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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
If you think about how you grow a relationship, it's being curious. It's not relying on what you already know. But what the research says about solving your most complex organizational problems, it's the same thing. You don't solve these really deep issues by relying on what you already know. It's being highly curious about how a process is working or not working, being highly curious about time with a customer asking really, really good questions.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative. Bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service, and this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow rate and review Good Morning HR wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at good morning hr.com.
Mike Coffey:Organizations success or failure often boils down to the commitment of the people in the organization. Not only those in the c suite, but even more importantly, the frontline managers and rank and file employees who actually do the work. And just like there are indeed dumb questions, there are also such things as really bad cultures. But in my experience, what often gets diagnosed as a bad culture is really just a culture where the values of the people in the organization are not fully in line with one another. Joining me today to discuss the importance of the individual contributor, self leadership, value alignment, and the importance of practice is Andrew Jezbrae.
Mike Coffey:Andrew is cofounder, along with his brother Alex, of Prax Leadership Academy, a training organization dedicated to transforming companies by transforming their people. Over his career, Andrew has led entrepreneurial startups and coached c suite leaders in large organizations. Welcome to Good Morning HR, Andrew.
Andrew Geesbreght:Thank you, Mike. Glad to be here. This is a lifelong dream.
Mike Coffey:You said exactly what I told you to. So thank you. You're you're you're you win.
Andrew Geesbreght:No. That that was that was what I wanted to say.
Mike Coffey:Okay. Well, thank you. So I am a firm believer that organizations really don't have values. We talk about organizational values, but organizations don't. The people in the organization bring their values with them, and those things all kind of make a porridge of what the organization's values are.
Mike Coffey:And then certainly leadership can incentivize certain behaviors and do things like that, but even those decisions are still the individual values of those leaders. So let's start with all that that I said in the opening. In your work, how often do you encounter truly bad cultures, because certainly they're out there, as opposed to cultures just where there's a value misalignment.
Andrew Geesbreght:Yeah. Values is, such a huge and, I think, misunderstood topic in organizations. We talk about values generically, I I think as leadership, But oftentimes, they they end up, dusty on the shelf and, ignored. And I I think the most, important thing to understand about values, 1st and foremost, and you're probably familiar with this this idea of incongruency and congruency. And the dirty little secret about values is that we are almost always congruent, meaning we are living our values.
Andrew Geesbreght:Whatever we do is a reflection of what we care about. So this concept of being incongruent is really just the fault line between our ideal self and our actual self. And so, we like to think at at Prax that this idea of incongruence is really only a temporary feeling of dissonance, where we don't like a thought or an action or a behavior because it doesn't jive with who we wanna be. And organizations experience this, but you are, what your record is. As Bill Parcells used to say, you you your culture is a reflection of what you do.
Andrew Geesbreght:So I think that's the first thing. And the second thing
Mike Coffey:is that values,
Andrew Geesbreght:the research on values, is very clear that values predicts behavior. Your values are, foresight into how you will behave, and your actions are insight into what you value. And they have reciprocal influence, on each other. So your question about, do I see, quote, unquote, bad cultures, of course, all the time. What's, another interesting layer and makes values and and culture really difficult is is kind of a slippery topic because it's really in the eye of the beholder.
Andrew Geesbreght:One of the things that we talk about is this cocktail party test. You know, if you've had, 1 and a half margaritas on a Friday night and someone asks you
Mike Coffey:One and a half margaritas on a Friday, that's about 3:30. But Yeah. There you go. Afternoon. But okay.
Andrew Geesbreght:Try yeah. Certainly trying to be this is good morning HR. So I,
Mike Coffey:you know, I've
Andrew Geesbreght:said 1 and a half, not 5. But if someone says, what do you think of your job? How do you like your your, your company? And you've had 1 and a half or or 2 or 3. Whatever you say next is the culture and it's coming from from that person.
Andrew Geesbreght:So it does come down to subjective feelings that that certainly makes the concept of culture difficult to to understand. But I would say if we were gonna get into how do you demonstrate your values and then attract talent that's aligned, with your organizational values, that's a that's a whole another ocean of of, of things to get into. But I I would say my, the most important thing to understand from a leader's perspective is that values are are being lived. So if you wanna understand what your actual values are, you can look no further than to how you're performing. That's what's really being experienced and lived by your customers and and by your employees.
