Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
Would You Hire You?: The Secret to Smarter Hiring | Jay Henderson
Would you hire you?
That’s the uncomfortable but powerful question at the center of this episode—and it just might change the way you build your law firm team forever.
This week, Brian sits down with Jay Henderson, performance coach, hiring expert, and the brain behind Real Talent Hiring. With over 50,000 assessments under his belt, Jay breaks down what most law firms get completely wrong about hiring.
We’re talking about how to assess judgment—not just experience—the secret to interviews that reveal the real person, why your culture is either attracting or repelling top talent, and how to flip the script so that candidates are chasing you, not the other way around.
If you’re tired of hiring people who check all the boxes but still don’t perform, this episode is for you.
Want to dive deeper into Jay’s work or get your hands on his new book?
Jay is offering free copies of The Lawyer’s Guide to Hiring Superstars. To request one, simply email him at jay@realtalenthiring.com —no charge, no shipping.
To learn more about Jay’s hiring assessments and how he helps law firms build high-performance teams, visit www.realtalenthiring.com.
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
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But ultimately, the perfect job interview is anytime you can objectively get in the head of another human being. You know, how do you objectively identify who they really are Like? Look, I try to say can they do the job? Will they do the job? Will you like the way they do the job? Or will they do the job for you? Will you like them in the culture? Because even if they can do it, it doesn't mean they will do it. But if they can do it and they will do it, are you going to like the way they do it? Are they going to get along? Are they going to fit in? Are they going to be a problem? Are they toxic in some way?
Speaker 2:et cetera. No-transcript. Today's episode is going to change the way you think about hiring forever. Let me ask you something Would you hire you? It's a powerful question and it's the one we're using to crack open the hidden psychology behind smarter hiring. I sat down with Jay Henderson, a performance and hiring expert who's worked with thousands of law firms to unpack what really makes someone a great fit, not just on paper, but in real life. We talk about why most interviews are broken, how to assess a candidate's judgment instead of just their experience, and what it takes to build a team that actually wants to be there. Jay also shares why you need to stop chasing candidates and start making them chase you.
Speaker 2:If you've ever felt overwhelmed, burned by bad hires or stuck with a team that just doesn't click, this episode is your roadmap to doing it differently. So stick around, hit, play and let's get into this. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the show. It has been a while since we've talked about something that is not marketing and digital marketing, and I am excited to talk about human beings and human performance once again with my friend, jay Henderson, the owner and CEO of Real Talent Hiring. Jay is a performance coach, a hiring expert, and he's developed this niche in helping lawyers and law firms hire the best talent into their practices, really, with you know what? I would describe, jay, as a truly unique screening tool that you use, and we'll talk about that as we go on today. But, jay, welcome to the show, hey thanks, so much, glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, and Jay tells me that within the next week, his new book will be available on his website.
Speaker 1:What's the name of the book? Jay it's called. I've got one right here the Lawyer's Guide to Hiring Superstars.
Speaker 2:And I am recording episodes about eight days out from production Jay so you have very little margin for error to get this thing on your website.
Speaker 1:I don't have it done, so there's your challenge, man.
Speaker 2:There, you go All right. So let's talk hiring in law firms. So this is almost the number one challenge that I hear from lawyers. It's either one of three problems that law firms face. It's either I can't I don't have enough clients, which is either I don't have enough leads or my team is not good at converting the leads, or it's I can't meet all of the production needs that are in my office. And so in Great League Marketing, obviously we help people solve the leads problem, help them identify and then solve the sales problem. But the production problem is the problem that you solve, because it requires great people to come in and run the systems and processes in the way that the law firm owner wants them to be run. So how do law firms identify or misidentify talent when they're coming through the hiring process?
