People First! with Morag Barrett

Welcome to this week's episode of People First, and my guest this week is David Cohen. And for those of you who are eagle-eyed, and for those of you who are eagle-eared, if that's such a thing, you will recognize that David was a previous guest on People First, and I am excited to have him back because we're going to be talking about his brand new book, which is called Selecting the Best. And I know that those of you listening to people first, you are the best. But first, a gentle reminder. David is a globally recognized thought leader, executive coach, consultant, teacher and author specializing in the intersection of values, vision, purpose, leadership and people. As a disruptor and contrarian consultant, David accelerates companies by ensuring that they are as great as the people within them. His experience spans five continents. He's worked with government organizations, not-for-profit and for-profit companies. He's a frequent speaker at global and industry conferences and also regularly contributes to business press worldwide. And his book that we're going to be talking about today, as I shared, is called Selecting the Best, Fostering a Workforce Driven by Values for Lasting Success. And I believe, David, this is the third book you've written. Is that right? Congratulations to you on the arrival of your third book. So before we dive in talking about Selecting the Best, I want to ask, what role have relationships played in your success? I would say that relationships have played everything in my success. And without them, I would not be successful. I, you know, when you ask that question, which harkens back to is when I first started as a consultant, left education, transitioned to consulting. I went in to see a gentleman who was at one of the major banks and he was in charge of visa on an assignment. He was a senior vice president of HR before that. And as a growth assignment, he was given the visa card division. And I walked in and talked to him about behaviors and competencies and some of the stuff that I was focusing on. And he kind of smiled and chuckled and said, well, maybe in ten years, come back to that. But I also talked about team coaching and team building, and we had a long talk about it. And then about three days later, he gave me a phone call and said, I got a situation I want to have you do. And Jim and I, this was thirty something years ago. Jim and I have become very good friends. Jim has opened doors for me, not only within the bank, but also in other organizations and has been a big supporter. And that is not only, you know, that was one of my earliest contacts. And I'm really proud of the fact that I still have it. And certainly I would say that without those relationships, I can Think of other relationships with other clients and other consultants, even that by building a personal relationship and one that's built on trust, mutual respect, it's helped me grow and it's helped me get through some rough times sometimes. So there you go. I love the fact that you talk about Jim. Yay, go, Jim. We adore you, too. But the fact that that's a thirty year professional relationship and how they've helped not just with the professional success, but navigating life's ups and downs, too. Yes. And Jim is a personal friend now. He's retired. We're still friends. We still communicate. He's a good man. It's interesting because the question about relationships and when I ask it invariably, the answer is, well, everything when it comes to our success. And when I think about the theme of your book, Selecting the Best, which is how to conduct fair and effective hiring interviews, it would appear to me that relationships are a critical part of even getting the interview. What's been your experience? Yeah, I think that it's interesting because people talk about Um, you know, with AI and all of this resume screening and everything, I still tell people contact them directly and build a relationship, get to know people. Um, because that way they'll invite you in for the interview and get past the AI resume screening, which might screen you out if you don't put in the right keywords. So, you know, build that relationship, get to know people. It might be a year, it might be two years, but. at some point because of the relationship, if they don't have work for you, they might know somebody else is looking for somebody and that sort of expands it. I learned this when I left education and I went to an outplacement counselor and he said, everybody's leaving education and it'll be nine months before you get a job and et cetera. But he said something very important. He said, well, every time you meet somebody new, Ask them for two additional references. And then when you see those two references, send the first guy a thank you note and then ask the two new references for two more references. And then it sort of expands and expands and expands. So that relationship's everything. What it turned out is I got three job offers in nine weeks. And they all came within two days. And I took the one that I felt was the right fit for me. And I worked with hay management for a couple of years. Then a couple of years later, went out on my own. So without those relationships, without asking to help build the relationship, it ain't going to happen. So you're right. One of the best ways of getting that interview is have a relationship. So let's come back to your book, Selecting the Best, Fostering a Workforce Driven by Values for Lasting Success. Ooh, I couldn't say the word today. For Lasting Success. So I'm curious, why now? And who's your ideal audience? The ideal audience is anybody that does interviewing or even is going in for an interview. Because if you're going in for an interview, it actually tells you, gives you a way of saying, just tell your story and don't BS your way through it. You know, I just saw a cartoon the other day, which is in one of the favorite questions, which is, you know, I recommend the book never ask is what are your strengths and weaknesses? And I saw this cartoon the other day of Superman going in for an interview and they asked him, what is his strengths and weaknesses? And he says, well, I guess my weakness is I care too much. And then he, There's a pause and he says, oh yeah, kryptonite also. So, you know, you can BS your