Hire For Strengths, Not For Lack Of Weaknesses
How Great Managers Build High-Performance Teams
Imagine a football club searching for a striker and opening up a hiring process. Two football players, Sam and Will, apply for the position. Sam is an experienced striker and top scorer at his current team. Will used to be a defender but presented himself as a promising striker. The club conducts interviews to assess their skills in shooting, passing, dribbling, ball control, running speed, and, surprisingly, their defensive abilities.
Sam’s poor defensive skills resulted in his rejection despite good shooting, dribbling, and ball control. On the other hand, despite not being impressive, Will was hired as a striker because his skills were acceptable and without weaknesses.
A few months have passed, and Will struggles to score goals during the official football matches. Moreover, he misses the ball too often and struggles to dribble past great defenders. Due to Will’s poor performance, the team cannot win matches, causing deep concern for the club. It seems they didn’t hire the striker they expected for the team.
You may relate to the fictional story I shared, even if you aren’t a soccer fan. The reality is this kind of story happens in today’s companies, where employees are hired based on their lack of weaknesses rather than their strengths. Regrettably, this approach frequently leads to the formation of teams comprising average performers who lack diversity and excellence.
The importance of hiring for strengths
While working in London, I noticed our CEO had a book on his desktop one day. It was The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. I have always been passionate about startups and had an entrepreneurial mindset. Additionally, I greatly respected my CEO because I understood how difficult it is to build and run a successful business. Therefore, I purchased and read the book.
Thanks to that book, I learned the significance of focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses. However, it wasn’t until a few years later, when I was heavily involved in hiring engineers, that I realized the significance of this concept. Essentially, we discovered that our hiring process was not designed for candidate’s success but for their failure.
I’d learned the hard way that when hiring executives, one should follow Colin Powell’s instructions and hire for strength rather than lack of weakness.
― Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
During our interviews, we often focused on candidates’ weaknesses and failed to identify their unique strengths. For example, during the interview debriefs, we said things like:
“I am not inclined to hire this candidate as they lack depth in systems knowledge.” In such cases, we rejected potentially good candidates by focusing on weaknesses that weren’t a dealbreaker for the job.
“I don’t think this candidate is a senior engineer because they didn’t consider observability aspects in their solution.” In these cases, we were down-leveling candidates due to non-critical weaknesses, which is generally not a good idea.
“This candidate is sort of okay; I don’t have any objections to hiring them.” These were probably the worst cases when we hired a candidate who didn’t shine on anything in particular and excited nobody.
However, minimal times someone during a debrief said something like this: “Although the candidate lacks depth systems and observability knowledge, I was impressed by how they documented the whole solution, indicating the pros and cons of the implementation provided and further improvements they would do to make the application production ready fully.”
The good thing is that after collecting and analyzing data, we realized that unfortunate pattern. Therefore, we changed our hiring process and set up our candidates for success by identifying their key strengths.
How to hire for strengths
Strengths are the unique combination of talents, knowledge, and skills everyone possesses. People use these innate traits and abilities daily to complete their work, relate with others, and achieve their goals.
Hiring for strengths is a matter of understanding an individual’s strengths, whether they can use them effectively, and how engaged and motivated they are. For example, questions like the following can help to identify their strengths:
How can I see you at your best?
What are some of your strengths?
What are you passionate about?
Of course, it’s essential to be aware of significant weaknesses or red flags when considering candidates for a job. That can help ensure that you don’t hire individuals who are either unqualified for the role or have values that don’t align with your organization. It’s best to avoid hiring someone incompetent but nice or someone who is a brilliant jerk.
The key is to ask the interviewers a straightforward question during the interview debrief: “Is there someone who is excited by this candidate and will stand up for them?”
If there is no response or enthusiasm, then he probably isn’t the person who will help you get the organization to the next level. Remember that you should hire for strengths, not for lack of weaknesses.
Great managers focus on their people’s strengths
It’s hard to imagine Lionel Messi’s coach advising him to improve his goalkeeper skills. After all, Messi is already one of the best football players in history. What’s essential for coaches is to focus on their players’ strengths and help them reach their full potential.
The same applies to managers. When investing in people, you should invest in their strengths, not weaknesses. It’s crucial to support their career growth by helping them to develop these strengths further. Of course, you should also help them work on some of their job’s critical weaknesses so they can reach an acceptable level of performance.
Focus on your strengths while improving on your weaknesses (until reaching an acceptable level of functioning).
Outstanding managers identify the strengths of their team members, and they focus on managing those strengths. They recognize that each individual is unique and has their areas of difficulty, which may persist despite their best efforts. Instead of attempting to improve every weakness of their team members, it is more beneficial to concentrate on their strengths and develop them further.
Concluding thoughts
Timing and hiring are the most crucial factors determining a startup’s success. If you get either of them wrong, the startup will likely fail. Hiring individuals whose strengths align with the company’s objectives is crucial to building a solid organization.
Inexperienced managers may hire for lack of weaknesses. They may look for balanced individuals, but that could lead to mediocrity. To build a strong organization, you must hire people based on their strengths and then manage their weaknesses.
Great leaders recognize their team’s strengths and manage them accordingly. They lead each person differently, which is why great leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders.
How do you hire? And how do you balance investing in strengths versus addressing weaknesses?