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Dee Ann was a 33-year veteran of Chick-fil-A, Inc. Prior to retirement, she was Vice President, Talent and Vice President, Sustainability for the company.
Selected as the company’s first female officer in 2001, she was instrumental in building and growing Chick-fil-A’s well-known culture and talent systems. Today, she leads her own organization, Dee Ann Turner & Associates, LLC, writing books, speaking to over 50 audiences per year and consulting and coaching leaders globally.
She is the author of multiple bestsellers, including Bet on Talent: How to Create a Remarkable Culture and Win the Hearts of Customers.
In this episode, Dee Ann and Ross talk about:
- Select and steward extraordinary talent
- What qualifies as extraordinary talent within your organization?
- Which part of recruitment and hiring is most critical?
- What does stewardship of talent look like?
- What Dee Ann learned about “betting on talent”
- The leader’s responsibility in selecting the right talent for the team
- How to make hiring managers love the process
- Trust, Transparency, and Instinct
- “Why would I choose you for this job?”
Find Bet on Talent at https://www.deeannturner.com, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your books.
Visit Dee Ann’s website to download her list of 25 Interview Questions to Select Extraordinary Talent.
Subscribe to The Authority to get more deep-dive interviews with education authors. It’s available wherever you get your podcasts.
Visit https://bepodcast.network to learn more about the Be Podcast Network for educators.
About today’s guest
Dee Ann Turner is a 33-year veteran of Chick-fil-A, Inc. Prior to retirement, she was Vice President, Talent and Vice President, Sustainability for Chick-fil-A, Inc. Selected as the company’s first female officer in 2001, she was instrumental in building and growing Chick-fil-A’s well-known culture and talent systems.
Today, she leads her own organization, Dee Ann Turner & Associates, LLC, writing books, speaking to over 50 audiences per year and consulting and coaching leaders globally. She is the author of the best sellers, It’s My Pleasure: The Impact of Extraordinary Talent and a Compelling Culture (2015) and Bet on Talent: How to Create a Remarkable Culture and Win the Hearts of Customers (2019) and Crush Your Career: Ace the Interview, Land the Job and Launch Your Future (2021). She also hosts the Crush Your Career Podcast and is the Talent Expert in Residence at High Point University.
In 2023, Dee Ann was named to the Georgia Titan 100. The Titan 100 program recognizes the Top 100 CEO’s & C-Level executives. They are the area’s most accomplished business leaders in their industry using criteria that includes demonstrating exceptional leadership, vision and passion.
She is a graduate of Clayton State University with a degree in Management. She also completed executive education courses at Emory University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Virginia’s Darden Business School. She is a 2009 alumnus of the prestigious Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program.
Connect with Dee Ann at https://www.deeannturner.com and on social media:
- https://twitter.com/DeeAnnTurner
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/deeannturner
- https://www.facebook.com/DeeAnnTurnerAuthor
- https://www.instagram.com/deeannturner
About the host
Ross Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Twitter @RossBRomano or https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossromano
Are you a professional looking for insights to reach the next level, find a fulfilling new career, or achieve peak performance? You may be a candidate for performance coaching. Schedule an introductory chat here.
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What is The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders?
Are you looking for proven ideas to increase your influence, hire and develop an excellent staff, build a stronger culture, lead meaningful change, and form a strong foundation for learning and leadership success? This is the podcast for you.
Whether you're a leader to seeks to refine your command of core educational strategies, learn new management techniques from those who have used them at some of the world's largest corporations, gain fresh perspectives on personal development or student success from practitioners across fields, or a little bit of everything, you'll find powerful content on The Authority.
Join leadership coach, storytelling strategist, and edtech advisor Ross Romano as he interviews the prominent education authors you already admire, up-and-coming voices, and experts from the worlds of business, personal development, and beyond — including Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Amazon bestsellers — to take a deep dive into their wealth of practical insights.
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everybody to another episode of the authority podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. So pleased to have you here with us again for what should be another great conversation. It's been my pleasure really to have a variety of great conversations here.
Hopefully I asked some good questions and problems with good things, but really I'm just blessed to have some wonderful guests. And my guest today is Dee Ann Turner. Deanne was a 33 year veteran of Chick fil A Incorporated prior to her retirement. She was actually the vice president of talent and the vice president of sustainability for the company.
She was also selected as the company's first female officer back in 2001 and was instrumental in building and growing Chick fil A's well known culture [00:01:00] and talent systems which I'm sure is familiar. Because it was so strong to many of you out there. If you've ever been to one of their restaurants, you probably felt that culture, right?
And the consistency in the talent and the approach today, Deanne leads her own organization, Dee Ann Turner and Associates, LLC, writing books, speaking to over 50 audiences per year and consulting and coaching leaders globally. She's the author of multiple bestsellers, including the one we're talking about today, which is called bet on talent, how to create a remarkable culture and win the hearts of customers.
Deanne, welcome to the authority.
Dee Ann Turner: Thank you so much, Ross. It's a pleasure to be with you.
Ross Romano: Yeah, I wanted to start with something that it certainly is part of the book but it also kind of encapsulates a lot of what your work is about right now in general, and it's this concept Helping leaders learn how to select and steward extraordinary talent. And first I wanted to touch on that second part, extraordinary talent.
What do we mean when we use [00:02:00] that phrase and why do you think that's the goal of hiring?
