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Welcome to the 360 leadership podcast, the top rated show for driven women in senior leadership with new episodes released every Wednesday. I’m your host, Lucy Gernon, a multi award winning executive coach for women leaders and the founder of 360. Leaders Club exclusive high level membership for career driven family orientated women just like you. I created the 360 leadership podcast to share practical tips, actionable step by step strategies, and inspiring stories to support you to unlock the power and belief within to accelerate your impact and potential. So you can build a life filled with success, balance and happiness. So are you ready to achieve 360 degree success? No more excuses, no more waiting. Your time is now. If you’re anything like me, one of the things you love about being a leader is the people you love holding yourself and your team to a higher standard. You love seeing results, whether it’s a new hire, joining or going live with their customers and things for the first time. It’s something you absolutely love is the people side of us. And I know that you take great pride and great, I suppose care of your responsibility you have as a senior leader when it comes to your team. And sometimes in business, the team we hire sometimes isn’t the team we wanted. Because sometimes my clients told me you know, they’ve inherited teams, and they wouldn’t be exactly what they wanted. And sometimes we make poor choices in hiring because we need bodies. And we we need to get somebody in and we’re recruiting and we can’t find that perfect person. So sometimes we might maybe might drop our standards a little bit. And today on the podcast, I wanted to share the single most powerful lesson I learned from making a poor hiring decision. So a bit of a backstory, I have been expanded my team over the last year, there’s about eight or nine of us now. And I have been looking for a particular role for a bit of time now to find kind the right person. And I found a really, really good person. And she came in on a trial basis. I had done I had gone through the interview process, I had interviewed a few different people and the lady is but I actually hired she was actually a contractor. When we actually started working together after the first week, she came to me and she said look at I can’t do your business processes because she actually is a freelancer. And she works with lots of different clients. And my business processes were different to how she was used to working. And I didn’t want to change my entire business, you know, my procedures to suit her way of working. She’s a millennial soccer. And she stood out, you know, she stood her ground and we had a conversation and we agreed it was a mutual fit. And I were still in touch and there was no bad blood, it just it just wasn’t the right mutual fit. So I had interviewed another few people. And I was in a bit of a panic mode. I was in Spain. And I had all this work that needed to be done. And I had interviewed one particular girl who I really liked as a person. Have you ever been there you interview somebody you really liked them, you connect with them, you want to give them a chance. And I knew in the interview, the reason I didn’t hire her is because I knew she didn’t have the experience. And there was just one thing, which I’ll share in a second, which is the power for lesson that I should have. I really should have listened to but I didn’t. So anyway, I gave this girl a chance. I welcomed her with open arms into the team. She had obviously in the interview promised me that you know, she was going to help everything run more smoothly because of the areas I was struggling with in my own business and all of the things. But I knew pretty quickly, within the first week, there was a few red flags that popped up. The first red flag was her communication really wasn’t great. So you know, if you’re if you’re working with a new client for the first time, or you’ve got a new job, you’re really are trying to make a really good impression. Well, I know I am anyway. And this particular girl, I just felt like her communication wasn’t great. So she’d go off the radar for a few days. And I’d have questions and she she wouldn’t necessarily answer my question and I kind of just said no, I’m gonna give her the benefit of the doubt. Now you know, she’s just new and Lucy, you have high standards and you expect a lot of your team and I have some absolute superstars on my team who, who love working the way I work. And I also have people who are really diverse on my team, different cultures, completely different ways of thinking, which I think is so so important to have that rounded experience and to really make the business better, you know, but I just knew, I just knew within a few days It wasn’t going to work. So I was in Spain, I was gone over for the month, if you’ve listened to a podcast, you’ve heard me talk all about this. And there was a lot going on, I was in the middle of my rebrand. I was in the middle of launching 360 members, leaders club membership. And there was just so many things that I needed a body, I needed a body. So I had her in. And based on what she had said, in her interview, we’ve all been there. She just wasn’t delivering to the standard, I would