Speaker 1:First of all, I haven't met a lot of attorneys or anybody that owns a business really that loves the hiring process. I mean, some people love it. Maybe they're weird, I don't know, but you know it's not easy and really the trick is getting in people's heads, like we talked about the screening piece and it's hard to do in job interviews, but we got to do it, don't we Right? We know that. So we want to meet people. The real big key is being crystal clear on the role, and that goes beyond the duties and responsibilities you know, kind of like who do you want around you, what are they going to be like and what do you expect from them? We got to do all the things that your typical approach involves Having a great ad. You guys are really good at writing ads. I've seen your ads and Ben's ads and stuff like that but, yeah, it's getting in people's heads and really understanding exactly who they are for real. That's the hard part, but that's what I do to help.
Speaker 2:Well, the challenge of hiring for lawyers is, you know, especially in a small firm. I'm running a firm that has five lawyers, maybe 18 team members, so I hire twice a year, you know, and so it's not something that you get an awful lot of reps at. And when we were smaller, five years ago, we're hiring once a year. And then what happens is lawyers are great pattern identifiers and we make a hiring mistake once, or make a hiring mistake second time, and we think it's a pattern, but it's not necessarily a pattern right. And that's how we develop these generally bad habits around hiring and screening and interview processes. And you have a webinar out called the Perfect Law Firm Hire Perfect Law Firm Hiring Process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I call it the perfect job interview.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what's?
Speaker 1:tell me the what does perfect look like? Perfect looks like well, I mean, look, we've got to take the steps that we all know that we've got to take. But you've got to know how to take each of those steps really powerfully and be realistic about what step in the process is adding value and what step do I not worry about. But I've got to do it a little bit and what you're looking for each step along the way. So your typical hiring process we're on the ad, we get some, we look at the resumes, we do some interviews. What are the goods and bads and ups and downs about each one of those steps that are very valuable? And then in my perfect job interview webinar, I hand out free templates that help people organize their hiring process and interview, looking for the right things and not missing things they don't want to miss.
Speaker 1:But ultimately, the perfect job interview is anytime you can objectively get in the head of another human being. You know, how do you objectively identify who they really are Like? Look, I try to say can they do the job? Will they do the job? Will you like the way they do the job or will they do the job for you? Will you like them in the culture, because even if they can do it, it doesn't mean they will do it. But if they can do it and they will do it, are you going to like the way they do it? Are they going to get along? Are they going to fit in? Are they going to be a problem? Are they toxic in some?
Speaker 2:way, et cetera.
Speaker 1:But the real, real rubber meets. The road piece is, I mean, how do we identify who they? Can they and will they? It's easy to know if they can there's ways we can figure that out but will they do it? That's a bit of a different story than will they do it for you.
Speaker 2:It's a real challenge in some small firms again, because you're not doing it very often. And then when you do and when you get the candidate who, out of the batch of candidates, look like they would be pretty good or pretty okay, especially if you have like a bad batch of candidates you often find yourself in the position where you're trying to sell them on the firm, they're trying to sell you on them. Nobody is really, I think, upfront and objective and completely forthright and honest about the good and the bad and what they're looking for, and then we end up on the other side in three months and we're not happy. So what are the methods or the tactics or the strategies of actually getting inside a candidate's head in the I don't know hour-long interview and whatever follow-up processes that most firms have?
Speaker 1:Yeah, great question. Well, first of all, I'm smiling a lot because you're nailing what is a problem for people. It's kind of like if you don't know how to interview powerfully, then we're trying to sell them into the job and they're trying to sell themselves into the job. So, like you say, that's perfectly true and I like to tell my clients, first of all, hold that question, help me remember it in a minute, because I just have to say that when people are looking for work, they're in this I'll call it a transitionary state. Right, they're in a transitory state and like so, transitory state, so they're dissatisfied where they are, or they're unemployed currently and they don't, but they're not happy. So they're going to do what they can do to get the job and then we're going to tell them, we're going to try to get them to take the job if we like them, and that's like your point you're making is exactly true. That's not always a good thing to do.
