“A Players Hire A Players”

I’d like you to share a brief example of a high functioning team, either one that you led, or one where you were a member, how was that team unique, do you think? What were the factors that made it so successful?

I think two things that go into high-performing teams is you actually have to hire high performing folks. Something that I learned at Goldman is that B players hire C players, A players hire A players. And how do you hire A players that want to go and hire other A players?
One of the things that—and we do this with our clients, but I implement this of our hiring—when we’re thinking, when we do a debrief, which is pretty common after people hire folks, everyone before getting into our feedback, everyone has to say if they’re A, no hire, which is thumbs down. A hire, which is thumbs to the side, or a strong hire. And the reason why this is not just neutral, but it’s a hire, is that this means thumbs to the side, a hire means that they will meet the expectations in the job description.
They can do the job, we don’t want someone that’s just going to do the job, we want someone that is going to exceed the job description, exceed that. And so, when you can get your, the folks that are hiring to think in that way, you will elevate the type of talent. Could they do the job? They were a strong candidate, yes. But are they going to exceed? No. We want everyone on this team exceeding the expectations of what we need in that role.
The second thing though is, one of my highest performing teams had to do with inclusion and diversity, made sure that everyone personally understood it and got it. Everyone was so personally tied to our mission. Every single person on that team came from some type of under representative or marginalized group. They were personally invested, and they had a personal story as to why this was important, and that passion showed up in the work that they do. No one saw it as work. Like this was a team where I had to force people to take time off.

Wow!

And they would be tired, but it was just like, because it wasn’t work, it was like, they knew that they were making an impact, they knew that what they were doing mattered.

That's the dream team.

Yeah, #bestteamever.