way through those, but that's not going to get you a job. You can be as creative as you want. And ChatGPT will give you lots of hints and how to answer these off the shelf questions. Just go in and tell your story and be authentic because if you don't align, if your values, your behaviors, your outlook doesn't align with that of the organization, you're going to be looking for another job within six months or less. So be honest and show them who you really are. So you're talking words that just sing to me, but it's interesting that you use the word values because we're seeing a lot now in the conversation of round getting back to basics, hire for knowledge and skills. And yet you are talking about it is still important to focus on values and fit. So say more about that. Yeah, the knowledge and skill movement is an interesting one because people are really focusing on this. And I have a fear that it's taking away from looking at people as individuals again. Because when I started this business, I started to work on leadership. I came to the realization that people are hired for their skill and knowledge, for their education. They're promoted for their success and fired for their interpersonal behavior. It's that interpersonal behavior, which goes down to your values, which drives our behavior, which is going to make for lasting success. So if I work in an org, if I'm hiring somebody great, I know they have the skill and knowledge or they have shown the ability to learn quickly. And therefore I can teach them the skill and knowledge they need, but do they have the behaviors to get along with everybody? And. If they don't have the behaviors that are going to fit the value set of the organization, they're going to be a disruptor in a negative way. And I don't want organizations that have these negative disruptors or the ones where teams don't function, people get disengaged, people go on stress leave and all this other stuff. And therefore you're not going to be very productive. So by hiring people that align with your values, hiring people that are committed to your passion to your purpose, you're going to be more successful in the long run. Yeah, you might hire somebody that might solve a problem real quick. But you know, it probably would have been cheaper to hire them just on a short term contract and not a permanent employee. That leads to another challenge that I can see, because in the book you talk about some of the most common values. And so the challenge I see is for a company to identify them, for me as an individual to even be able to understand What are my values? And then show them in a comprehensive way. And one that always pushes my buttons, and I see it on all the posters when I go into clients, is integrity. And I look at it and I go, like, isn't that just table stakes? I mean, what does that mean? Don't steal the silverware. Don't take an extra bag of peanuts out of the snack cupboard. And so help us understand when we talk about values, what really matters when it comes down to values and fit? Okay. We're already here on my favorite topic, the word integrity. And I believe integrity is not a value. It is the sum total of living your values because every organization that has the word integrity in their value set, they also, when they try to define it, it also covers two or three of their other values. And you can't have multiple values that mean the same thing. So I believe organizations have integrity when they live their values. If they don't live their values, they don't have integrity. That's where you get cynicism in the workplace. So integrity is a sum total of being who you are, sticking with who you are, and saying who you are. As a result of that, I believe that values, you know, understanding your values. So here's the problem. Most organizations have what I call two sets of values. The overt values, that's what you see on the wall when you go see your clients. And that's what I call wall decor. And then there's the covert values. And the covert values are the ones that really drive the business. And being able to identify those, what are the behaviors when decisions have to be made When people are treated, when customers are treated, what drives success? Why did people like certain things that were done to them and not like other things? And you're able to, through critical incident interviewing, identify what are the behaviors that drive what really matter to us. And you see it all the time. And right now I see it in corporations. I brought an article on LinkedIn about this, that with this whole political move away from diversity and inclusion, there were organizations that repeatedly talked about inclusion as one of their values. Diversity is one of their values. And now all of a sudden they're backtracking on it and their employees are distraught. Their employees are confused because if this was a value and this is what differentiated us, then why are we going back on it? Because it wasn't really a value. or we're doing it because it's politically expedient, there's no real clear communication on it. And I think that a lot of organizations have lost integrity, if you want to go back to that word, because they're not living their values. And when you don't live your values, you'll lose that integrity. And it's tough to stand up and say, when there's opposition, I'm going to live my values. But I can tell you that when organizations do live their values, that organizations have a stronger workforce, a more committed workforce, and a workforce that is going to be retained a lot longer, and a workforce that is a lot, has a better employee experience. You know, people talk about employee engagement. Those are the parties that loose ball on that. That doesn't mean anything to be, what really matters is, What's the employee experience? And the experience is how I'm treated. And if I walk into an organization expecting a certain set of behaviors and I find a different set of behaviors, it's a bad experience. If I find the ones I expect, it's a good one. So I like what you've shared there in terms of as an organisation, we need to understand what matters to us so that in our interviewing, we can identify to the best we can whether or not I will be a fit, have fun. And I, as a potential candidate, need to understand in what environments do I