Speaker 1:I tell my clients all the time make people chase you, do not chase them. Research shows that 71% of employees are dissatisfied right now. People the research shows that if people had $300 a month more than they have in bills right now, that they wouldn't even work at all, that if they had income they wouldn't work at all. Shocker, but that's what research shows. Now, why am I talking about that? Well, because 71% of people are they might like their job and want to keep their job, but they're disengaged at certain levels. And my assessment and research, after over 55,000 or over 50,000 assessments in the law world, shows it's 68%. So it's really really close in those numbers. So you don't want to sell them because they're sitting there wanting to be sold and then they're trying to sell you to, like you said.
Speaker 1:So make them chase you, because and the other part of that is be super clear about what the role is Part of making them chase you is to tell them the full truth. The full truth here's who you're going to work with, here's what that's going to be like. Here's what the true expectations are. Here's what our days are like. Here's what it's like around our office. It isn't just duties. And can you do this? Can you? You know? Do you know Excel? You know? Do you like paperwork, are you?
Speaker 2:detail oriented. Yes, I am.
Speaker 1:Perfectionistic. Oh, that's a real big problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and you know, I think again, one of the problems in small law firms is that we don't know. You know, we don't most of us, and we're better at this now than we were five years ago, but most of us don't actually have standard operating procedures. We don't have. This is the way something's going to be done and, by the way, the job that you start today is very different than the job that you're going to be doing in my firm in 18 months, because the firm is going to grow. I'm going to be behind on hiring where I should be hiring. You're going to swell into, you know, a number of things that you didn't sign up for in the first place, and if we look back at the job description that we actually hired you into a year and a half ago, it would be almost unrecognizable to what you're doing today, and that's the way most firms operate. And so you know there is something to like just find good people and get them into the role. Yes, at a certain size.
Speaker 1:Totally. I mean, look, the good news about that is people want to grow anyway. They want to grow, they want to learn. That's what everybody complains about the X, the Z generation and everything like that, you know. So that's the good news about that. But you're right, that's the whole higher attitude over skills. And I like, even better than attitude is judgment. Now, we want the attitude to be great, sure, but first number one is we need people with good judgment, because if they have good judgment, they can do exactly what you just said. They can grow and they can do whatever job needs to be done. They can apply their talent to whatever needs to be done. And there are people with poor judgment, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:How do you assess judgment in the hiring process?
Speaker 1:So it's not easy. How do you assess judgment in the hiring process? So it's not easy. And you know we're looking at past experience and actual high level performance and past experience. So you really want to ask a lot of questions about what they have done and why they did it.
Speaker 1:When you ask a question like what problems have you solved in that role, when they tell you what the problems that were solved were, you want to go deep into that and talk about, well, how did you solve that? Why did you do it that way? And go deep into that and make them tell the full story instead of just I observed that problem getting fixed, but I wasn't involved at all in that, you know. So now, that's one thing is you look at the past and you're going to look at a history of success and you're going to check references and you're going to ask that question Did they make, you know, did they make effective decisions consistently foreign on behalf of the firm of your business, whatever role they had, and did they seem to have good judgment? Where did they lack in judgment? So references which is no one wants to hear do reference checks and people don't trust reference checks. But if you do reference checks properly, they can be very, very powerful.
Speaker 2:Where's the line Jay between asking the right questions and cross-examining somebody?
Speaker 1:Well, it's softening statements, it's relating while you're cross-examining. I don't think it's bad to cross-examine if you are relatable, if you're not interrogating right, and so that's what I think it is. Look, it's your right, as the owner of the business who's about to hire someone for the business, to get as much data as you can, and I think the key really is to, like they call it, active listening in the communication world, right, where you feedback what they said and ask a follow-up question based on what they said, using their own language. And if you're relatable and you're asking softening statements, using softening statements between your questions or using their own language to go further and deeper, which I recommend you do- when you interview.
Speaker 2:I mean, it seems to me, just having this conversation, that one of the things that lawyers under-index for is the amount of time that we're spending doing investigation on the people that we're hiring. Right Like, I looked at the resume, I talked to you. I brought you in for a team interview yeah, you'll do. I got other things to work For a paralegal position in a firm that's my size, 20 employees. How many hours would you expect the hiring team to spend on any successful candidate?