Andrew Geesbreght:And if you wanna change that, you can look no further than James Clear's work on habit change and activating, values, which it from a neuroscience perspective is very difficult because we're we're wired for automatic behavior. So we have to activate something new, which means we need to reward something new. We need to cue something new. And, this is the last thing that I I will say before I take a breath here. There's 3 things I think that are important to to understand.
Andrew Geesbreght:Values are ranked, values, are dynamic, and they compete with each other. So the first thing is if I were to ask you, Mike, what your top three values personally as a as a husband or father or professional, you would probably not struggle to answer that question. But if I ask you what your 5th value was, you would probably have to get a piece of paper out and think about that. That tells me a couple of things. 1, all of our values are not created equal.
Andrew Geesbreght:Same goes for an organization. And when you start getting into 5, 6, and 7, they start becoming a little diluted. They're not number 1 and 2 is not as important as 56. And that sorta leads us to the second thing. Our our values personally and organizationally, they change over time.
Andrew Geesbreght:The easiest way to illustrate this is, are you the same person you were 10 years ago? The answer is probably no. I've asked a 1,000 people that question. I've only had 1 or 2 people say yes. And we instinctively know that we're not the same person.
Andrew Geesbreght:So change is going to happen. It's constant, but change for the better isn't necessarily automatic. And then the last thing, our values compete with each other. I think this is the, the way I like to think of it. If I stay out late drinking on Saturday night and miss church on Sunday morning, I had 2 values that competed with each other.
Andrew Geesbreght:My faith value lost out to my impulse pleasure value. If you get a $1,000 bonus, your generosity value might conflict with your wealth or security value. So in any moment, organizationally or personally, the decision that you make is activating a very specific value, and that means by definition that another one is losing out.
Mike Coffey:And I think a lot of people and certainly a lot of organizations, one of their unrecognized value is the esteem of others and they write their values or they when they're evaluating what their values are, they get aspirational about them based on what they think other people are going to appreciate or what people are going to think about them. So I went through the project a number of years ago of really writing through my values and and I've got them on you know, I use Asana as my task manager and project manager, and it's it's at the top of my Asana list, a reminder of what my values are. And one of them is unabashedly earned admiration because I recognize I really do, you know, that's just what I value. And it it sounds it sounds cocky, it sounds, narcissistic, and it probably is. But that's it's I know that's one of the things that I value, and, sometimes I have to pay attention to that, like you said, and temper that against other values.
Mike Coffey:Other times I can indulge in that in a positive way, and I can help people and I get their earned admiration or their earned, you know, gratitude because I've earned it and I I've brought value. So I think that's one of the things that too many companies do is they say, okay. This is what will look good in the market or this will what will attract candidates. But when the people actually get in the organization and they see how leaders lead, how employees interact with one another, and all those they realize that the real values, like you said, your performance, you know, demonstrates what you really value and then, and that's your culture. And so how do you you know, what do you think causes that, you know, that misalignment between what we state and what we aspire to
Andrew Geesbreght:Yeah.
Mike Coffey:And the way we really do things?
Andrew Geesbreght:Well, I think it's very wise what you just said, Mike, that you're honest and authentic about something that's important to you. I find it funny that the first go to for us discovering our values as people is to look at a list of really beautiful words and then choose the words that we connect with. When you say it out loud like that, there's a tremendous gap between who we actually are and who we aspire to be. I believe it was Aristotle said that we have one ultimate goal as human beings, and it's to bridge the gap between our actual and and aspirational self. That's our ultimate goal.
Andrew Geesbreght:And I I find that to be accurate. I think that's, it's certainly a beautiful notion. And when we talk about unhappy or dissatisfied people, I think one of the first things that I see is this, not to be overly dramatic, but this kind of fault line in their soul. And in understanding not your aspirational values, but who you really want to be. And those are not necessarily the exact same thing.