Dee Ann Turner: Well you hear people talk about top grade talent, A grade talent. It's my word that I just used to describe the talent that I selected during my career. And I believe that when I talk about extraordinary it's something that's above and beyond. And what I mean by that is candidates selecting talent who's Character matches.
the organization whose competency matches the role and whose chemistry matches the team. And starting with character, when I think about somebody that's extraordinary talent, they have character that matches the organization. And that's really important because if you stop and think about it, the culture of your organization is made up of the sum total of the character of the people in your organization.
So it's an important place to start when you think about selecting extraordinary talent.
Ross Romano: Are [00:03:00] there. reflective questions, right? Is that you would think organizations should be asking themselves when they're creating their own definition of what is extraordinary talent mean in our organization? You talked about the character, the chemistry it's about Fitting in with the culture, the mission, the vision, the team and then of course having the skills and competencies to do whatever the job is, but it's about so much more than that.
And I think each organization is going to have their own definition of in, in this place with what we need, what would be just ordinary and what is the extraordinary that we're searching for? Are there some general questions they might go through to figure out what should that be?
Dee Ann Turner: THe first thing that I think you have to ask yourself, and I offer this in Bet on Talent, is, am I hiring people, or am I selecting talent?
There's a huge difference between those two ideas. Hiring people is all about quantity. Do I have enough? You know, think about the chicken [00:04:00] business. Do I have enough in the drive thru? Do I have enough in the back of the house preparing food? Do I have enough serving the customers at a counter? Do it do I have a, do I have enough?
And instead I suggest that you focus on selecting talent. Do I have the right talent? Do I have the right people in the right roles? That's what selecting talent is all about, and that's the competitive advantage. Most organizations are just filling slots. They're not really thinking about, okay, this is the role, these are the unique qualities I need in this role.
And by the way, my vision for this organization is I'm going to grow exponentially and I'm going to need talent that's going to be able to do these things in the future. So I'm looking not just at the skills somebody has today as I select that talent, but I'm looking for what they might bring my organization in the future because we know right now the hardest.
The first thing to come by is talent. It's the one thing that just does not seem to be enough of. So once you get it, you [00:05:00] want to develop your talent and develop your teams so that you have what you need for the future. So that's the first thing is really thinking about the difference between those two things and what am I really trying to do?
I suppose there's a case at times that people will say, well, I'm just trying to survive. And I've talked to audiences about this. I've talked about this idea of like, okay, Dean, I understand what you're saying. And that's ideal situation. But right now, I'm not going to be able to open my business if I don't get somebody in there tomorrow.
That's the only choice I have. And so what I've said to these people is. Okay, so that's where you are, but commit that you will never be here again, because this is cyclical. What we're living through in a talent shortage is cyclical. And one day, there'll be enough people for the jobs we have, I believe, because I've seen this cycle three times in my career.
And when that happens, that's the day you make up your mind. Hey, I have time right now to get [00:06:00] these processes in place to get this mindset in place in my organization. That when the next cycle comes and there's not enough people, I won't find myself in the same place again. I'm going to fix my systems and my talent before I get there.
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Ross Romano: Yeah, that speaks to such important points around one, you've described kind of having the long view when it comes to talent and looking at not only, okay, what are the immediate needs and what are the what's the black and white of this job description I'm filling, but also What is the overall talent and potential of this person?
And if they're in our organization, what might their career look like? Right? What might they do now? What might they move into later? What broader impacts might they have on the team and the culture versus just the nuts and bolts. And those are both important things to think about but it's something that isn't maybe as often thought about.
And also, as you said, some people may be in those positions where I have. [00:07:00] two candidates for three openings and okay, right now I just, I need to make sure that I can get people in the door because the numbers aren't in my favor, but that even in those situations where it feels like environmental factors are preventative of things being in your favor.
There are things that can be done to change that for the next time around. And then there's sort of are these different stages that I want to, and you can kind of redefine these, but, and we'll talk more in detail about them, but I kind of wanted this sort of. Break it out into, I would say, stage one being kind of setting the stage, being like all the various things that an organization does to communicate about its culture, about what kind of a place it is to work, about what it stands for publicly, right, to people who may be prospective candidates or just prospective customers, but all the things that [00:08:00] would make people consider wanting to apply.
And then, two, is the selection. Okay, we have a job, we're recruiting for a role, we are evaluating different candidates, we're choosing who we're going to hire. After that, they're in the door, you're onboarding them, you're stewarding the talent, right? You're giving them training and professional development.
Hopefully that's not immediate, but that's long term. And then and then sustaining that. What is the long, what is the long view here? Do we have people that, are we always going outside for hires because somebody comes in, they do the job for a couple of years, they hit the ceiling and they leave, and then we got to bring somebody else in?
Or are we actually cultivating talent that will be with us For the long term kind of looking at kind of that chronology, right? Is there a certain part of it that stands out to you as? They're all important, but one that you say, look, if you really have to kind of tilt some of your resources to one of these, [00:09:00] like, really focus on this, because this is what makes or breaks the long term.
Dee Ann Turner: Well, you knew what I was going to say. It's like, well, they're all really important. So let's start, you said it, let's start with culture and the culture is foundation. This is what I talk about when people say, what does it mean to bet on talent? Well, here's the formula. First of all, it's about the culture and it's foundational to everything.
If you don't have a strong culture to attract your talent. And then to grow your talent, then you're going to be, you're not going to get very far. And so when I talk about culture a lot of people are talking about Friday afternoon, happy hours, or bring your dog to work day, or some of those activities.
That's what I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about three important elements, which is, first of all, that you define for your organization, a meaningful purpose, a big why. of the reason you exist at all, why you're a business. The second is that you create a [00:10:00] challenging mission. And that's one of the things extraordinary talent wants to be a part of.