Speaker 1:No one has ever asked me that question ever. In all the interviews I've done about this Great question how many hours? I would say first of all, you would have built up the proper interview and what that looks like for every paralegal you hire. You know what you're looking for, why, you know what the questions are and why those questions are the questions you want. So I think you've got some upfront work to do to get that ready.
Speaker 1:And then after that I would say I mean I'd have to say over two hours, three maybe even, because to me you're going to interview them at least three times and then you're going to do an assessment on them. Now that doesn't have to take your time, that's their time, but you're going to look over the data. From it, I definitely would say over two or three hours, given a period of time. The hard part is if you're having trouble finding people, shortening how long you go through that process. So you know that just again buoys up the importance of how good we are at interviewing and having our work in front of us already done, we know exactly what we're looking for, we know exactly who they should be, we know exactly what the experience level is. We know exactly what the questions are, etc.
Speaker 2:So One of the things that we found as we've been hiring people is the talent pool on Indeed is very shallow, and so do you have best practice tips for where to be searching for? You know, not necessarily entry level position and not a seven year lawyer position, but the folks who are in the middle right, A great front desk staff, your great intake team, your mid-career paralegal how are people finding the best candidates for those jobs?
Speaker 1:95% of jobs are found through networking. So you want your team helping you find people. You want to do your everybody doing social media. You're going to do your Facebook and your own social media stuff. Linkedin's a good source and then, of course, you've got all those other tools out there, like Indeed and whatnot. So it's a real full press effort, just like you do in your marketing. You know when you want to tell your clients to not only be doing maybe, direct mail, but also digital, but also this and that right. So it's a full press effort and it should be ongoing. Don't ever stop. Okay, if you find someone and you're not looking for anyone right now, be collecting resumes like keep the job open, because you never know when a rock star is going to walk in the door that you're going to be like. You know what man. We really want this person.
Speaker 2:So, um, yeah, I've never known anybody that you know hired hired a rock star when they did not need one and then regretted it. You will find a place for that person to fit in on the team and do some more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm about to hire above my need right now as well, because I feel like that. You know, I used to step over dollars to save pennies and try to scrimp and save and be careful about who I hired and whatnot.
Speaker 1:But now I have a more abundant mindset because if I get a little more horsepower on there, we're going to, we're going to create more growth and it's going to be ultimately better, even if I have to, for a short term, have a little, you know a little less revenue or whatnot, what caused that change.
Speaker 1:I just you know, no, no major incident. I just again started thinking, you know what? There's probably more room for growth that I, we are. Well, the main thing that happened is a person called me and said I know someone that who wants to work with you or wants to look at hiring, being doing your work and they'd be phenomenal. And I started thinking about, well, my first response was I don't need anybody right now. And then I started thinking, well, why am I thinking that way? Why don't I be a little more broad? I've been thinking about my vision and where I really want to go and I'm going to go ahead and probably bring someone on and you know it won't hurt me too bad and but I think I'll create more growth. And, by the way, every time I did hire, I had more growth and made more money anyway.
Speaker 2:And that's you know. Again back to like things that lawyers traditionally are under indexing on is thinking about employees as investments rather than costs, right, so many. And my mind always goes to intake when I talk about that, because I talk to so many lawyers and I say you know, the number one problem in your firm is you aren't as good at intake as actually you think you are. And if you had a rock star in that space, you would really fill the gap and you wouldn't have to spend any more dollars on marketing. You'd have more clients, right, they go okay. Well, so I should get what Like a 24 seven answering service.