thrive and flourish? What drains me so that during the interview process, it's not one sided. I'm also discovering what Is this a place where I am going to flourish and thrive? Which brings us to the questions either being asked of us as the candidate or the questions we should be asking of a potential hiring manager to get a better understand for the feel for what is it really like? So what does your research and advice here show? Firstly, for the interviewer, the person who's looking and sifting through the best of the best, who select the best, what are the tips? What are the first thing that they can do to make their questions useful? They should ask a question that doesn't have, that's ambiguous. What do I mean by an ambiguous question? An ambiguous question is one that doesn't have a question mark at the end. Usually people will say, tell me about a time that you successfully communicated with somebody else and what did you do or how did they react? Well, whether I did something or they didn't react, I now know I have to tell them that people reacted and how they reacted in a positive way. Instead of tell me, simply asking, tell me about a time you dealt with someone who was very difficult, period. You don't ask them anything else. So it's really an interrogative statement. And it needs to be related to your value behaviors without stating what the behavior is. Because people are always looking for clues in the interview question on what are they looking for. So if you're ambiguous enough to ask that challenging question, tell me about a coworker that you had a significant disagreement with. And then the other thing for the interviewer that's critical is silence. Because we as human beings like to fill the void. So if they're being silent, we're going to try to help them and give them, well, this is what we mean or something along this lines. But they're thinking. Allow them to think. I learned this in education. If you give students think time, they'll come up with an answer. If you give the candidate think time, they'll come up with an answer because people hate silence. So my key is think time. Give them that think time. And it's a long time, thirty seconds. Make sure you give them a full thirty seconds and they're either going to come up with it, say they don't have an answer, and you're going to be able to go from there. So for the candidate, on the other hand, know what your values are before you walk into the organization. Know what makes it different. What bothers you when you see something or hear something on the news? What did your friends do which upset you? Know in advance what your values are. And then if you look on the website and it looks like that corporation has values aligned with yours, then ask them a question. Because candidates always have the opportunity to ask questions usually at the end of an interview. Ask them a question. So you have respect as one of your values. So now ask them a behavioral question. Tell me about a time where you showed respect what you considered a successful time you showed respect in your organization with your employees. And I asked my students this for years. When I put fourth year students at university, I would say, when you go out for your first interviews, also ask them about their values because part of the course in OD is they've discovered their values. Ask them their values. And students came back all the time saying, well, The person that was interviewing me didn't even know their company values. And that's telling. I mean, even that suggestion. Does that tell you everything you need to know? Oh, yeah. We created the post. That was last year's project. They're hanging up, but I've no idea what they are. So therefore, how do I know if I'm role modeling them? But even the asking a question around how it is or isn't being demonstrated consistently in an organization is I think many candidates, I know I have done that, is focusing on the, well, tell me about the benefits. What else might I expect? What might my first projects be? But to ask that reciprocal question about the values lived, that's powerful. Yeah, it is very powerful. And I can tell you in the book, I... follow a case study of an organization that's building a billion dollar plant in Corpus Christi, Texas. And the first part of the exercise was to work with the newly appointed executive team to identify their values, what makes them work as a team before they ever hired anybody. And when they identified that, and after we went through an extensive training period of how to interview and score an answer, based on the behaviors of values. They hired people that the general manager of the plant, the head of the plant, Jeff, admitted he would have never hired in the past, who turned out to be some of his best employees. And unfortunately, because of a situation beyond their control, the company in Italy that was building the plant had to withdraw from the project. But when they got new investors and they restarted, They went back to the people that they originally hired and said, will you come back? And when I interviewed those people, I found out that one person had left Corpus Christi on their own, moved to Seattle, Washington on their own dime, moved back to Corpus Christi, Texas to work there at a twenty five percent reduction in salary from what they were working in Seattle. And I asked them why and had everything to evaluate the was in awe of the leadership team, not only talked about the values, but lived the values every day, protected their staff and did things for their staff that you said you'd never seen before. And so, and there were about eight people who came back at reduced salaries. So it's a very powerful story, but it really drives home that going back to what you talked about earlier, If I can build that meaningful relationship based on a meaningful experience together, that creates that loyalty. That creates that connection. And once that connection is there, it's hard to break. So you touch on AI. So I'm going to pick up on that thread of meaningful connection. And you have numerous acknowledgements to the use of AI, both in the submit your resume to the online system, the keyword search, that is AI one dot zero. But now we're getting to the point where you can get on the phone for a phone screen and it's like, is that