They want to have a big goal to go after. And so you have to have a mission that resonates throughout your organization and with your talent. And then the third thing is demonstrated core values. You notice I say demonstrated because if you have core values and they rest on a screensaver or a sign in a conference room, but they aren't demonstrated by the leadership down throughout the organization, then they're not very meaningful at all.
And so combining those three elements to create this culture. That people know why they're there, they know what goal they're striving for, and they understand through core values how they're going to achieve those goals. That's where you start. So definitely strong investment in there. And then second to that, barely, is the whole idea of selection.
I tell a story in Bet on Talent about how when I went to work at Chick fil A, I had no budget for terminations. And I thought that was very odd, like, how can I [00:11:00] not have budgets for outplacement and you know, packages for people leaving the organization, terminations, and even even lawsuits, like, why do we not have anything for that?
And I went to see the president and he explained it to me. He said, Well, truthfully, Kathy, the founder of Chick fil A doesn't think we're going to be making any changes. So you need to make the right decision to begin with, because if you make the right decision in selection, then you won't need all this.
Well, interestingly what I learned over all those years is, first of all, he's exactly right. We invested heavily in the selection of talent. The most important decision of all those selections were those franchisees. The whole business rest on selecting the right franchisee for For each location.
And so over time, what I learned is, yeah, we invested in that. He was right. We maintained over all those years. And I think they continue to do. So, today, a 95 percent retention rate of franchisees and 95 percent retention rate of the corporate staff. And when you have that, then you [00:12:00] don't need that money.
So, on the back end, and most organizations do just the opposite. They skimp on the front end. But they're all prepared to defend their lawsuits or to pay you know, severance packages or outplacement services for the employees. Most of them aren't willing to invest on the front end in both the time and the money that it takes to get the right person in the first place.
But the rewards are great once you get that system in place, because then it becomes like a flywheel like Jim Collins talks about for the organization. Excellent. Excellence attracts excellence. So the fact that the very fact that you have great talent there attracts more great talent to your organization and you don't, and truthfully heading talent also known as HR in an organization like that is a lot of fun because you're focused on growth activities and growing talent instead of figuring out, okay, well, we've got to let these people go or these people quit because we didn't have a great culture or whatever the case is.
[00:13:00] Instead, you put all that in place. And now you're just focused on growth of the organization and growth on the people to sustain the organization,
Ross Romano: Yeah. And what's so great about that is that it When you have that mentality, and that is the culture that's set, and that is the norm, and the expectation, and the agreement it's just becomes self fulfilling, right? Because you're, when you're saying, look, our job here is to find the right people, because once they're here.
And when we're keeping them, is of course, there's certain factors that are objective, and you can tell, okay, this candidate is a little better than this one, and there's other subjective factors where, who's to say that we always know who's the right, but now I'm invested, okay, I've made a decision, I've made the best decision I can, and now I'm committed to this person and their growth, and it's a mutual role.
And and there's [00:14:00] organizations that create a dynamic like that, for example, in being able to involve different people in the hiring process. Right. A lot of school leaders listening school, I've talked to school leaders who will get different teachers involved in those interviews because now.
Where I traditionally, I had no say or no real insight into who was being interviewed or hired. Now I'm invested in these people because I've talked to them, I was part of the process I had a say in them and now I want them to succeed. So I'm going to do the things that I can do to ensure their success versus to look for, okay, when's the opportunity to say, oh, we made it different.
We made the wrong choice. Let's get rid of them and get somebody else in.
Dee Ann Turner: That's an excellent point about involving others in the whole process. And the other thing it does is it gives the candidate great information when I was at Chick fil A. And I always did the final interviews of franchisees and of the I say corporate office, they call themselves support [00:15:00] staff now, the support center staff, and I would do the final interviews for those candidates.
And one of the things that I tried to do is talk them out of it, and when I tell people that, they think that's a crazy idea. Like, why in the world would you invest that much money in selection and then try to talk somebody out of it? And the reason for that is because if they could be talked out of it then, it was so much better.
for our organization and for the candidate. Because if they got in there six months into it, and we've spent a lot of money training them, maybe we've relocated them, they've relocated family, they've made decisions for their life, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, this is not good. They don't really want to be selected for that opportunity, or they don't really want to be in, in this particular location, whatever the case is.
We've wasted a lot of time and money. And they've uprooted their whole life for something that may not have been what they wanted in the first place. So, what you describe about involving others in the process not only gets [00:16:00] them bought in, but they're able to give real life examples to these candidates of what it would like.
It would be like to work there, what it would be like to work in that school what the administration is like, what the day to day culture is like in this organization. And so they get to have good information because they're making at least 50 percent of the decision, right? So we want them to be as informed and that's a great point that you bring up.
Ross Romano: Yeah. And and that also ties into another, there's a lot of S words, but when I talked about like kind of setting the stage, it's all storytelling, right? It's the ways that the organization uh, proactively goes out and talks about, what are we about? What do we do here?
What does a day in the life look like? What is, what's our mission? What's our culture? Getting different people involved. We get to hear from them directly. Okay. Well, these people are going to be my peers. So the way that they talk about what their [00:17:00] job is like and what they like about it, the challenges and the, is that's good information for me because now I know I'm not just getting the company talking points, but I'm actually hearing it from different angles.