Andrew Geesbreght:You mentioned it just a few moments ago. And when we discover and activate our real values, the ones that are gonna lead to long term fulfillment, that's like mending your soul. And, I I find it to be one of the most important things we do as human beings. And the people that avoid that work, I think that leads to deep regret. A deep regret.
Andrew Geesbreght:And, I apologize, I don't actually remember the initial question that you had, Mike.
Mike Coffey:Well, what you said was really interesting and it it sparked that idea, you know, in me that, you know, just, you know, talk about aspirational values. Recognizing that your values that you state and even that you tell yourself this is what I really value. I mean, I think that's the first thing is people ignore what value the term value all it is is this is what I value. This is what I I and, you know, this is what I invest into, and and we we have all these flowery ideas about them. And, really, it's just, you know, this is what I this is where I put, you know, this is what I give worth to, but they have this this idea, but and that that often isn't in line or, like, as you said, it's incongruent with how they really behave.
Mike Coffey:And I think it's a certain amount of self awareness that's lacking. I think most of us, myself and I mean, I've been married 27 years, and my wife can tell you all the times, and she's keeping a long list of all the times I've said something that was very unself aware. And so how do you build that kind of self awareness or just that recognition that my behavior and what I'm saying don't really line up?
Andrew Geesbreght:Couple of things I wanna, mention. This is a little bit of the secret sauce for for Prax, but one of the activities that we engage our executives in at the, almost the first time they walk into our building is we do what's called the documentary test. And, this is to build awareness to your point, Mike. And what we have them do is we have them, think about, hypothetically, what a a documentarian would, write down as your values if they couldn't read your mind or your heart. All they saw was the previous year of your life, in film.
Andrew Geesbreght:And they they saw 365 days of of your performance, your behavior outside. Again, it's really important. They can't read your mind and they can't read your heart. All they do is see what you do. And this stranger, let's just say that they're highly credentialed stranger, their only job at the end of that year year's worth of footage is to write down what Andrew or what Mike's values actually are.
Andrew Geesbreght:They have no dog in the fight. They're just writing down what they see. And I have to tell you that when we do that documentary test at the beginning, we have executives in tears, because they see on on right in front of them the disconnect between what they want to value and what's actually being manifested and demonstrated. And so there is no change without awareness. And so the reason why we use that test is because it's emotionally stimulating.
Andrew Geesbreght:And, you know being involved, professionally in human resources that there's really no change unless we can stimulate someone's emotional center. Then then it just stays, intellectual. It's it's got to hit a nerve. It's got to provoke attention. And, and that test has been a a really beautiful way, stimulating way for people to to come in contact and collide with with who they actually are.
Andrew Geesbreght:So I would say that's, that's first. The second thing, if you don't mind, is, Harvard republished a study a study, by Egon Zehnder, their, global consulting group. And what they did was they, looked at the hallmark traits for the predictors of leadership skill, the hallmark traits of the predictors of leadership skill. So, basically, in layman, it's like, what are the things that you need to to do and think about that will take you as far as you can go, you're capable of going? And and what they found is 4, hallmark predictors of leadership skill, and they weighted their influence.
Andrew Geesbreght:Number 1 was determination. That had 37%, influence on how far someone can go. Insight and engagement had 62% influence, but there was only one trait that was a 100% influential and it was curiosity. 100%. And I find that, revelatory, for leaders to hear and to really digest that if you want to become the absolute best version of yourself, curiosity is the way.
Mike Coffey:Unless you're a cat and you wanna avoid
Andrew Geesbreght:Unless you're a cat and then you've only got 8 tries.
Mike Coffey:So so curiosity, openness to new ideas, seeking to understand, you know, the, you know, the old seeking to understand rather than being understood, those kind of things. Is that what they're talking about with curiosity?
Andrew Geesbreght:Yeah. It's, the after folks take a beat on that, the the next logical question if you're being curious is curious about what? I would say, if you get home you've been married, you said, 27 years?
Mike Coffey:Yes. 3 of the best years of her life. Yeah.
Andrew Geesbreght:Yeah. So, let's use that as an example. There there is a version of Mike that can come home tired at the end of the day and be uncurious about your wife. And, I I so I when I look at a really, really strong marriage, Mike, I I see people go, that's unattainable. It's magic.