Speaker 2:No, like spend on the seven or $8,000 a month to get a real person who you can train and then see if you don't sign three more cases next month than you did the month before. Now in a contingency fee practice there's a significant lag on when you get paid for that. But if you can get through that nine-month period, that's the greatest lever you can pull in your firm is understanding those people as investments rather than costs. But it is so scary in the first three or six months when you don't see any increase in the revenue number. But you do see it in the cost side of the ledger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's actually another good reason for why we're talking about what we're talking about. Who do you pick? How do you find them? Who do you pick? How do you do that in a way that doesn't really freak you out, so that you're nine months down the road at $7,000 a month and they haven't done anything.
Speaker 2:you're in money that you train them on and you're also in lost business potential. Yeah, the opportunity cost Correct. So yeah, all right. Let's talk about your assessment and what it is that you actually do. Okay, all right. Which I have always understood to be witchcraft.
Speaker 1:Yeah, For people that are unfamiliar with you, unfamiliar with your online hiring assessment, can you walk through? Like, how do you explain that to somebody the first time that you're talking to them about it? So there are like 90 some percent of the tools out there that measure people are subjective in nature and I mean I like them, so I'm not trying to be critical of them. Like your disk, your Myers-Briggs, your Colby, your print, your predictive index, I mean I'll name them all. They're my competition, I don't care because they can't do what we do, but they're, but they're, but they're good, but they're all subjective and it's just has to do with who creates and builds those and how they know how to learn about people. I mean, and builds those and how they know how to learn about people. I mean the only thing they can do is observe the outside of people, watch performance, watch behavior, build a series of questions that try to identify can I identify that behavior in this series of questions? Then they build a norm and then they compare you and I against that norm. But it's a subjective process because they don't know why those people perform the way they do or why they behave the way that they do. And that's okay. You can learn things about people that way. That's fine, that's good, but it's limited because you can't reveal risk. You don't know why they make the choices that they do. Behavior can be masked, what we do differently. So that's in comparing, they measure behavior.
Speaker 1:We don't measure behavior. We measure how they think and make decisions, which we can then predict behavior. Because you give me a scenario about a person and I know their thinking style. I'll call it that. I can predict what they're going to do and what they're not going to do.
Speaker 1:And after 15 years of helping attorneys all day, every day, and doing over 50,000 assessments, I have clients that they keep buying and keep buying and keep buying because they feel it's accurate. There probably are some people out there that have not kept buying it and whatnot, and I don't know why. And I could be a better marketer when I come to your conferences. I should be paying more attention to your conference. But that's the distinction. We're objectively measuring how people think and make decisions and I'm capturing how they filter the world and how clearly they see the world, which means judgment and their attitudes. So I know what decisions they're going to make, where the other stuff is measuring behavior and they have to guess backwards, but they don't know what decision a person is going to make. So we're measuring everything that happens before a decision has been made, actually, and the other tools are measuring everything that happens after the decision has been made, actually, and the other tools are measuring everything that happens after the decision has been made.
Speaker 2:Can you give me an example of that? Or maybe here's a scenario, and how that knowledge of an employee's decision-making style might play out?
Speaker 1:Well earlier you were talking about, you were saying to an attorney you're not as good at intake as you might think you are, and maybe you could hire someone who could be better at that. Well, so like I can see why someone would be good at intake or not, even if they're an attorney. And most attorneys would do intake based on credibility, for the most part, because they have the degree and they're attorneys. So they're selling on credibility. And that doesn't mean if I could say selling, you know what I mean. Or they're intaking on credibility, but that doesn't mean that people buy on credibility. I mean, that's what you teach people is.
Speaker 1:It's a psychological dynamic, and so that's a scenario where I would look at a person's scores and say, hey, attorney, here's where you could be way better at intake, and or here's what would make a great intake specialist in your organization, because I know what the steps are to sell powerfully. We actually did a study of 50 years of successful sales training and it turns out there's only four steps. By the way, in all the sales training out there, you look at every script. No matter how different the script are, there's four steps in intake. And so then I can look and I look at the profile and I know exactly how this person's brain filters this step and this step and this step and this step. Does that answer your question?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. And so then, knowing that, are we selecting for people who think about step two in a different way than step four, or what are the things that were, if I have two candidates and one of them scores well on the assessment and one of them scores poorly, and those probably aren't the right terms to use, I understand what is that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, step one is. So back to what I said earlier a little bit is that judgment is absolutely the critical number one deal. And then there's attitude and they're different from one another. But if a person's got, if they want to do intake, I'm thinking about, have they done it before? Obviously, you know know what background do they have?