expect. And I even challenged myself, by the way, and this would be good for you, too. I was gone. Is it just me and my standards, like Lucy dropped your standards a little bit. And I did. But there was just I woke up one morning, and she had sent me something for review. And this, this particular person claimed to be like an expert and all of that, and I woke up. And basically what she had sent me really just, I just couldn’t have used it, it just really was a lot of time that she had spent doing something. And in that moment, I just knew, I just knew that we couldn’t continue working together anymore. Now, this was a really, really, really hard decision for me, because I’m a people person, I am really empathetic, I care deeply about people in general. And this particular lady was a single mother, she was, you know, she was she had a child, and I just wanted it to work so bad for her. And sometimes I do allow my emotions to get the better of me in business, which is something that I’m working on. And I talk to my clients, we talk about this all the time about leaving, you know, leaving your brain giving your brain to the business, but when it’s your own business, you know, this is my baby, like everything I do is mine. It’s my company. But I still I still don’t want to ever lose that emotional side. I don’t ever want to become that. Just pure business ruthless, it’s just not who I am. So it really, really deliberated over, what do I do? I said, Do I give her more time? Do I go back and do this? Do I, you know, spend more time with her? Do I get the team involved? Like, how can I get this girl up to speed and I really deliberated doing all of that. But there was one thing that I should listen to. And if you’re multitasking, come back to me. thing that I should have listened to was my gosh. I knew in that interview, the first interview I did with her, she wasn’t going to be the right fit. I just instinctively knew my gut was telling me she’s not the right person. And my heart was telling me give her a chance, give her a chance. And my brain was saying you need a body, you need a body, you need a body. So my brain was saying one thing, my heart was saying another or my gut was saying another. And it turns out my gut was right. So the reason I share that with you today is because I want you to tune into your gut a little bit more. You got it will never steer you wrong. If you feel something is off, it’s off. And so I had to make a really difficult decision. And I had to terminate her contracts with immediate effect. It was not something I wanted to do. It was extremely, I’m not gonna say upsetting, but I don’t like having to do things like that. But it was either do that or spend more time with somebody I knew wasn’t going to work out long term. If my God was saying she just needs time to something good here, she just needs a little bit more support a bit more training, which has happened to me, by the way, with team I’ve hired if I email, you know, yourself to certain team members, you know, just need to give people an opportunity to come up to speed, you know, it takes time. And if they’re showing the willingness, and the communication is good, and they’re asking questions, they’re always really, really good indicators. But this particular girl was not doing that. So I had to make that really hard decision. So my invitation for you today is to use your gut. Use it when it comes to making business decisions. Tap into your emotional intelligence as the leader and use your gut because sometimes I see leaders make mistakes based on facts and data. And ignore your gut. Do not ignore your gut. Because your gut is your is your second brain. It’s been scientifically proven. You can go Google it. There’s tons of studies out there, actually backed by science to prove that your gut is your second brain. I believe your gut is more powerful than anything. So don’t be afraid to lose your gut or use your goals. Lose your goals. Use your gut as a leader.
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Don’t be afraid if if the room is saying one thing to you or you’re in a situation like I am, where I was where you know a team members just not the right fit. Be brave and make the decision early on. Because if you don’t you’re going to waste time. You’re going to waste her energy and you’re going to divers off insane. So that’s it for this week’s episode. I hope that you needed to hear this today. I know somebody definitely is in a situation right now, where your mind is saying one thing, your heart is saying the other thing and your gut are saying something else. My invitation for you is to always, always listen to your gut, and then just make decisions quickly. Do it with compassion, do with care, and then move forward. So that is it for this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please rate and review as always, and make sure you subscribe to my show so you never miss any episodes. I usually try and keep my solo episodes nice and snappy and short so that you can take one little nugget away every single week and the margin that will be 365. Now wouldn’t 5252 little nuggets over the course of the year. So I look forward to being back here again with you in your ears next Wednesday, same time, same place. So until then have a fabulous week.
