We want people to come in our organization to be with a leader mindset and ownership mindset where they’re saying, I want to do everything I can possibly do to help the company be its best, and when I help the company be its best, then I’m successful as an individual and then we’re successful as a company.

This podcast is brought to you by Fast Slow Motion, a team of expert consultants that have helped hundreds of growing businesses build scalable systems on the HubSpot and Salesforce platforms. To learn more, visit fastslowmotion.com. Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion podcast, where we teach you how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. In our podcast, we talk key learnings, cheat codes, hacks and principles that have served us in our journey in the hopes that they serve you as well.

I’m your host, Sam Donaghy, and today I’m joined by Michael Smith, Fast Slow Motion’s, Director of People. Michael, it’s great to see you and welcome to the podcast. Great to see you, Sam. So, Michael, can you tell our listeners about what you do here Fast Slow Motion? What exactly is a director of people? That’s a great question and I get asked that often.

Let me start on the personal side first. It’s really a position where my skillset, my experiences and my passions have kind of all aligned and I get to live out kind of my dream job here. First, from experience, I worked many years in, nonprofit world where we got to build teams that you had to motivate beyond money.

And then second, my skill set was I just love to help people be the best that they can be. And that is my passion. So I’ve kind of always been this leadership junkie that just wants people to be their best. And I do everything to read and research that and try to pour into other people. So that’s on the personal side.

On more application as we get into Fast Slow Motion. There’s a couple things I do. One, I help in the interview process where we’re helping to get the right people on our team, and that’s a very strategic process. Two is I want to make sure we we do the onboarding process. And that’s not just a one day thing. That’s really a four month process for anybody on our team that comes we’re a we unpack what we expect out of them as an individual contributor, how they respond on teams. And we even unpack some practices that we believe will help them be a success. So it’s the interview is the onboarding. I also get to be the point person for our company training. We do that every other week. And we just had one today where we talked about vulnerability. And sometimes it goes about leadership. Sometimes it’s about technical aspects.

But I helped drive that calendar. And the fourth thing I do, and probably the one that’s most satisfying to me, is I get to mentor our leaders and meet with them on a monthly basis, just to coach them, to help them be the best they can be as a coach, as a leadership person who is helping their team get better.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that, Michael. I know that you get a lot of job satisfaction for everything that you do for us here at Fast Slow Motion. You know, you and I, we’ve worked closely together, right? We recruit leaders to come and work at Fast Slow Motion. Tell us about our process for finding and hiring leaders here at FSM.

One is very intentional process. one, it’s and it’s also, it’s not an easy thing to get a position at Fast Slow Motion. We have a lot of people apply. But the reason it’s not easy is because we want to make sure we get the right person. So we’re very intentional, very selective. I like it that the first thing happens is people apply and they get to connect with you and you get to see, hey, do they meet that criteria of being that Fast Slow Motion candidate on from a technical aspect and just fitting in with our beliefs?

So that’s the first interview. If they get past that, then the fun happens and that’s where we send to them a problem to solve. It’s like when I went to graduate school and the grad school can look at my transcript and see all the classes that I passed, but they didn’t take that for granted. And they put me through some tests to make sure I knew what the transcript said I knew.

So that’s what we do. We send them a technical problem to solve, no matter the position. Then when they do that presentation, it comes back and we have an interview with them at that point where we get to unpack their answer to that technical problem when they unpack that, we get to watch and see how do they respond to our challenging them on what they presented.

When they get through that, then they get to me and I just get to have a conversation with them, helping get to know them. It has nothing to do with their technical skills, whether that’s Salesforce, HubSpot or selling or anything. I just want to know them. But before that interview, I send them behavioral assessment for them to take.

Now, we do not use this as a criteria for hiring, but I listen throughout the interview at the answers they’re giving. Are they humble in how they put those answers out there? Do they understand how their words are affecting even the conversation we’re having? And are they hungry for the job? Well, then I look at that behavioral assessment.

Just what they put on that assessment match up with what they’re saying. And it’s just a fun conversation to unpack. If we get through that as a team, when we say we’re ready to move on, there is actually one more interview. And that’s with our CEO. Everyone on our team interviews with our CEO. It’s that important to us to get the right people on the team.

That’s why they meet with our CEO. But I like the last step just as much to and that’s the job offer. It’s not just a quick phone call or an email. We actually take a whole hour and unpack the company. Its vision, values, how we’re organized. We unpack the job they’re going to, if they’re going to accept what is expected of them.