a human or is that a robot? So how is that playing out and impacting that employee, aspiring employee experience? Yeah, I just presented at the beginning of the month at the SHRM conference a session on ethics, AI, and human resources. And I find that people have not really dealt with it. One of the biggest problems, as you've said, how do I know who it is, is the lack of transparency. One of the biggest concerns is the lack of transparency. The other problem with AI, especially the bots, is, and I've done a lot of research on this and heard a lot of horror stories, the bots don't deal well with people with accents. So if you have an accent, you're at a disadvantage. If it's a video bot interview, you're at a disadvantage if you're a person of color. So AI is in its infancy, and it has a long way to go. Right now, if you are over forty years of age and the AI they're using for resume screening is Workday, you'll be out of the interview process because it has discounted anybody that's over forty years of age. And right now there's a class action suit on that. The other one, which is the famous one, is Amazon created their AI because they want to get more women in the interview process for management for programmers and management positions, they spent a million dollars on this AI. And then all of a sudden the recruiters were saying, wait a second, we're only getting men references. We're not getting the women identified. And they went back and said, the data we put into it was based on the successful people. Oh yeah. The successful people are all men. And so we're fueling the differences. Yeah. So garbage in garbage out. And so there's a lot of, And plus the fact AI is not built around behaviors to identify that. So if you're looking and you have a clear set of values in your organization, AI doesn't know how to interpret that yet. And doesn't know, it's not going to see that in a resume or a cover letter. So there are a lot of good people that should be interviewed that are being overlooked. And that's why I say AI is not going to replace recruiters. Recruiters, however, are going to need to use it to help expedite it, but they have to improve upon how they use AI and the algorithm itself. So I love that in the book because it helps the decision makers as to what processes and systems they want to use in order to manage the process. As a candidate, what advice, if any, do you have for how do I navigate that use of technology in the process well the one way is I hate to say it understand on that linkedin post or wherever you see it there's certain keywords there certain to make sure they're in that resume so they get identified so you get pulled up um and the because that's the you know as long as they're using that technology use it to your advantage that way um Also, some of the laws now in Europe, especially in New York City, nowhere else in the US, in Canada, some of the provinces require the acknowledgement of the use of AI in the interview process. If you know they're using AI, it might be really good to go on LinkedIn, see who is somebody in the company that is at a senior position, create that relationship with them through LinkedIn, and then say, I noticed that you're looking for somebody, but my resume not come off well with that resume scanning. I'd really like to be interviewed. So through that personal relationship, you can build it. I know that there are a couple of companies that are going out and looking for people on LinkedIn and other social media places to see who might be future candidates based on how they've solved problems, how they posted things. And so they're building up a database, a candidate pool that way. It's a very, you know, it's very advanced. So they're creating, they say, well, if you're going to this conference, let's meet, I want to buy a coffee and they build a relationship. It's fascinating. So, but that goes beyond, technology of AI, again, that's about building human connections. You know, it used to say that when there was before all of this technology, there was something called the one ads, which most people listening to this probably don't remember one ads. But in the one ads, they always said that ninety percent of the jobs out there weren't even in the one ads. Go out and create the relationship with the person, the company you want to work with and find out that they are looking for somebody, I'd say the same thing's still true today. Create the relationships. So as we come to the end of our time together, David, what's the message that you hope that, or not hope, what is the message that you would like our listeners and viewers to take forward from this conversation? That values are the essence of how we get along with each other. and our behaviors, our values are not gonna change overnight. You don't hang them up neatly in the garage when you pull your car out of the garage and say, I'll wear my values when I get home. If something happens, your values are gonna interplay. And that's why values don't change, they evolve slowly. Knowing what the values of the organization are and hiring people that are aligned to the behaviors of those values, Not that they say, yeah, I shall respect, but the behaviors of the values. You'll have a much stronger workforce. Employees have a better employee experience. They are probably going to be more innovative, feel more safe. And one of the biggest issues today is retention. They're going to stick around a long time. So you overcome the retention problem by having people that feel good, positive, and secure in your organizations. So know what the behaviors are, but know what the authentic behaviors are of what your authentic values are. And you're hired for those. How can people learn more about you and your work? They could find me on LinkedIn. There's lots of David Combs. So that's why I use the middle initial S to try to differentiate. And so I'm on LinkedIn. Also, the website is sagltd.com. And the book, Selecting the Best, is on Amazon, available on Amazon. David, thank you for rejoining me here on People First. I have enjoyed the conversation and I enjoyed reading your book, Selecting the Best, Fostering a Workforce Driven by Values for Lasting Success. Wishing you lasting success. Thank you very much and thank you for re-inviting me. My pleasure. Always good to talk to you.