And but how does that. It not only communicates culture, which is critically important, right, but it also helps to establish, right, that consistency and Everybody kind of having their voice and being able to contribute to that conversation uh, it really cements, I guess, the culture and strengthens it because it's, it is about the people that are involved in it and it's, you can't just create a culture by writing it down and saying, this is our culture.
You might start there and say, this is what we want it to be, but it only becomes the culture. It actually is the cult, if the people there
Dee Ann Turner: yeah, it's lived out and the stories are told and passed down exactly.
Ross Romano: And the other piece, like, and the way you described, of course that. Mentality toward [00:18:00] uh, toward hiring, I think will be an indicative of why the word stewardship is the one used and what that connotes, right? And I love the word because it's it's not just about, okay, it's training and it's leadership, it's management, it's development, but it's also, it's just that level of care and responsibility toward.
And that there, it's a resource that you're really giving adequate care to and it's something I used to say this thing when I was in an organization where we were hiring people and having ups and downs of that and things that weren't working out and these are just made up numbers, but I would say, Well, it's 20 percent about hiring the right person.
It's 80 percent about what you do after that. And those are, it didn't necessarily mean that those numbers were hard numbers, but it was like, Yeah, we have to hire people, but your job's not done after you hire somebody, and you just say, great, we did a great [00:19:00] job, we hired somebody, okay, now I hope they do well, because if they mess up, then it's on them.
It was about kind of trying to instill the mentality of You need to continue to equip people for success once they're in your organization. What are you doing? Are you establishing for them what it means to be successful in their role? Are you giving them the resources they need? Are you giving answering their questions, giving them access to the things that will help them to be able to develop or are you just saying, well, They had a good resume and we hired them and hope they do a good job.
Dee Ann Turner: Well,
Ross Romano: a little too much of that going on.
Dee Ann Turner: yeah, and unfortunately that's not going to work at all for Gen Z, because they were looking for three things mainly, and the problem is, I feel like today when people are looking at selecting talent. They're trying to do [00:20:00] 50 things to get them and to keep them, but really, there's three very important ones to Gen Z, and they're the, we've already talked a lot about the first one, they want to work in an organization that has a remarkable culture.
Secondly, they want to be about something bigger than themselves. You know, this is a generation that will work hard, but they're going to work hard for a reason, and it's not just, it's not at all just about money. If anything, they want to work for something that matters. And then third, they want To work for a leader that is willing to invest in their development.
Those are the three things. So thinking about that number three, being that steward of talent is a huge responsibility. And of course, it starts with setting clear expectations and then helping someone set goals. to meet those expectations and then holding them accountable for those goals. And of course, when they achieve them, recognizing them in those goals or when they don't achieve them, helping them to [00:21:00] redirect.
And I'll tell you something, with somebody who's willing to do those things for you, I would stick it out with them all day long because it is a whole lot harder to go out and find new talent and train them than it is to make the talent you have successful. So, as a leader, I'm a I'm going to put all the energy I can into making who I have on my team successful, because that's a whole lot easier than starting all over again.
Now, there are times because people just can't be successful, or especially if they're not willing to put in the effort to be successful, that you have to make those changes. But for me as a leader, I want that to be the rare circumstance. I want to know that I've done everything I possibly can to help that person be successful.
One of the things that really helped me grow up, if you will, as a leader much earlier in my career is when I stopped and recognized that the people on my team and about how I really, how I treated them and how I felt about them. And I simply told myself [00:22:00] this, every single one of those people, they are somebody's mom or dad.
They are somebody's son or daughter, brother, sister, husband, or wife. They are special to somebody in the world. And I want to treat them like I want those special people in my life to be treated by another leader. And so when you think about it that way, in, in terms of stewardship, it changes your outlook a great deal.
I was talking to one of my former team members today and really I wasn't expecting the encouragement, but she's highly successful now, but we were talking about every career has ups and downs and she was talking about and it actually was of no fault of her own. It was circumstances beyond her control, but when she was having a downtime and I said, yeah, and you became successful because you were resilient and you were teachable and you just.
You know, you took that on and now look at you today. And she told me something and it's not to pat myself on the back, but it's to encourage other leaders because I really had no idea until she [00:23:00] said it. But she said, but the reason I could be resilient is because I was in a ditch. And you climbed in the ditch with me and let me know I wasn't alone.
And she said, and that's why I climbed out. And I thought, wow, I need to share that with other leaders because I was doing something that came natural to me. I didn't even think about it and didn't recognize that it had that much impact on her, but you can think somebody is down and out and then all of a sudden.
They just need the right encouragement and she is an absolute rock star, superstar any moniker you want to place on her today and I know it was well worth it for the organization to make that investment in her.
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Ross Romano: You spoke to making the challenge collaborative, right. And you just mentioned in this story, like when somebody's struggling, they know they're not alone. Same thing in what, what's going to attract high talent people to the organization is we have a [00:24:00] challenging job ahead of us, right? We are working toward these big goals, not.
You're going to have a tough job. You know, there's a big difference in you could imagine the type of things that would have attracted people to have worked for NASA in the fifties and sixties, right? We are trying to get to space. We're trying to get to the moon. We have this big goal. We need great people to help us do it versus if they just were to.
be interviewing somebody and said, look, you're going to have to figure this out because this is a hard job. And if you don't figure it out, um, but there's a lot that happens a lot in certain types of roles where it's almost yes, people want to be challenged. They want to work toward big goals.
There's a lot of you know, big issues in the world that people want to have a hand in solving that are, might take generations to solve. And they know that they can't do it by themselves, and they might not even see when it gets done, but they can contribute to it. But [00:25:00] it's not motivating to do that unless you know that.
