Build relationships with talent
Strong relationships with clients will help you build toward
long-term success, but you also need a top team to keep growing.
Hays says to find quality people, you have to know your company and not lower your standards.
For example, data shows that, in general, lawyers tend to be
type A personalities who are skeptical, less resilient than most
of the population, afraid of failure and less risk-oriented. To
make sure his firm stays ahead of the competition, he targets
people who don’t necessarily fit that profile.
“I’m a big believer that good is the enemy of the great,” Hays
says. “Good is not good enough. You have to have great people
— and to do that, you have to insist on greatness and have high
standards across the board.”
Getting great people starts in the interview process, and
whether you’re hiring senior people or entry-level folks, the
principles always apply.
“You need to have in these interview processes some skeptics —
some people whose jobs are to ask hard questions because you
want people to appear to be desirable — that will be the instinct,”
Hays says. “When you get into recruiting mode, it’s a groupthink
mentality that takes over, and marry that with what if the people
you’re interviewing are just telling you what you want to hear, and
the next thing you know, you don’t really have the kind of rigor that
you need to have to make quality decisions to grow that’s consistent with high performance.”
You may have a team member who’s naturally skeptical, but
if you don’t, then you need to appoint someone else or deal
with it yourself. Hays remembers one situation in which he
was interviewing a small group of people that looked great on
paper, but he doubted whether or not the candidates were
committed to the high-performance aspect of the firm’s culture, so he asked them some further questions.
He says that if they liked the line of questioning, they would
be fine with the culture, but if they didn’t like it, they probably
wouldn’t work out.
“I asked them, and it turns out they didn’t like it,” he says.
“That, to me, was a win-win all the way around. They learned
something, we learned something, and we didn’t go forward
with it.”
The way you ask questions is also critical. To avoid having people tell you what they think you want to hear, Hays says to have
multiple teams of people ask questions to get historical data and
reduce some of the doubt in the hiring process.
“You ask people to prove that rather than state it,” he says. “What
is it about what you’ve done to date that demonstrates that you’re
committed to these values?”
While you’re asking a lot of questions, you also need to have
some honest conversation by laying out expectations to avoid
surprises later.
“You have to tell people that this is what’s expected,” Hays says.
“If you don’t, they won’t get there on their own, and they will
engage in mental gymnastics to avoid that conclusion if it’s convenient for them.”
You also need to make sure you’re not trying to sell the position to
them. Instead, clearly articulate the mission and let them decide if it’s
suited for them. For Hays, it’s about the balance between high performance and a fun culture that is most important.
“If you can’t look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m truly committed to
both of those things,’ that they’re not in tension with each other,
then it’s the wrong place,” Hays says. “If you build on that and
insist on that on a day-to-day basis, then you’re likely to develop a
culture and pass along an ethos within your organization that
attracts other people that are committed to the same value system,
and then it feeds on itself.”
On top of everything, you have to be patient and resist the
pressure to just fill a position.
“Just hiring good people will solve short-term immediate
needs, but it’s a mistake long-term, frankly.” Hays says. “No
one’s immune from having done that before, but you learn the
hard way.”
Hays says the easy way is almost always the wrong way, so
just say no, which is easier if you keep your standards at the
forefront.
“The firm has to constantly increase its standards — not only
keep them where they are but increase them,” he says. “If
you’re committed to constantly increasing your standards at all
levels, then that’s an antidote to the seductive temptation to
making the short-term immediate decisions of hiring people
who might be good enough.”
Your people shape your culture, and that has to match up to
your clients if you want to succeed.
“Our culture is important to our business because if it was not consistent with what we heard from our clients or if we were not committed to aligning our culture with our business model, then I don’t
think we would ultimately be successful, as we are.”
HOW TO REACH: King & Spalding LLP, (404) 572-4600 or www.kslaw.com