Speaker 1:around that. But then I want to see the quality of their judgment. That's that's the next thing I'm going to look at. That's what the profile reveals. If I get a person who's a low risk and that's what you want to hire low risk, that doesn't mean perfect, okay. And then I've got a person that's higher, higher risk or they're risky at all, I don't want to hire risk, I want to hire low risk. Now, if I see great judgment, they're risky at all. I don't want to hire risk, I want to hire low risk. Now, if I see great judgment, they're probably going to be lower risk.
Speaker 1:If they've got a sales background, we start doing all that kind of thing. But to be specific to your question, I'm looking at number one what's the quality of their judgment? And then number two, I'm going to say do they have a background in sales? And then I don't have to break down step one, step two, step three, step four. So much, I just look at okay, they've got a background in sales. What were they selling? Was it an intangible? Was it tangible? And there's all these different questions you have about selling.
Speaker 1:And then I'm looking for this would probably be a great person in sales, like Brian, you'd be really, really good in sales if that's something that you felt like you wanted to do and were into it. You'd be very, very good at it because of the quality of your judgment and your talent and your ability. So, but then I would look at your scores and say now, so let's say, brian, you were going to hire me. Let's say I took the profile for you and intake, and let's say that my judgment were good enough for you to consider me. I'm like a low risk, hire right. Then the step would be hey, brian, I would hire Jay because the talent is there. But when this person gets put in that role, here's what they need to know about how to perform the sailing process better than they already are going to do. Now. That's the way I do that. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you know, you say I would be good at sales. I mean, this is all we do, right? I sell the clients, I sell the insurance adjusters, I sell the judges and juries, so that all tracks. And then it's just what's the skillset? Right?
Speaker 1:And I would go. Sorry to interrupt you, but then you know again, I'd go hey, here's where you'd be, even better.
Speaker 2:How does this translate across working generations? In other words, do you see higher levels of judgment or risk in older folks, younger folks, remote workers, or is it kind of the same bell curve and it's just a matter of finding the people at the top of the bell curve? Excellent, question.
Speaker 1:First of all, we don't see differences in older generations and younger generations as it pertains to talent or ability or interest or desire to grow or goal orientation. That's good news because we definitely know there's differences between an older generation and a younger generation. But it just is interesting also that research shows that when they study generational performance, the complaints of the previous generation usually are the same about the next generation, no matter what generation it is. But there are differences. There aren't profile differences so much, but there are differences, cultural, and the profile isn't cultural or identifying based on race or sex or any of that kind of thing, but it, but there are nuances to it and we can see, see, we can see certain things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kind of yeah, well, you know it's, it's. Every generation has a problem with the next generation. So I'm I'm surprised a little bit to hear that, objectively, there is no the one thing that's different.
Speaker 1:You're bringing. You just brought me back. I got lost at first sight. The one thing that's different, um, is that I am seeing the quality of judgment doesn't seem to be as good as it has been, or there's more risky stuff going on in people's thinking than there was before. That's not empirical. Empirical, you guys. I haven't studied it, I haven't done a big research project on it, it's anecdotal from my experience. But there's definite differences about quality of judgment and the way they see the world than there used to be.
Speaker 2:Is that just you know? You haven't had as many reps.
Speaker 1:I just I run too many assessments to stop and think through.
Speaker 2:I run too many assessments to stop and think through things. No, no, not you, but the 25-year-old has more judgment than the 52-year-old because they just haven't had as much life. Is that it, or is it something else? Great, question.
Speaker 1:It's something else. It isn't reps, it isn't maturity, it isn't experience either. I see 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds with worse judgment than some 25-year-olds, so it's the person which is part of the question you asked me originally. It's the person.