And then we unpack the compensation package. So that could really take 3 or 4 months. Someone could be in the process before they actually become a team member at Fast Slow Motion. And as you said, it’s a super intentional process. It’s well thought out, it’s well structured and it’s very in-depth. But I think that helps both parties, right? It helps the company realize, is this candidate going to be right for us, but it’s also going to help the candidate understand, are you a good fit for the company?

Because who wants to join a company that you’re not right for? So Michael, what advice would you have for business leaders who want to start looking at ways of leveling up their hiring processes and actually start attracting these types of candidates? One know who you are as a company. Make sure that you’re living out is not just a piece of paper that says, this is what we want to be, but you’re living out those values, okay?

But from there, to hire somebody, put in an intentional process. I’ve seen so many companies hire fast and push people out the door even faster at that point. But I want you to be intentional. I’d rather see a position be vacant for a longer time just to make sure we get the right person. You know, as I like it, that Fast Slow Motion, we’re intentional, but we’re not perfect in that we have continued to tweak that process to make sure we get the right person on the team.

And I will say those two as intentional ways where we don’t get it right every time. And sometimes we get people on our team who are not right for our team, and letting them go or separating from them is not a fun thing. So that’s why it’s important to us to always evaluate that process, to make sure we’re getting the right person on the team.

And on that same note, when we hire somebody and we think they’re right and they’re doing a great job, sometimes people in our team decide this is not the best fit for them. Well, we’re sad, but we also want to celebrate them and support them because we want them to be the best person they can be. We were hoping it was that Fast Slow Motion, but if they decide to go somewhere else, we’re sad, but we’re going to support them as they make the decision because they want them to be the best who they can be.

I really appreciate your heart behind that as well. Michael and I mean, look on the podcast today. What we wanted to talk to you about was leadership specifically. So why is it so important for business leaders to hire and develop good leaders, and how did they go about that? Michael, it seems kind of paradoxical, but here at Fast Slow Motion we say we only hire leaders.

Can you explain that a bit? Surely everyone can’t be a leader. Yeah, but every good team member is a leader because they first have to learn to lead themselves well. And that’s what some of the things we listen for in the interview process, we are they self aware of what they’re bringing to the team? Are they self-aware of what they’re saying and how others receive it or perceive it?

So good leadership starts with self leadership, and we want to establish that baseline from the beginning. That helps us understand where we can help them grow beyond that. So yes, everyone at Fast Slow Motion is a leader because we want people who have a great understanding of self-awareness and we just want to help them get better as that as they move through our organization, I love that.

Absolutely love that. So what’s the difference in a company that operates this way versus one that operates with a mindset that it’s okay for some employees just to sit back and be followers? Well, no matter what leader you are, you’re also a follower, and we’ll get that in a minute. But we want people to come in our organization to be with a leader mindset, an ownership mindset where they’re saying, I want to do everything I can possibly do to help the company be its best, and when I help the company be its best, then I’m successful as an individual and then we’re successful as a company.

It really starts in this place of we want people who are self-aware as individual leaders, who come in with this attitude that also I want to get better at who I am in all aspects of my life so that I can be my best contributor to the team. And that starts from a place of humility. And that might seem like a strange word to use.

And some people think of as a weak word, but being humble is actually a strong thing because you’re self-aware of the skills I bring to the team, and also what I don’t bring to the team and where I need help at that point. But I wanted to think about, you know, I said everybody’s also a follower.

Even the owner of the organization is following something. He’s following either the board of directors or other people in his life. But in every aspect I want followers to follow from a leader mindset. In other words, they’re still thinking as that owner mentality that we want to be our best. And I think that’s what a good leader is.

I love that, okay, that owner mentality around leadership, right? You’re not just a cog in a wheel here. You need to contribute and become a leader in regardless of which position that you hold at the company. You know, we look at things like frameworks and best practices around how we identify leaders to join FSM. But is it really possible to predict who’s going to be a good leader?

Well, there’s some research that shows that the overall predictor of success for a leader is self-awareness. Okay, that research shows that when you ask leaders a question, if they believe they’re self-aware, 90% of the leaders say they’re self-aware. But that same research shows that only 15% of leaders are self-aware. What we’re trying to get is we’re trying to instill this pattern that we want you to be self-aware of what you bring to the table.

