Bernie Glieberman says hiring someone requires a leap of faith, but there are ways to increase your odds. There are people who
have interviewed for so many jobs that they know just what to say, Glieberman says. But he also says that 80 percent of the time,
he knows if someone is putting him on during an interview. Glieberman, CEO of Crosswinds Communities Inc., a 200-employee
residential building and development company, looks at the candidate’s education, the number of jobs he or she has held to see
how often the person moved around, and he also tries to get a feel for the candidate’s character when hiring. Smart Business
spoke with Glieberman about how to take risks and how to be a good listener.
Watch your hours. I get in real early in
the morning and I leave at 4 p.m. After
that, I am not doing any more work.
It’s not that I don’t take phone calls at
home to talk to people, but I have a definite cutoff for when I’m leaving the
office, except if I have meetings that
night.
It benefits the company because some
people are nocturnal, but I’m the
reverse. I’m great in the morning, but at
4 p.m. or 5 p.m., I am not really that
good to make decisions anymore, so I
need to be gone. When you start at 5
a.m., by 4 p.m., you are at a point where
you can’t make the same decisions anymore.
Just because a person puts in a lot of
hours, that doesn’t mean a lot to me. It’s
what is going into his or her hours. I
have found people that can work an 8
a.m. to 4 p.m. or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job and
get way more done than someone who
works 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Smart people know how to work
smart, and you don’t need to worry
about their hours. If you start to see
them there a long time, you have to
start to worry either they have too
much responsibility or they just don’t
know how to handle it.
Don’t hire your friends or family. It is a
great risk, and I’ve seen more bad
examples than I have good ones. There
is too much emotion involved. It also
affects your other employees.
It’s very hard to win when you do that,
and it’s very hard for the person coming
in. Everybody thinks, ‘He’s related, and
he gets special treatment.’ That person
never gets treated like the rest of the
team.
If they are really good, then you have
a problem with people complaining
they are taking over their stuff. If they
are bad, then you get employees moaning that, ‘I have to do more work
because of them.’ There have been a
percentage of successes, but it’s a very
high-risk thing to do.
Evaluate the upside and downside of risks.
How much upside can this transaction
do, and what’s my downside? There
should be a ratio. A 1-to-1 risk makes no
sense. If you are going into a transaction and you could lose $50,000 or make
$50,000, that’s not a good deal.
The risk should be at least 3-to-1. If I
could lose it all, how much am I going
to make? That’s the kind of thing that
you want at least a 3-to-1.
Make time for big decisions. When we
have a decision that is a final decision
on an action with risk, we make sure we
allot time for that. We don’t just have it
as part of a business meeting.
Then, the people in the meeting only
focus on that, and they aren’t thinking
about the next agenda item or the last
agenda item and writing down a whole
bunch of stuff or where they are going
to report. You have to take everything out of your mind and say, ‘Let’s talk
about the pros, the cons and the risks,
and let’s look at all the data that’s been
assembled.’ You put that stuff together
and put people in the room that have
the skills of the different areas you are
looking at. As a leader, I call it a democratic dictatorship.
You listen to everybody, and then you
make the final decision. It can’t be a full
compromise. Someone has to take all
the information, assemble it in his or
her mind, and decide, ‘OK, this is the
position I think we should take.’
Be a good listener. Make sure that you
allow time for your employees to be
with you to be able to listen to them,
and listen carefully and don’t interrupt
them.
A lot of executives are in a hurry, so
the employee comes in, has a problem
and you cut him or her off half-way
through and say, ‘I know that already,
and here’s what you do.’ That’s not a
good idea, even if you do know the
answer. They spent time, and they may
have worked themselves up thinking
about this, and you went and cut them
off.
Don’t fault employees with good intentions. One thing you never do is punish
them for something they’ve done where
they meant well, and they thought they
were doing the right thing. In those
cases, never cause them discomfort
over what they did but encourage them.
Those kinds of things are important to
get them to feel comfortable that they
are willing to tell you things that went
wrong. They know you are going to
encourage them not to do it again, and
you aren’t going to yell at them.
If somebody comes to you with bad
news and, all of a sudden, you are
screaming at them, then that goes back
to don’t kill the messenger.
HOW TO REACH: Crosswinds Communities Inc., (248) 615-1313 or www.crosswindsus.com