Andrew Geesbreght:They must have married the perfect person for them, and I reject all of that. I say it's not magic, it's skill. I'd say if, if you are paying attention, if you are curious about your significant other's day, how they're feeling, and you have evidence of that by asking more than one generic question. How are you? How was your day?
Andrew Geesbreght:Right. Follow-up question. Follow-up question. That's actually being curious. Doing the same thing with your kids and your most treasured relationships.
Andrew Geesbreght:If you think about how you grow a relationship, it's being curious. It's not relying on what you already know. But what the research says about solving your most complex organizational problems, it's the same thing. You don't solve these really deep issues by relying on what you already know. It's being highly curious about how a process is working or not working, being highly curious about time with a customer, asking really, really good questions.
Andrew Geesbreght:I'm not a necessarily a Tony Robbins guy, but I love this, quote. He says the quality of your life will be determined by the quality of your questions. And I think the essence of being curious is asking questions.
Mike Coffey:That's interesting. And
Andrew Geesbreght:That's what that's what we're doing right now.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Right. Exactly. And just I'm peeling that onion and getting deeper into an issue. And, and so are there certain questions you think on the organizational side when we're looking at at leadership that leaders should be asking that that they don't?
Mike Coffey:Or is that just so situational unique to a a, you know, specific organizations, specific leader?
Andrew Geesbreght:Yeah. That's a that's an interesting question. Here's what I would here would be my perspective, is I think it would be important to determine, your level of skill as it relates to asking questions. So if we back up just a second, there's only really 2 options, in the world when we choose to open our mouth. We're either making a statement or asking a question.
Andrew Geesbreght:There's really our only 2 modes. We're either inquiring or stating. Another exercise that we do with our executives, in our leadership training programs is we have them write down their ratio of advocacy versus inquiry. In any normal situation, how often are they stating versus asking? And what you can imagine is they are less than pleased with what they write down, especially after we talk about the power of curiosity.
Andrew Geesbreght:And the term know it all, is is widely known. Well, what is that really? It's someone who is constantly advocating for their own thoughts and not asking questions. And one of the most beautiful ways to honor another person is to simply ask them a question. And so your organizational, leaders, one of the the easiest ways to ingratiate yourself to your customers and to your employees is to just dim yourself just a little bit and and to to stop, talking about what you already know and and be a little more curious.
Andrew Geesbreght:And that starts with simply asking a question and then listening. It's not rocket surgery, as my dad would would say. And I I I find that incredibly powerful, and it's something that's easily, practiced day to day. This isn't something that's abstract. It's simply asking more questions to take this lopsided ratio of inquiry and advocacy and and just flipping it for a day and seeing how it feels, seeing what the results are, seeing what if there's any fruit that's being born.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning. HR is brought to you by Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. At Imperative, we help our clients make well informed decisions about the people they involve in their business, Whether it is best in class employment background investigations, due diligence on the principles in a potential investment, research to meet client acceptance protocols, or any other business due diligence, Imperative provides the most thorough research and robust reporting available. And all of it is delivered by a team dedicated to ensuring that our clients make well informed decisions about the people they involve in their business.
Mike Coffey:You can learn more at imperativeinfo.com. If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been pre approved for 1 half hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information, visit goodmorninghr.com and click on research credits. Then select episode 174 and enter the keyword prax, that's p r a x. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:And now back to my conversation with Andrew Jez Bray. So I know at Praxie, y'all y'all use the term self leadership, and I think that if I understand what you what you're talking about when you say the self leadership, It's that that that self that self awareness we talked about is a big part of that. How do y'all define self leadership and, you know, whether you're on the know, individual contributor side of the organization or at the c suite, how does that play into how the organization performs?
Andrew Geesbreght:Yeah. This is, probably other than practice because praxis is the Latin root of praxis, which means to practice. I would say self leadership is our, top three guiding principles. First, we, I think, have to define self leadership. So leadership is about influencing others.
Andrew Geesbreght:Self leadership is about influencing ourselves. It's it's a really important distinction. I I would say that a lot of the leaders that we come in contact with are leadership fixated. This means they are focused on controlling others' behavior, influencing others' behavior. What's interesting about the, juxtaposition between leadership and self leadership is, one begets the other, but it doesn't work the other way around.