But self-awareness can be broken down into two ways in an external and internal well, internal is do you know yourself what motivates you, what your personal core values are, and what are your behavior patterns? And the external is knowing how others see you is not just enough to know your behavior patterns, because sometimes people can use their behavior patterns as an excuse for, oh, that’s just me.

That’s how I act. But the external part of that is knowing how is someone else seeing me across the table? It’s it all boils down to self-awareness. Yes, I believe everybody can be a good leader and they can raise it if they understand this self-awareness. It doesn’t matter on your behavior style, it doesn’t matter. And what kind of work you do.

Do you know who you are? And then we want to work with you to get people around you that can compliment you and collaborate with you. That’s really, really interesting. But the fundamental building block is self-awareness, right? Absolutely. And everything else is built upon that foundation. What can an individual do in order to develop leadership traits within themselves from that foundation?

Yeah, this might be a simple answer here, but it really starts from a willingness to be open with your teammates and with your organization. One, you want to be open and tell everybody what you’re good at, but also say what you’re not good at. You know, our definition of humility in our organization, I think, comes from C.S. Lewis.

It says, humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking of yourself less. In other words, I don’t discount what I bring to the team, but I also don’t think I have everything so I can look across the table and say, I need you. Or I can look across the table and say, I can help you as we go there.

So leadership development starts with humility and vulnerability. Again, back to that self-awareness piece. We spoke about this with Martha on one of the previous episodes as well, about vulnerability being the foundation of this sort of development, right. You have to have vulnerability to be able to achieve that self-awareness, to put your hand up and say, I don’t know this, right?

Absolutely. That comes from that cultural perspective. You need that culture ingrained to be able to do that as well. So can you talk about what we’ve done here at Fast Slow Motion to encourage this kind of growth? Yeah. There’s a quote from John Maxwell that says everything rises and falls on leadership. We have taken that and kind of rephrased it a little bit and come up with our own quote that says, we believe that everything rises and falls on honest communication.

We are all in on radical candor, real time evaluation. We don’t wait for some yearly thing that happens, so we’re all in. But that’s just not a one way street. From day one, you’re given permission to speak freely into our organization. If the things we told you in the interview process about who we are, we want you to hold us accountable as much as we’re going to hold you accountable to moving forward.

Yeah, it does. a lot of people join our team. Think that’s only words when we say it out, that we don’t really act it out, but it doesn’t. It takes them about a couple months to rise. You really do mean that? You really do want us to say what? They hold us accountable to that. So we give you permission to speak freely.

Here’s another thing we’ve done. We’ve established a process where everyone in our organization does a one on one meeting with their team lead monthly to unpack things like this. Now, granted, you meet with your team, lead on a daily basis are talk technical things. But once a month, a team lead sits down with their team member to ask them how they’re doing in life, health and work and we try to also present some some questions with open ended questions about your journey on your technical side, your journey and your communication skills so that together they can put a plan in place to get better.

In some things we do that so they can unpack their technical acumen that way. What do they need to get better at? What do they need to go study? And one of the platforms that we do, but is also leadership acumen we unveiled this year what we believe are the four foundations of leadership at Fast Slow Motion. And again, it starts with what you talked with Martha about.

It starts with vulnerability based trust. That is the foundation of it. But rising from that foundation, we want everybody on our team to get better at communication, whether that’s you and I talking, whether that’s presenting to a client or presenting in a company training, we want to provide those training opportunities so you get better at that. So trust, communication, collaboration that’s about working together, knowing how to delegate, knowing how to accept task, knowing when to delegate.

And that’s not just internally. Sometimes we need to delegate things to our clients so they get them done. So trust communication, collaboration. And the last one’s a little harder to explain, but it could be the most powerful one. And that’s multiplication. And what I mean by that is we want to inspire the best in everyone, whether that’s our teammates, our boss, or our clients.

And when that happens, it’s not just me training someone, it is me training you and both of us going training someone, then four of us going training someone and that’s multiplying the leadership acumen in our organization. So we’re setting some things in place. We don’t have it all together yet, but we’re getting there. I love the, the concept of the one on one.

Right. Aside from the technical work, aside from the daily grind, it’s creating human beings at work. Right? And, it’s building relationships and, I really do appreciate that side of things that Fast Slow Motion. It’s really interesting. And I feel like everything that you’ve mentioned require vulnerability, right? So it’s not it’s it’s more than just technical acumen that matters.

