BUSY SUCCEEDING ELSEWHERE

how teams of A-players are built

Photo: Ido Yoshimoto by Justin Chung

I have the best team in the business.

My business happens to be leadership recruiting, but that’s irrelevant. You could swap my team into almost any domain, give them 6 months, and they’d be among the best all over again.

I found Bastien when he reached out to me on Instagram, saying he was interested in what I had going on and he’d like to be involved somehow. He was running event production, traveling and adventuring in his free time.

I met Alyssa through her creative director sister. “You should meet the more organized version of me.” She was a project manager, learning to fly airplanes in her free time.

I was connected to Kiki through a trusted mutual friend. She was a sales professional, and had started a nail salon in her free time.

What did they all have in common when I met them? They were intensely interested in what I was doing. They wanted to be a part of it, but they didn’t need to be. They were happy, they were curious, and they were busy succeeding elsewhere.

Assembling this team taught me a fundamental truth about the business of finding talent for our clients:

The best way to envision “what will they accomplish for my company if I hire them?” is to ask “what are they accomplishing right now?”

A-players understand that their skills are services that can be deployed in numerous ways. They are usually gainfully employed, but sometimes they’re not, and that doesn’t matter. They don’t need the permission of an employer to exercise their vocation. During downtime they’re freelancing, volunteering, mentoring, helping their friends launch projects, doing personal projects of their own.

You are what you do every day. This is true regardless of employment status. A high caliber person cannot help doing the things that they were born to do.

Those hiring for elite positions aren’t looking for people who are “interested” or “available.”

They’re looking for people who are busy succeeding elsewhere.

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