Andrew Geesbreght:If if you are focused on yourself, then you will increase your capacity to lead others, but it doesn't work the other way. If you are focused on controlling others' behavior, you yourself have not improved. So one, has sort of a compound exponential positive effect, and the other one doesn't. And it doesn't mean that leadership isn't important. It's vitally important.
Andrew Geesbreght:That's one of the things you're paid to do other than make good decisions and and dev devise a strategic plan. You are you're leading people. But if you are inept at leading yourself, then you are at a huge deficit. Just a quick aside, Mike, when my brother and I decided to form Prax, one of the, huge inspirations for me is that we've spent our professional career working on our own businesses. That means working inside of our businesses as as they say.
Andrew Geesbreght:And one of our first clients at Prax asked, us to consult in their business, which you're very aware what that looks like. It means we're looking at their strategy, we're looking at their customer base, we're looking at their p and l. And it was a great lesson for me because early on, year 1, I had this epiphany that Prax is about people not businesses. And we've lost some clients over saying, we're not here to improve your business. We're here to improve the people inside your business.
Andrew Geesbreght:Now, we believe that that will improve your business, but that's not why we're here. We're working on who people are, not what they do. And and that's a that's a big north star, for me. One of the thing that I wanna, mention, if you don't mind, is some some recent research on the effect we have on others. And if you are are dubbed a high performer in your organization, just your sheer presence let's say you, Mike, you're a high performer.
Andrew Geesbreght:Just your sheer presence inside the organization can lift other people's performance by up to 15%. You haven't done you haven't exerted any sort of leadership. You are just around. You are influencing others. The the thing that's slightly more shocking is that if you are a low performer, let's just say that Andrew is a low performer, I am bringing just my sheer presence, I am bringing down people 30%.
Andrew Geesbreght:15% boost to 30% anchor. I what I I I find amazing about that is a 45% delta in just being who you are. Walking around in your organization without really doing anything other than just being who you are, there's a 45% delta in if you're bringing people up or pulling them down with you. I think that's an easy way to illustrate why self leadership matters. If if you are working on who you are, you can you can you can be that 15% or you could be that 30%.
Mike Coffey:And when you say walking around being who you are, yeah, I think examples of that sound like meeting your commitments, being truly empathetic to other people, those kinds of things. If you've got those behaviors, those are the things I would think bring it up but being a narcissist looking to lay blame taking other people's ideas not sharing credit those kinds of things those would be the things that drag them down and I can imagine that at the c suite but I can also see that in that line manager with a team of 5 or 6 people tearing people you know either way either you're a high performing team or you're not and so much of that goes to that behavior but what about peer to peer do you how do you think individuals self leadership, their self awareness, and their their ability to influence their own behavior, how does that influence the rest of the team at a peer level?
Andrew Geesbreght:It's a fantastic question. I think the question that comes up is, okay, so I I buy curiosity. I buy culture. I buy, that I have a tremendous effect on others. So what are you asking me to actually do?
Andrew Geesbreght:And I I go back to Viktor Frankl's, work, the stimulus between stimulus and responses is choice. And if you dig into his research a little bit more, he talks about, well, what are the things that are inside of the circle of control? And if we have the circle of concern, that's the outermost, circle, what are what's in that circle? It's the weather. We don't, control the weather.
Andrew Geesbreght:We don't control the stock market. Are we concerned about both of those things? Of course. And the circle of influence inside of that is our relationships, some kinds of of job outcomes. You know, I can do my best to prepare for a promotion, but I'm not necessarily in control whether I get it or not.
Andrew Geesbreght:The only thing that's really inside of the circle of control are our thoughts and actions and our responses more specifically. So when we really drill down on self leadership, we like to think of it in terms of this acronym FITS, fully influencing the self. What are the three core things that we can actually control? And it's values, cognition, and behavior. Values, cognition, and behavior.
Andrew Geesbreght:And we've talked a lot about values. It's it's understanding what really drives us and if we want those things to actually drive our behavior. And that's why we start with that documentary test. When I I mentioned this, before, but content people, people that, are not devoid of insecurities, but generally happy people, we like working with those folks. Customers like working with those folks.
