Dr. Sabrina Starling is the founder of Tap the Potential, a company that specializes in transforming small businesses into highly profitable, great places to work. Never one to accept the status quo or back down from a challenge, Dr. Starling’s How To Hire The Best series grew from her desire to solve the toughest hiring challenges interfering with her clients’ growth and profitability. Her latest book, How To Hire The Best: The Contractor’s Ultimate Guide to Attracting Top Performing Employees, is an international bestseller on Amazon.
In this episode, Dr. Starling explains why leaders need to stop solving every single problem their teams come across, as it creates an unhealthy, co-dependent relationship. You’ll learn how to bring the best out in your team, how to be a problem solver, and how to hire correctly for your business.
Learn how to create a team that can function independently with @DrSabrina, author of HOW TO HIRE THE BEST. #hiring #humanresources Share on X
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On Today’s Episode We’ll Learn:
- How to bring out the best in your team.
- The importance of creating a team that can function independently.
- How to be a problem solver, not a problem identifier.
- The right questions to ask.
- How to hire correctly for your business.
Key Resources for Sabrina Starling:
- Connect with Sabrina Starling: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn
- Amazon: How To Hire The Best: The Contractor’s Ultimate Guide to Attracting Top Performing Employees
- Kindle: How To Hire The Best
- Amazon: Topgrading
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- Full Episode Transcript:
- Welcome to Brainfluence, where author and international keynote speaker Roger Dooley has weekly conversations with thought leaders and world class experts. Every episode shows you how to improve your business with advice based on science or data.Roger’s new book, Friction, is published by McGraw Hill and is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookstores everywhere. Dr Robert Cialdini described the book as, “Blinding insight,” and Nobel winner Dr. Richard Claimer said, “Reading Friction will arm any manager with a mental can of WD40.”To learn more, go to RogerDooley.com/Friction, or just visit the book seller of your choice.Now, here’s Roger.Roger Dooley: Welcome to Brainfluence. I’m Roger Dooley.I was kind of surprised to find that today’s guest hasn’t been on the show yet. I’ve known Dr. Sabrina Starling for years and she’s known as the business psychologist. She’s the founder of Tap The Potential and the author of the How to Hire The Best, a series of books. She’s particularly familiar with the problems of smaller scale and entrepreneurial companies, and among her projects is the four week vacation teaching business leaders who think they’re indispensable to build a sustainable operation that can survive without them for an entire month. Welcome to the show, Sabrina.Sabrina Starling: Thank you, Roger. I am honored to be here on the podcast and I love talking brainy things, so let’s dive in.
Roger Dooley: Right. Well, our audience loves to brainy things too. That’s generally why they tune in, so I think we’re going to get some good ideas here today.
Sabrina Starling: Absolutely.
Roger Dooley: Yeah. Sabrina, it seems like your various projects are all kind of a part of a basic theme, getting the right people in place in your organization, not just to increase profits, but to create scalability. When an entrepreneur feels like he or she is indispensable, that creates multiple problems. One is stress and overworked, but I can think of a few other things. Team members who may not feel like they have an opportunity to grow. And also there’s no real opportunity for a business that requires that sort of day to day involvement of the founder to have an exit of some kind. Nobody wants to acquire that kind of business. It’s too risky and it probably won’t integrate well. Do you agree?
Sabrina Starling: Absolutely. I think the important thing that we as leaders have to grapple with is, boy, it feels really good to be needed. And when someone comes to us from our team and says, “Hey, you got a minute, I am trying to figure something out, can you help me?” Are just ego wants to jump in there and help and solve the problem. Every time we’re doing that, we’re creating a codependent relationship with our teams and we’re teaching our teams that they need us to solve problems for them. And that is just unhealthy overall because we want to have businesses and teams that can function independent of any one person, even if it’s the owner of the business or the CFO or whatever role you’re in, if your team feels like you can’t be away and things will fall apart or if you think that, that’s too much stress for anyone person to bear and it’s not a healthy place for that team to be in.
Roger Dooley: Yeah, and although in my intro I talked about entrepreneurs, I think the same issue occurs in bigger businesses where managers can be irreplaceable because again, they’re so involved and necessary for the day to day that often their boss won’t promote them or transfer them to a better position for that same reason. They haven’t built something that is capable of running itself. But as an engineer, Sabrina, I know exactly what you’re saying. I mean, engineers tend to be problem solvers. Now, I haven’t been, worked as an engineer in decades, but I think all of us have that desire to fix things and get involved in a crisis, and solve it. But it’s tough to stay a step back from that and say, “Okay, well how would you do this?” Or deal with that in some way that doesn’t require you to go in and fix it.