Speaker 2:Where do you see the future of hiring? You know everybody in law is worried. Ai is going to come for the law jobs. No, it's only going to come for the jobs of lawyers that don't know how to use AI. There's all this automation that's now taking up a bunch of low skill. We thought it was coming from low skill work, but it turns out like it's really good at doing high level analytical interpretation of big data sets. Where do I see the future of the workforce and what traits should lawyers be hiring for? You know, for 2030 and beyond.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question. Obviously, ai is just unbelievable and I actually, in the back of my mind, there's times I just think can what I do be replaced? How actually can I use AI even further than I already have to empower the work that I do? No, I mean, like I think it's going to be. I think that, first of all, I think there's going to be even more need for quality judgment, and I think that there's going to be.
Speaker 1:I think that, first of all, I think there's going to be even more need for quality judgment, and I think that there's going to be. I think that, you know, people, we have a great ability to innovate, don't we? And when things change, we innovate, and I think there's going to be a lot more innovation than we think. Well, we'll use AI to innovate. So I think that AI will be a powerful tool in terms of hiring and helping us hire more powerfully. But, yeah, whatever human beings we do rely on, you know, we're going to want to understand the quality of their judgment even more than we ever did before.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, you know, and I hadn't thought about that. But the skill, it seems to me, is actually less important when you have all the automation and the question becomes do you have the judgment to know which operating system, value system to use? And then, when there are fact sets, problem sets that come up that are on the fringe of your SOPs, do you have the right judgment to come up with the outside of the box solution? And that becomes all the more important when the computers and the bots can do everything Right.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. I mean, you know, if we, if we go from 18 people down to 10 because of AI, we want those 10 to be the best that they can possibly be. So we still are going to have to do powerful interviewing, powerful understanding of people and understanding what we really want Ultimately, outside of skill sets culture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I get this question a lot, which is how do I develop culture within my law firm? And you know, the answer that I give is some version of it's not pizza parties and ping pong tables in the break room, it's just this is core dedication to the central mission. Right, how? How would you? And the second part of that is like your office currently has a culture, it just might not be any good, right, if you wanted to, you've got a culture. If just might not be any good, right, if you wanted to, you've got a culture. If you were in that. Second, you got a set of habits, right, they're just not good habits, and it's the same thing with your culture, maybe. But if you were in a firm where you wanted to develop a stronger culture or livelier culture or culture of whatever, whatever the aspirational thing is, how would you start to turn the ship around to do that?
Speaker 1:I have three P's protect potential performance, and I see it as a culture of performance which includes and I see the word performance as results and then so. So what I would first start to do is, whenever I hired people, I would, like you said at the beginning, I would screen powerfully, I would hire, hire powerfully, I would market to get people to apply, but then I would change my attitude to once you're interviewing with me, you have to. You know. I changed my attitude from please come and you know please come and apply to. You can't work here unless you're a rock star. Okay, and then I would get the skills I need to access the potential of the people, because if you do hire the wrong person and you've got powerful coaching and management skills, you're better off than if you don't, obviously, but then you drive higher levels of performance.
Speaker 1:Everybody wants to be part of a high-performing organization. Best thing you can do for your currently good employees is hire more good employees. Now. After that, it would be just exactly what you said. It would be a central core vision and a mission. It would be mission driven. It would be a powerful, consistent, mission oriented communication from the leader. I would also then empower people on the front lines with decision making ability, assuming they've got good judgment and we can trust them. And I would have KPIs be very, very clear but minimal, because the human mind can only focus on one thing at a time.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, Minimal in terms of number of KPIs.