Andrew Geesbreght:Unhappy people bring unhappy habits and behaviors to work. And and we sometimes we call that toxic, sometimes we call that hard to work with, but the my favorite customers, my favorite, colleagues, they're happy people. They enjoy what they're doing. And it doesn't mean that they don't have difficult things in their lives, but they tend to carry themselves a little bit lighter than than others. So values is is number 1.
Andrew Geesbreght:And when I say cognition, I'm really talking about, how we appraise the events in our lives. So how do we process, what's our what are our emotional regulation abilities, our our maybe our lack of thinking errors. The people that are able to process the exact same event in a much more purposeful and positive way than maybe someone who is imminently negative. And then finally, our our actions. And I I'd say, this seems like a duh, but one of the things that we work on with executives, are mastering the fundamentals, sleep, nutrition, and movement.
Andrew Geesbreght:And I wanna point out that we're not talking about diet and we're not talking about exercise, which can be, like, triggering words for for for some people. The people who live to be a 100 aren't doing CrossFit. They're gardening. They are moving. They're moving their bodies.
Andrew Geesbreght:This is the way our our bodies are designed. So, we talked about values, we talked about cognition, but when it comes to actions, we're we wanna master the fundamentals first. If I show up exhausted to work, Mike, that's gonna influence my mood and it will influence the performance and it will influence how others receive me. That's my job, not yours.
Mike Coffey:That's interesting. And and that that cognition part and it seems like, really if you if you get the values and the cognition, the actions would almost be easier to make the change in. Right? I mean, because you've already recognized this is what I truly value. And, and then, you know, I've got I've got my head on straight.
Mike Coffey:I'm seeing things for what they are. I've got a certain level of emotional intelligence, which is, you know, something you can learn. It's it's not easy and it takes, you know, it takes effort. But then you've got those 2. Then that third thing, those those, you know, the actual, behaviors that you're, you know, the actual things you're doing, whether to take care of yourself and do all that seem to, you know, probably make a lot more sense to you.
Andrew Geesbreght:Yeah. It's a great point. I would say that stop behavior is really challenging. Stop doing that, Andrew. Stop doing that.
Andrew Geesbreght:And the reason why is it it, there's no change in my reward system when you just tell me to stop. Yeah. Start behavior is a lot more impactful and we can replace old habits with new habits. The science on neuroplasticity is really clear. We can actually change our brains over over time.
Andrew Geesbreght:But that automatic behavior, there's a, cognitive effort that that goes with changing, the stimulus that leads to this reward. And, so when we just say stop doing that, stop being angry about that, stop feeling like that, stop smoking, stop, doing this, that that tends to not work. What does work, and you pointed it out is the wisdom in starting with your values and with your thoughts, and that that translates to purposeful actions a whole with a lot less resistance than than the other way around.
Mike Coffey:So we're right up on time, but I wanna before you I'll I'll let you go, I wanna dig a little deeper into that idea of value misalignment between the organization and the individual contributor, whether it's c level or or a frontline employee. It's kind of a two way street. Right? I mean, we're and, hopefully, we're at, you know, we're at the job application, the interview, that, you know, that first connection between the individual and the company when we're exploring this rather than somebody's already on board and now we're realizing we've got this misalignment from either the individual perspective or from the organizational or leadership perspective making hiring decisions. What does that evaluation look like?
Mike Coffey:How do how do you get a real sense if you're looking at going to work for a company or you're looking at hiring somebody that they are aligned or they're not aligned with your organization's values?
Andrew Geesbreght:Yeah. That's, that will be our next good morning HR. But, no, I I'm I would say, first, some data that I, that caught my attention was that, almost or up to 80% of new hires, were placed by referrals. And, I think that's important, but why? Why does why are referrals such a powerful source?
Mike Coffey:Parts of a feather?
Andrew Geesbreght:Yeah. I would say it's a values, data point. I would say that when when if you and I have worked together with Sally and we both vouch for Sally, we understand what drives her. We understand how we feel working with Sally. We're it's really not a performative evaluation.