You're part of a team. Everybody's committed to that. And that, and that's the mentality.
Dee Ann Turner: It's funny that you mentioned that example of NASA. I actually use that sometimes when I'm talking about culture for organizations. I use the example because it was in 61 that Kennedy made his famous speech, and he said the nation should commit itself to send a man to the moon and return him safely to earth by the end of the decade.
And it's like the perfect example of a big, hairy, audacious goal, right? I mean, it's time bound, it's specific and it's challenging, and it's exciting. But what was so great about that, and of course, it was accomplished eight years later when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon but what was so great about it, Was that accomplishment, but it just spurred them on to bigger and bigger missions.
And so the next big mission [00:26:00] came in the next big mission. And here we are in 2003 with the Artemis program with the possibility of putting a man on Mars sometime in the next few years, and it all started with that many decades ago. So it is challenging for people to be a part of a mission like that is motivating and it keeps them very engaged.
Ross Romano: Is there any, you mentioned earlier right at the beginning when you first went into the role in human resources and talent and realized there was no budget for terminations. Of course, that was part of a perspective shift and learning something new, but anything else that comes to mind that you've learned over the years of betting on talent or about things that were surprising or just enlightening to say, okay, look, when you really put your belief and trust in talented people who fit the characteristics of what we want and you, in a sense, go, [00:27:00] right?
To say, look, we did what we're supposed to do. We have this person that we believe in. Now we what's going to happen next? We can kind of believe in that, right? But are there things you learned along the way that maybe at first were not evidence or not or were just counter to what you thought might happen?
Dee Ann Turner: You know, I think back to one lesson I learned early on so we've talked about making your decisions right, we've talked about stewarding the talent you have, but there's another one that really stands out, and it's the same leader, former president of Chick fil A, Jimmy Collins, who mentored me in many ways and Jimmy a lot of things we talked about, I learned from Jimmy, but another one was, he used to say, it's kindness to refuse immediately, What you eventually intend to deny.
And that's such a big statement. I'm going to say it again for you, Ross. It's kindness to refuse immediately what you eventually [00:28:00] intend to deny. He started teaching me that when I was in my early twenties and I had no idea what that really meant or how that would play out throughout my years of leadership.
I knew the 1st way that it played out is that sometimes what he meant by that early on, and he was teaching me had to do with how you treat candidates and if you're in a business. You don't want, and funny that we were in the restaurant business, but you don't want a candidate to leave with a bad taste in their mouth for your business.
Even if they're not going to be your employee, you still want them to be your customer. And so you had to treat them in such a way that they would feel that way. Well, one of the things you had to do is that when you recognize that for whatever reason, they weren't going to become part of your organization, The kindest thing you could do is tell them no as soon as possible.
Don't let it drag on. Don't let them feel like they have an opportunity that you already know they're not going to have. I [00:29:00] like to talk about the fact that being kind is about I care about you. When I'm nice, I care what you think about me, and there's a huge difference. So, it's kindness to refuse immediately, which you're eventually going to deny.
You think of stewarding employees, they want promotions. Maybe somebody has plateaued out, they're not going to get the next promotion, and you know that. It's not fair to them and it's not kind to them for you to string them along and not tell them the truth and let them know that opportunity is not going to be there for them.
And of course we could go on with example after example. For those of you who are listening to this and your parent, your parents of teenagers. This principle applies all the time. When they ask about, on Friday night, I want to go to such and such party, and you know on Monday, that's not the case. You're not going to allow them to go there.
It's kindness to tell them on Monday. Because if you wait till Thursday, as the week goes on, their hopes get higher and higher that [00:30:00] they're going to be there. They're already talking to their friends, and they're making plans, and they're getting a ride, and they're doing all these things, and in their mind, they're By Thursday, they see themselves at the party.
And so when you tell them on Thursday, something you could have told them on Monday, you're going to get a bunch bigger reaction on them. They're going to be far more disappointed. And it was less kind than just to tell them no immediately. So they didn't have their hopes up. Just another example of that principle.
Ross Romano: right. I love that one. It's, it really aligns with some of the earliest lessons I learned and I learned them from the other end of it as the candidate. You know, starting my career during the global recession, um many years ago now, but at a time when the power balance was totally tilted toward the employer, right?
It was a buyer's market. You could have as many overqualified candidates as you wanted for a job. You could pay them as little as you wanted, and you could put [00:31:00] them through any kind of interview process you deemed appropriate. So it would not be uncommon to go for three interviews and Prepare for them and drive there and maybe pay for parking and then sit with their team for an hour and a half and do that three times, right?
Commit all that to the process. And then at the end of it. Eventually, you would just realize, I guess I'm not going to hear from them. I guess I didn't get the job. And that was how you found out. And then if you reached out, they might confirm or they probably would say something like, we can't say too much.
And they would always have these company policies about, well, we, we don't give feedback to you know, to candidates. Really early in my 20s early 20s realized, you know what, when I'm in that position, I'm never going to do it that way because you know, one, I remember who those companies were and I'm not really inclined to want to do business with them with the way they conduct themselves [00:32:00] and.
You know, and by contrast, when there were those places where they were willing to say, well, we didn't select you for this job, but we're willing to chat about give you feedback on your interviews, maybe you'll learn something or you know, then when I soon after that was in a position where I was hiring and I would.
call the people on the phone who came in the interview and didn't get the job. And a couple of them it wasn't always an easy call. A couple of them would sort of be like, well, why are you calling me? But then other people, I learned really quickly how appreciative they were to get that call.