Speaker 1:KPIs correct and I would make sure that my team understood See leaders and managers. In order to create a powerful culture, leaders and managers need to understand that you are either reducing interference, which is one word obviously for anything that gets in the way, or you are increasing. You either reducing interference, which is one word obviously for anything that gets in the way, or you are increasing. Or you're reducing interference or you are not creating interference, because you know, in our best effort like earlier we were talking about having children in sports you know well, sports psychology says that my kids' commitment on the field to their bad idea is better than their non-commitment to my perfect idea. And it's true with employees as well. So if we get people empowered on the front lines and they've got good judgment and you can trust them and you can coach them and you're so we've said a lot of things right. We've said you know, protect the business, access potential, drive performance, communicate a lot.
Speaker 1:What's the mission and the vision? Empower the front lines, the best that you can minimize KPIs, because you're either going to, you can create phenomenal KPIs, which creates interference and reduces potential and performance. So it's a psychological thing Marketing you and your world, brian, marketing right, it's psychology and math. People performance is psychology, work is logical, performance is psychological. So having a powerful vision and performance or coaching skills and then hiring the right people, so these are the things that have a very yeah, and backing up from that, it's like building the kind of place where people actually want to work right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I can't sit in front of you with a straight face and tell you you have to be amazing to work here if I think my law firm sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even if I do convince you that you have to be amazing to work here and you get in and I got a bunch of buffoons working for me, you're not going to last very long if you are a superstar. So much of this for me starts with the lawyers and the law firm owners psychology, and then the psychology of the core people and the top performers who are around that lawyer. Yeah, because it's, you know, that's, that's enough people. The number one thing that I hear from lawyers about hiring and staff it was really hard to hire you go. Well, why would anybody want to work for you as opposed to the law firm across the street? I don't know. Well, there's your problem.
Speaker 1:That is a really really powerful insight. Actually it is.
Speaker 1:You know and, like I talked about, hiring the right people and performance and, you know, protecting the firm and whatnot. And the other part is that we talk about psychology. We're not talking about therapy, and you know, kumaya, we're not talking about that but there's a psychology behind what drives performance in a great, powerful culture, and part of that is what you just said. And it's like most CEOs get hired for their technical abilities and fired for their lack of interpersonal ability. So there's a people aspect to it that is very important and that's why I said that whole comment about work is logical, that people are psychological. It's like they spend a third of their lives at work and they want to grow and develop, they want to get better, they want to be part of a purpose and they want to be liked and get along.
Speaker 1:And there's a great book called golly. Let me think about that. There's a thing called the 12 Questions that came from a book that's like probably 30 years old. It's called First Break All the Rules. It's an awesome book. Everybody should get that and read that. And the 12 questions are very, very powerful and they have found that if these 12 questions are answered, you'll be able to identify what kind of culture that you have and whether people are engaged or not. And one of the questions is sounds weird, but do I have someone at work that cares about my development? Another question is do I have someone at work that cares about my development? Another question is do I have someone at work that I like and get?
Speaker 2:along with, like a friend, because, again, we're spending a third of our life there. Yeah, like, the number one indicator of employee retention is they have somebody who who's a friend at work, or they have a best friend at work I'm butchering whatever exactly that is, but it's the number one way to to get people to stay. By the way, it's a way to get people to stay in their apartment complex. Also, like, make, make sure that they're friends with their neighbors. Yeah, okay, right, so build. Build a firm that's worth giving a shit about. That's where we are, and use Jay to assess your potential hires as they're coming through the pipeline. Jay, the book a lawyer's guide to hiring superstars will be out. Be out in eight days, when this episode drops.
Speaker 1:Right now. No, I've got 200 of them sitting beside me, so if you can get them now, just email me. Jatrealtalenthiring, I should have waited for you to ask me that.
Speaker 1:That's all right, jatrealtalenthiringcom and just put hey, I want a copy of that book and in fact it won't be long. I'm going to send an email to everyone on my list and say hey, man, if you want a copy, let me know. And I'm just sending them out to people, no charge, no shipping or anything. Just give me your address, I'll I'll shoot it over to you.
Speaker 2:Well, you better buy more than 200, if that's going to be Well, hurt me, man, hurt me. All right, Jay, anywhere else you want to direct people.
