Claudine Ripert describes how she used to over-support employees, hiring for potential she saw in them rather than their own belief in themselves. She now looks for a smaller gap between what candidates can do and what the job requires, prioritizing coachability over raw potential.
Chapters
One of my biggest faults at the very beginning is being an enabler. I grew up in a family that was super enabling. That was definitely my default and go-to. And so I'd hired quite a bit of people that I believed in them more than they believed in themselves. And I was like— it reminded me of foie gras, and I was just force-feeding them, you do want this, you can do this, I see your potential, you can be a leader. And it just wasn't the truth. That was really hard to reconcile. And then if they failed, I really took it personally. I had to fight against that.
Do you look for something different when you're interviewing now? Is there something, a behavioral trait that you look for?
Definitely. I understand you have to grow somebody, but it's like, how far back do you have to go? What is that gap? So I'm very cognizant, or I'm really looking for, I guess, a shorter gap. Are they coachable?
I like hiring people that blame themselves for something going wrong first, so that, that makes them more coachable, right? But if people are always blaming the outside environment, blaming their boss, blaming the economy, blaming a supplier, blaming other employees, they tend to not be as coachable. It's everyone else's fault.