Even though the call was telling them you know, we only had one position and we gave it to somebody else. Just what a difference it made to them to say, wow, you actually called me to let me know and to thank me for my time. And it was like, wow, is that really that rare? But it was
Dee Ann Turner: Exactly. That's a perfect example of that. It's just, and you're exactly right. It's kind of [00:33:00] funny that the shoes on the, I guess it's not funny, but it's ironic that the shoes now on the other foot, and it's the candidates that are calling back or showing up on the first day of work or whatever the case is the ghosting situation.
Things to turn around.
Ross Romano: Yeah
Dee Ann Turner: And that's why I say it's cyclical. It will, it, the cycle will change at some point. And so being prepared in all seasons is a good idea.
Ross Romano: Yeah, and I mean it's not a bad thing. Of course for employers to have to reflect on Okay how are we conveying our value proposition here? How are we ensuring that This is a place where people really want to be, not just they have to be here because they have to work, right? And so it's, and it depends on when people came of age, when they first entered those leadership positions and how they got used to operating.
That was a huge you know, area of opportunity for a lot of years was [00:34:00] there was a lot of companies that took a long time to realize That the dynamics had changed and that the economy had shifted and it was no longer a session if they had to operate a little differently or else they weren't going to secure talent, whereas.
You know, other companies that were more dynamic and put more effort into going out there and really making themselves appealing, I think, took off during that.
Dee Ann Turner: Exactly.
Ross Romano: You know, going back to that word of stewardship, I realized it relates in another way, and it relates to to the leader's role in selecting the talent they bring into the organization.
Not, I mean, not just in stewarding talent was there, but in saying, like, so in your roles, of course in HR and head of talent roles, this is something that, that is. Part of part and parcel, but there's a lot of places where of course there's hiring managers who aren't[00:35:00] in human resources and who may have a variety of views on it, but in thinking about what is my stewardship of the organization, of my existing staff, right.
And of what the culture is that they've built and the teams and dynamics they work on, how seriously do I take my responsibility. To make sure that I'm bringing in the right people to serve those bigger goals, not just to serve me the person that I want or I want to work with, or that I want to just kind of get it over with to go to other things, but to say, look, whoever I hire, they're going to work closely with this person and that person, and it's going to make a big difference in those people's experience and their level of success.
and this person's hopefully going to be an important contributor to our organizational mission. And are they going to be a good one or not? How would you talk about that piece of it, particularly to people who aren't? [00:36:00] You know, whose main job is not the the role of recruitment and hiring, but for whom it is a big part of what they do
Dee Ann Turner: So, first of all I always viewed it as a partnership between talent and the hiring manager to get the right talent, but at the end of the day, the talent is going to work for the hiring manager. And so I think that they have a critical role in all of this. The way we did it was we left talent.
Responsible for making sure it's character that match the organization. We drilled down on the pieces of do they have a personal purpose mission and core values that align with the organization. And then we really leaned in while we knew what the qualifications were and what we tried to make sure that was true on the application and so forth.
And in our initial interviews, we really leaned into the hiring manager to make sure that this person has the competency. of what they're looking for in the role. You know, while there were some jobs that, especially over the [00:37:00] time that I did this work, I could be very familiar with and recognize that competencies, there were some other areas.
I'll use engineering as an example. I think that engineers need to select engineers and determine somebody's competency. We could go throughout the organization and talk about all kinds of roles. I think the hiring managers better qualify to determine somebody's competency. And again when you get to chemistry, I think there are points, and that was always sort of a shared responsibility because there are things that people from the talent part of the organization could identify in a candidate just because of their experience with lots more candidates.
And then the hiring manager needed to be sure that person was going to fit in well with their current team. So that was a partnership type decision. So that's how we looked at it. But. I was one of those HR leaders. And I'm glad that I didn't have a company some companies actually HR selects all the talent and then they just disperse them into their roles.
And the hiring manager has little to [00:38:00] no discretion whatsoever. And I think that's a big mistake. I think that. hiring managers need to select their own talent. And that's the first part of their commitment and investment to them. And so once you know, it's once they've made that commitment personally to select that talent, then that leads to being committed to the stewardship and invest in protecting that investment.
So I think that's a really important role. And I actually think selecting talent. And protecting the culture, or growing the culture, strengthening the culture, are the two most important things that any leader at any level does in an organization.
Ross Romano: yeah. How do we make hiring managers love that process? Right. Cause I I think there's a variety of mentality sort of, and a lot of it depends on the organization and its track record. Right. And all those things. But I think if we were to just. Choose a couple of rough buckets.
There's the bucket that would focus on the excitement of being able to [00:39:00] review candidates and add new talent to the team. And there might be the other that's more focused on. the burdens of onboarding and training and the what is this going to require of my time and effort that's going to make me feel like it's taking away from something else, right?
And it's that group that we want to say, look, this is an opportunity. This is a privilege. And if you're not really excited about it and I. I don't know if you're going to do as it is effectively if you're looking at it as a burden.
Dee Ann Turner: Well, so, this is really interesting because I talk with a lot of groups about selecting talent. We might get a little technical here, and tactical, Ross. But, so one of the questions I'll ask an audience is, how many of you have all the talent you need right now? No one raises their hands. I'll ask how many of you enjoy interviewing?
Maybe one or two will raise their hands and I often [00:40:00] find out afterwards they're in HR. Nobody raises their hand. So here's a couple of things. One is. I don't think they feel the accountability. No one says to them, Hey, I know you have these other functional things to do, but selecting talent is your most important role as a leader.