Andrew Geesbreght:It's really more of an emotional evaluation. You'll enjoy working with Sally. I can vouch for that. And I think that's why, that 87% is so compelling. So when you ask about, you know, what does an organization need to do to understand, and and maybe predict what will work and and what won't.
Andrew Geesbreght:The unfortunate answer is I'm not sure there's anything you can do to perfectly predict. But I do know that asking someone what their values are or asking an an organization what their values are isn't very effective for all of the reasons that we've just talked about because we don't know if it's gonna be truthful. And a lot of times, employees feel like this bait and switch occurs because they asked and they got an answer, and then they, got hired and onboarded, and then they experienced something very different. So I I I think marriages are operate kinda like that as well, and that speaks to the dynamic nature of values, people growing apart and and priorities, changing, and organizations values change as well. So I don't have a silver bullet, Mike.
Andrew Geesbreght:I would say, that Alex and I, in our multiple businesses, we have hired based on referral and, frankly, close referral. And a lot of times, family or friends have built our executive teams, and that's because we trust them. We are less concerned with what they're capable of doing and more concerned on on who they are. And and that has that has worked for us. Now if you're a very, very large organization, I would say the best that you can do, in these pockets, in these teams, is to hire around trust.
Andrew Geesbreght:And and and that that is, that's, there's some evidence that you can look to, but it's mostly an emotional, decision. And I don't think that's a bad thing.
Mike Coffey:And I I I certainly we we use values based behavioral interview questions where the person doesn't realize what the value we're looking for is. And then we try to phrase them in a way that makes it sound like we're looking for a different answer. So that's their Do you
Andrew Geesbreght:have an example of a question?
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Let's say one of our our key values is always act in the best interest of the client. Okay? That's one of our 3 main you know, 3 values.
Andrew Geesbreght:Okay.
Mike Coffey:And one of our questions is something to the effect of we've all worked with an unreasonable client that we have to put in their place. Tell me a time where you where where it was necessary to tell a client no or, you know, set them straight on what the organization was looking for, you know, delivering something like that. So the idea coming back to that to a candidate who's wanting to game the system is, oh, okay. They want me to be firm. They want me to tell this, you know, you know, sometimes, you know, the the client, you know, we just have to tell them off or whatever versus the the person who comes back and and still says, well, I wanna understand what the client really is trying to achieve, and I wanna dig deeper into that because if we've made them unhappy, that means we didn't do our work on the front end.
Mike Coffey:And so let's dig deeper into those, and that's what that's the answer I'm hoping to hear. But if I hear somebody who's gonna take a little who's gonna relish the opportunity to put a client in their place, you know, and go, you know, straight to that adversarial relationship, I know, okay, this person's not gonna be happy here. Yeah.
Andrew Geesbreght:We're not gonna
Mike Coffey:be happy with them. So that's an example of how we're doing it. It's I think it's harder probably as the job candidate to ask those questions. Although I've heard of job applicants who say who ask questions like, you know, you said one of your values is this. What does that look like and how y'all do how you manage the company?
Mike Coffey:Can you give me examples where you've made decisions like that? And that's a you know, quite honestly, that's that's a pretty courageous applicant because I think, you know Sure. But if you again, if it goes back to your values and if your value is being able to be frank and open and honest with your employer and you ask a question like that and it annoys them Yeah. And they they eliminate you from consideration, you just did yourself and them a favor.
Andrew Geesbreght:I love that.
Mike Coffey:You know, you're gonna have that incongruence you were talking about earlier. But, hey, we're really out of time. I I appreciate all your time. I ran you up. We're gonna get back because I wanna dig deeper into this, and I really appreciate you giving us the time.
Mike Coffey:Thanks for joining us, Andrew.
Andrew Geesbreght:It's a real pleasure being here, Mike. Thank you for having me.
Mike Coffey:And thank you for listening. You can comment on this episode or search our previous episodes at goodmorninghr.com or on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. And don't forget to follow us wherever you get your podcast. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at robmakespods.com. And thank you to Imperative's marketing coordinator, Mary Anne Hernandez, who keeps the trains running on time.
Mike Coffey:And I'm Mike Coffey. As always, don't hesitate to reach out. That can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week. And until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.
Mike Coffey:Up.