you are dealing with a constantly changing marketplace, you have to adapt. And culture fit equates to hiring a number of people who think in similar ways, which leads to “groupthink” and inherently eliminates “diversity of thought.”

What Grant recommends is based off the approach one of the world’s premier design firms takes. This company realized that rather than hiring on culture fit, they would hire on cultural contribution – that is, asking the candidate: “How would you make our culture even better?” This allowed them to find the individuals who were not only aligned in values, but thought in strategic ways that would help drive the company to new levels.

For more, see Tony’s essay on his Can Do, Will Do, Team Fit criteria.

Leveraging the Surprising Science of Meetings

This article was contributed by author and professor Dr. Steven Rogelberg – see full bio below.

Tony Robbins with a beard and headphones pointing his finger In addition to all the regular meeting problems we know about – from irrelevant agenda items to bloated meeting sizes – remote meetings are also plagued with unique challenges.

First, there are increased communication challenges. Without visual cues, the meeting is potentially fraught with people interrupting one another, difficulty finding a communication flow, and potential misinterpretations (e.g., sarcasm and motives are harder to detect). On top of all this, background noise coupled with poor connection quality, if present, serve to further undermine the richness of communication and the ability of attendees to coordinate their contributions.

Next, remote meetings are particularly subject to something called social loafing. This is a human tendency to reduce effort and motivation when working in a group, akin to hiding in a crowd. Social loafing increases the more anonymous one feels, and anonymity increases during the remote meeting due to the virtual barrier between team members.

The good news is that there is an evidence-based path forward. I have, and many others have, been doing research on meetings and teams for over 20 years. Meeting science has yielded key insights that can be incredibly helpful to meeting leaders, especially during this time that is marked by an increase in remote meetings.

The path forward

After interviewing hundreds of meeting attendees about meeting leadership, the best meeting leaders appear to have something in common: They share a similar mindset where they recognize their role as a steward of others’ time. Interestingly, leaders often adopt a stewardship mindset when the meeting is with important customers or stakeholders because they would never want these key individuals to leave the meeting saying that was a waste of time. But, stewardship is often disregarded when meeting with one’s team and/or peers. When you adopt a stewardship mindset, you become intentional with your meeting decisions from start to finish. Being intentional and making smart meeting choices do not take much time at all – it can take a minute of time with practice. I will break these choices into pre-meeting, during a meeting, and end of meeting practices all designed to promote a stewardship mindset and help improve the quality of your remote team or customer meetings.

Pre-remote meeting tips:

• Don’t over invite. Remote meetings plummet in quality as size increases. Luckily, remote meetings can be readily recorded and listened to at twice the speed by attendees who don’t attend live. So, let nonessential members off the hook, and just share the recording. They can listen at their convenience rather than having a meeting interrupt their flow. However – and this is key – to avoid team members who weren’t invited from feeling marginalized, give them the option to attend any future meetings on the topic if they so desire. They typically won’t take you up on it, but they will appreciate being asked.

• Set time properly. Given our shorter attention spans right now, avoid defaulting to the hour-long meeting. Don’t hesitate to make your meetings 20 or 25 minutes. Dialing the meeting time back a bit also creates positive pressure. Research shows that groups operating under some level of pressure actually perform more optimally given increased focus.

• Sharpen the agenda. As opposed to a set of topics to be discussed, try organizing the agenda as a set of questions to be answered to create focus, which is often lacking in remote meetings. By framing agenda items as questions, you have a better sense of who really has to be invited to the remote meeting. By framing agenda items as questions, you know when to end the meeting and if the meeting has been successful, the questions have been answered. 

• Use video. Creating “presence” is important in remote meetings. We want attendees to be actively engaged. Video increases the chances of that happening. Video conferences are more effective when people can see each other’s facial expressions, so consider asking individuals to sit close to their webcam to help to recreate the intimacy of an in-person meeting.

Tips for during the remote meeting

• Start on time. Nothing kills momentum at the start of a meeting like a 15-minute delay because people need to download software, or can’t get the video or audio to work. Anyone presenting should log in 5 minutes early to be sure all the technology is working. Also, our research shows that ending meeting late is a tremendous source of stress for individuals, so don’t run over on time. Start the meeting well. As the meeting leader, your mood matters. It sets the tone. Research even suggests it may produce a contagion effect on attendees – where their mood mirrors yours. Start the meeting with energy, appreciation and gratitude, especially during this challenging time. Doing so increases the chances of a more positive meeting mood state which promotes more creativity, listening, and constructiveness.  

• Establish some norms. Periodically create mutual expectations with your attendees about what makes for a good remote meeting. How can we expect our remote meetings to be effective if we never talk about what makes for a good one and what we should avoid? Get the expectations out there, like “let’s keep all contributions to no more than 60 seconds so everyone has a chance to speak.” Or, have a rule that everyone identifies themselves prior to speaking (e.g. “this is Gordon, my thoughts are…”). Again, this helps to create presence in the virtual setting. 

• Active facilitation. This is absolutely key in remote meetings. Meeting leaders must embrace the role of facilitator. Draw in virtual attendees in (e.g., “Sasha, please share your thoughts”) to keep them engaged. You might even consider keeping a tally to be sure all are contributing and all voices are heard. Avoid generically asking, “Any comments?” Instead, call on people specifically. Also, don’t let people ramble, especially given shorter attention spans and shorter meetings; kindly interrupt if necessary. That is your job as a meeting leader.  Use tools. Realize that silence does not equal understanding or agreement. There are great apps available (e.g., from Klaxoon, Mentimeter, Poll Everywhere) that allow participants to vote readily as a way of truly determining if you have consensus. This can be done in real time during the meeting or after the meeting. Also, have instant messenger or chat room technology in place, not for folks to engage in side-conversations, but for attendees to notify you during the meeting if they want to speak or indicate if they missed something. Utilizing the technological tools at your disposal helps increase attendee involvement and engagement during the meeting.

Post-remote meeting tips

• End meetings well. With a few minutes left, be sure to clarify takeaways.

• Identify the DRI – directly responsible individual – for each action item.

• Don’t let anyone leave your meeting wondering what was accomplished or what the next steps are.

Is it possible to achieve virtual meeting perfection? Probably not, but with focused development and intentionality you can turn your meetings into efficient and engaging events. While you can’t control other’s meetings, you control your own. You can make excellent meeting choices. You can demonstrate stewardship. You can be the example that you hope others will follow. Let’s commit to fixing our meetings, one meeting at a time.