And they don't hold them accountable in performance reviews. If I think that's, if I'm an organizational owner or leader, and I think that's important, then I need to hold my other leaders accountable to that. That needs to be part of their performance evaluation is how well do they select and grow talent.
So accountability is often the issue. Actual training and capability is often the second. People just don't know how they don't know how to do this. Well, they're not trained to do it. It's just like, well, you're a people manager. So go select people 1st of all, defensively. That's a really bad decision for an organization because you don't train these people.
They might get you in trouble because they don't know the proper things to do in an interview or in managing talent. [00:41:00] So you want to train all of your people leaders. How to correctly select talent, and you want to train them how to grow the talent, how to manage them, make sure they understand the do's and the don'ts, and all of those things or they can get you in trouble.
They need to know how to properly interview, and most of the time, once I teach people how to do this, And it's like, aha, that wasn't as hard as I thought. I just didn't have the right tools. I didn't have the know how to do it. But once I learned to do it, hey, this is not so bad. They don't know what to ask.
They don't know what they're looking for. And it's a miserable 30 minutes to an hour and a half. And it's miserable for the candidate because they're sitting there with somebody they know doesn't know how to interview. So not to get too tactical. But one of the things is knowing how to interview, and I think the best process for interviewing is using behavioral interviewing questions.
A lot of people might know what that is. Many people don't, I've come to find. But those are questions that can't be answered with yes or no. [00:42:00] That you're actually looking for a specific example or story of past performance. Because we know past performance is the best predictor of future performance.
Behavioral interviewing is better than situational interviewing. Situational questions will ask things like, Well, if such and such happened, what would you do? What would you do if you were in a situation? Blah, blah, blah. They don't know what they would do if they've never been in those situations. So, better questions are behavioral interview questions.
Tell me about a time when. Give me example of. Tell me a story about. And so let's just take an example here. Tell me about the most difficult project you ever worked on. So they lay out what that project was, and I like to use this technique called going three questions deep. Now, the questions have to do with what they say, so I can't necessarily script this ahead of time, but when I practice this over and over again, I get better at it.
But let's just say they told me about the project. After [00:43:00] they told me about the project tell me how other, what feedback you receive from other people about the project, the positive and the negative. So they tell me the positive and the negative of the feedback that, and I'm probably going to ask them who gave you the feedback, was it a supervisor, customer, whoever.
And so they tell me about the feedback and I say, as you think about the negative feedback. What did you decide you'll do differently next time to avoid that? That's an example of going three questions deep. And by the time you do that on five or six really well thought out questions that apply to the role that the person's interviewing for, all of a sudden you've got 30 minutes, 45 minutes of material.
You've got really good examples of this person's performance. And then when you take those same questions, And you reference against them, people who've worked, they've been accountable to in the past, either work or outside of work, they've had an accountability and you ask them tell me about the most difficult thing you ever saw them [00:44:00] do.
And then, and you go through that same thing and you compare their answers. All of a sudden, you have great information. It's all about being trained well, knowing how to ask questions and practicing that skill again and again. So it becomes second nature to you when you're in an interview. And I have found that when people learn to do that, well, it changes their whole perspective about selecting talent in the interview process.
Ross Romano: Yeah, and I'm, I believe that even for those who haven't maybe figured out how to ask behavioral questions that behavioral answers still make a bigger impact, right? And so for even those who haven't figured it out you know, I work with and coach professionals on a variety of high performance issues.
And some of them are people who are you know, actively job seeking and interviewing. I'm always encouraging them to give those Answers from experience. Talk about the things you did and think ahead of time. What what are they going to want to know? What is it going to what's the job about?
What are [00:45:00] the things they're going to be interested in? And think about the examples that you can give them. So even if they ask you, what would you do in such and such a situation? Well, Let me do you one better. Let me tell you what I did in such and such a situation, right? And sometimes it might it might be you have to make those connections or a little more abstract, but which one makes a bigger impression?
Hearing somebody actually go through the details of things that they did and what were the outcomes and what came later or You know, hypothesize about, well, in this, because, right, it's hard to get the, that three questions deep. Okay. Well, after you fulfill this hypothetical, then what feedback do you think you might get?
Dee Ann Turner: Right? Right.
Ross Romano: Who knows?
Dee Ann Turner: Well, something that would be a good resource for your listeners and you can put this in the show notes, but if they'll go to dnturner. com they're able to download my top 25 favorite behavioral interview questions. And not only do they get the questions, but they also get some [00:46:00] instruction on what types of answers they're looking for and why that question is asked.
So that's a resource that'll be helpful.
Ross Romano: Excellent. We will definitely put that link there. Dan, there's a few more things I wanted to touch on here. And one of them is just a few of these keywords. And I just wanted to hear what they kind of you know, words that I think either come up explicitly in the book or certainly relate to a lot of the the leadership competencies that you write about.
And number one is trust.
Dee Ann Turner: Well, when I think of trust, I think of the most difficult thing to build in an organization. Even the greatest cultures, this is something that they have to highly prioritize as something to protect and grow, is trust. Because without it, your culture will not be successful. And growing trust means that leaders within the organization, they have to be transparent.
Now, can they be totally 100 percent transparent about everything in the [00:47:00] organization? No, there are things that for whatever reason, because they're confidential, because they're you know, legal reasons, whatever, but be as transparent as you can about everything that you can be. Do what you say you're going to do.