So how do we encourage some of those other soft skills that are critical to good leadership. We use that phrase soft skills a lot. That implies that they’re easy. It’s really not. It’s probably part of the hardest work that we do because relationships are hard technical skills. When the computer is not talking back to you, but people talk back to you.

So we’ve got to get better at that. In relationships, let’s say this, I think relationships are built one conversation at a time. So building soft skills is about leaning into conversations. So it goes back to what we said about vulnerability and open dialog that open, honest communication, that real time feedback. That’s from day one. At the core of open dialog is a is start has to start with a team leader.

They have to be willing to be vulnerable. I loved it today in our company training, when one of our project leaders shared a personal story about what they were going through and it. I just watched all the head nods in agreement and go, wow, because you shared that story. I can share that story. Yeah. So it starts from top down.

But when you start this idea of I’m willing to be vulnerable, that’s where it is. Understanding these relationship skills get a great start as we go there. You also had to become in it from this curiosity into any conversations that I don’t have all the right answers and I need to listen. And for some of us, that’s really hard to pause and stop and listen.

But a conversation is two way. It’s you can’t have a conversation with yourself. Well, maybe you could, but the idea is to have a real conversation is with more than one person. You’ve touched on these tools as we’ve been talking, but can you also tell us what tools our team actually uses to guide that process of self-discovery? Yeah.

That’s great. well, first we talked about the technical tool, and we’re always looking at our technical chops as we as I say. And when you enter into there’s a process in place of getting more certifications and stuff. But there’s two others that we really put in place. This is since my tenure here in one we mentioned earlier, which is called the Behavior Insights Assessment.

And this is about how do you communicate, how do people see you and what motivates your actions. So it’s based on two assessments. One is called the DISC. And the second part of that is called the motive section. So DISC is about your behaviors. The motives is really what motivates that behavior. And the reason we use both of those in combination is two people can have the the same behaviors, but they might be motivated to get something.

For example, my friend here in town is motivated by helping others. That is not a motivation for me, but we act a lot of this the same way. So my motivation is individualistic. I like to have to. I like to be in charge when I’m put on a team and stuff. But this is about helping others. But because of our difference in motivation, our behaviors might be seen a little different.

We put those together, so we give this in the interview process, but then we make it available to everyone. Our team can have access to anybody’s report and pull it up. I use this regularly if I’m going to meet with somebody, I pull up their report and go, okay, are they like me or not like me? And do I need to change my communication style so that they understand me, or are they going to hear me?

So I use those on a regular basis. So that’s the behavior insights. And it’s the DISC and motives. This year we introduced a new assessment. And this is not about personality or behaviors or motives. This is about what type of work do you like to do. What type of work brings you energy. And this is the six types of working genius assessment from Patrick Lencioni Group, The Table Group.

And this is every project that you can think of, whether putting a garden in your backyard or building something for a client goes through three stages of work ideation, activation, and implementation, which says there’s two working geniuses that fall in the first group one do an intervention, two that fall in the second group, which is the sermon and galvanizing, and two, that fall in the third group, which is enablement and tenacity.

We are not good at all of those. You should not be good at all of those, but two of those just bring you joy. When you get to do that kind of work. Two of them you’re okay and two of them you’re not good at or it’s frustrating to you. But what’s been the aha moment for us as we look at this as a team tool?

Our teams are pulling this up and going, wow, we don’t have any tenacity on our team, so we’re having trouble struggling to get things done well. They put systems in place to help them get done so it we’re also found is these tools aren’t just a one and done thing. This is a vocabulary that we use on a regular basis and continue to bring them out, and continue to have training on them because we feel they’re that powerful.

Love it. Absolutely love it. Well, we always like to wrap up each episode with a quote that provides some wisdom about the topic that we’ve been discussing. So, Michael, do you have one that you’d like to share today? Yeah, this is then we’ll give you a couple. the first one I think of is the more you know about yourself, the more you can communicate and lead those like you and not like you.

So that leans into self-awareness. The more you know about yourself, the more you can communicate and lead those like you and not like you. But here’s the kicker the less you know about yourself can hurt you, and not to mention others. So you need to understand who you are. Have great self-awareness. Anybody can be a great leader if they are self-aware of what they’re bringing to the table.

Michael, I absolutely loved today’s conversation. So thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, it’s been my pleasure. Well, that’s it for today’s episode. We hope that what we’ve shared today will be helpful to you as you find and grow the leaders that will ultimately help you to grow a successful business. Remember to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform, or you can find archived episodes at fastslowmotion.com/podcast.