I I was so shocked the other day, somebody was telling me about their experience. They're within the organization, but one of the things that was concerning them was that they were hearing about people who had been applying to the organization and offers were being rescinded. And they got on the job and things weren't what they were told they were going to be.
And I was like, wow, I mean, that's not just. causing a trust issue with your candidates, that's causing trust issues and morale issues with people who work in your organization, simply by not doing what you said you would do. And so that's really important. And the higher up you are in the organization, the more that's expected of you in this area.
And so having [00:48:00] integrity, being sure that your impact that people, that sometimes we, what we intend is not what our impact is. And so we have to have self awareness about that gap between our intent, what we think in our heart we're doing, and the impact, what people are actually experiencing with us.
We have to understand that gap and constantly work as leaders to close the gap between our intent and our impact.
Ross Romano: So, yeah, and actually you referenced transparency, which was the second word I had here and yeah, a really critical one and to me, it always really relates back to the importance of proactive communication. And I I always think of transparency and mindfulness and empathy relating and saying, okay, I'm in this position of quote unquote leadership.
Am I being mindful of the things? That are important to the team here, the [00:49:00] things they want to know about, they're curious about, they're worried about are we making sure to communicate to them all the things that we can and to be less precious about what's privileged and not, and also just to communicate about if there are things that.
They can't know about, tell them what those things are and don't let them because they'll create their own interpretations and fill in the gaps about, well, it seems like they're not telling us something and what are they not telling us? And when you talk about culture, right? Not the breeding ground for a strong culture when there's a lot of doubt about what are they hiding?
Dee Ann Turner: Right. Exactly.
Ross Romano: What about instinct?
Dee Ann Turner: Instinct's an interesting word. I think that people sometimes rely too much on instinct instead of discovery, and I was like that early in my career in selecting talent. I used to think that within a couple minutes of somebody getting off the [00:50:00] elevator that Fifth floor of our office shaking their hand that I could decide whether they're gonna be a good candidate or not.
And that was arrogant. That was absolutely arrogant of me to ever think such a thing. Because really what I needed to do was do the hard work. Some of it I described to you about behavioral interviewing and really, and what I learned over time. Is some of those people I thought would be great candidates, after I did the hard work, they really weren't great candidates at all.
And some of those people I didn't think would be good candidates, after I did the hard work, I learned that actually, they were very good candidates. And so I think sometimes our instinct and then on the other hand, I think sometimes, It's a helpful thing and I used to tell myself when interviewing candidates about being a fit where there's smoke, there's fire.
And so if I had the instinct of something wasn't right, then I needed to pull the loose threads as I used to call them and try to figure out what that was. So I think instinct has its place. I think we should never just rely on instinct. And by [00:51:00] the way, I don't think we should be so, rigid that we don't allow instinct to play a role either.
So, I think that it's just something that you have to manage carefully that you don't over rely on it, but you don't ignore it either.
Ross Romano: Excellent. So Dan, you referenced a few minutes ago, that's with the 25. interview questions to identify extraordinary talent. So my final question to you is about number 25 on that list and which is why would I choose you for this job? Talk about that question and what you're looking for, right?
What, if somebody is to integrate that in or use that maybe as the conclusion to an interview what types of responses are you looking for to really say, okay, this person nailed it,
Dee Ann Turner: So I'm looking for a couple of things here. 1 is I'm looking for their confidence level. I'm looking for their understanding of what the role is, and that they've evaluated themselves. Well enough [00:52:00] that they can communicate to me why they fit that job. thE other thing that I, that is kind of a play on that, if you will, Ross I would sometimes, when I was selecting franchisees, I had a last question that I would ask them.
And I would say, why would I want my son or daughter to work for you? Because at the time there were so many teenagers working and young people working at Chick fil A, and so that was the way I sort of sized up whether or not I would want to select this franchisee, because if I wouldn't want my children to work for that person, why would anybody else want theirs to work for them as well?
So that was a question that I often asked. At the end, and I would ask a candidate. And so, a similar question to that is to ask why should I select you for this job? And I'm really looking for them to kind of tie all of that up and show me that they've investigated the role well enough that they're And, Fully aware of what they're stepping into [00:53:00] and that they can explain to me how their character competency and chemistry matches the opportunity.
Ross Romano: Excellent. So listeners the book again is Bed on Talent and you can find it at DeanneTurner. com or on Amazon, Barnes Noble, wherever you get your books. We also talked about the 25 interview questions list, which you can download on Deanne's website for free. Is there anything else listeners should check out on your website or anything you're doing currently that they should learn more about?
Dee Ann Turner: They can also check out my podcast that I recorded when I released Crush Your Career, Ace the Interview, Land the Job, and Launch Your Future is my recent, most recent book.
I like to say that Bet on Talent teaches leaders how to find and select extraordinary talent, [00:54:00] and Crush Your Career teaches talent how to be extraordinary. But I did podcast through that, so you can check that out on my website. Love to connect with your listeners on LinkedIn, on Twitter at Deanne Turner, on Instagram at Deanne Turner and on Facebook at Deanne Turner author.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Yeah. Listeners, we will put all those links below to the website where you can find the book, Bet on Talent, where you can find that interview questions list and all of the social media links where you can connect with Deanne there. So please check those out. Please also do subscribe to the authority for more in depth author interviews like this one and visit bpodcast.
network to learn about all of our shows. Deanne, thanks so much for being on the show.
Dee Ann Turner: It's been my pleasure, Ross. Thank you so much for having me. [00:55:00]