Sabrina Starling: Well, and from the psychology of positive psychology and growth, we are stifling the growth of our team members who are coming up behind us in their leadership every time we’re jumping in to solve a problem. So I really like to work from a place of assuming that our teams are comprised of people who are whole, competent, capable, and complete. And my role as a leader is how do I bring the best out of them. And oftentimes that means me not providing the solution and allowing them to develop the solution themselves.
And even on our team here at Tap The Potential, we are a small business. We have a team member now who is on vacation and she’s out for a week. And I love thinking that she’s going to be able to come back and she’s not going to have her work piled up, that things didn’t just stop because she left. I want her to have that freedom that she can be gone and enjoy her time off. For us psychologically we need to be able to disconnect and for us to do our best thinking, we need those times where we can disconnect. And so building this into our teams by design, I think is a critical thing for us to be paying attention to.
Roger Dooley: Yeah. Well, I guess you have to look too at the, your team members that’s facing some of the same problems that you’re talking about as the manager or business owner, because they too may be overworked and stressed out. And of course when that happens, if another team member goes on vacation, the last thing they’re going to want to do is pitch in and help out or take that over because they already feel like they’ve got too much on their plate. So, before we even talk about hiring, what about design of the organization and the way it works? It seems like that has to be part of it.
Sabrina Starling: Right. So we want to think about building an organization that can function independent of any single person. So what are we as a team here to do and how do we, and I really believe it’s about the questions that we ask ourselves. Our questions determine the solutions we find. So if we’re not asking a big enough question, we’re not going to find a good enough solution. And so if we ask the question, what is our team here to do? And how do we design our team so that this essential thing that we’re here to do can happen regardless of any one person’s involvement.
Then we start to see solutions for that and systems that can be put in place around it. From a small business perspective, I think one of the challenges we small business owners deal with is it’s very hard to say no to opportunity. So we start designing our businesses around the opportunities that show up and we can get very far away from what our personal sweet spot is as the entrepreneur, but also for the business’ sweet spot. So we want to be very clear on what is our thing that we are all here to do, this one thing, and how do we deliver that consistently over time? How do we design the business to deliver that consistently over time?
Roger Dooley: Yeah, and I think even in larger businesses, you may not have that exact same issue, but you have other issues of perhaps processes and procedures that had been put in place, sometimes imposed by other parts of the organization. Perhaps they’d been around for years. Nobody’s really questioned them. There’s a study that was published in the Harvard Business Review that estimated that in the US alone, businesses waste $3 trillion a year in what they call organizational drag, which is basically kind of a form of friction as I write about in my latest book, but it’s time wasted with bad processes, following rules that don’t need to be even exist, time wasted in meetings, time wasted on email. All this sort of system imposed time that is not only costing a lot, but it’s also creating disengagement among the people because they often are the ones who most realize that their time is being wasted.
Sabrina Starling: Yes, and we want our team members to be asking the question, why are we doing this? Why do we do it this way? And an answer of, because we’ve always done it that way, is not a good answer. That is a huge red flag and I love when you write about friction, I love thinking through all the different things that the processes and systems that get put in place in any kind of enterprise, what is the reason the these systems are put in place? And from my perspective, when we’re looking at A-players and we want to attract A-players onto our teams, and A-players are those problem solving go-getters. People who want challenges put in front of them. They just want to figure out how to work through that challenge and get around it or get through it.
They’re not deterred. They’re very resourceful people. They’re intrinsically motivated. And so that means that the motivation comes from within. They get very excited about a job well done and doing their best. We don’t have to put big bonuses in front of them to motivate them. That may pull out their intrinsic motivation and incentivize it. But we have to be very careful about are we over incentivizing because that will de-motivate an A-player.
But when we look at A-players in organizations and when that organizational drag exists, it’s creating friction. It’s keeping them from doing what they can do really well and what they’ll excel at and enjoy doing. And so I think a lot of times policies and procedures get put in place in organizations to take care of the problem employees. And that’s all fine and good, but we want to make sure that those policies and procedures are not interfering with the motivation of an A-player and how an A-player actually works. And being mindful of setting up our organizations to attract A-players and nurture the A-players spirit.
Roger Dooley: Yeah, that’s such a good point where there’s a, either a lack of trust in good judgment on the part of the rest of the team or active distrust. Then you end up putting all these crazy procedures in place to make sure that nobody can somehow beat the system. So expense reporting ends up being incredibly complex and detailed, or checking, say tools out becomes a process to make sure that nobody would ever steal a tool or something like that. But it ends up wasting so much time. And also it’s communicating to your good people that, well, we don’t really trust you, or I mean we say we trust you, but we have to have this procedure in place for everybody else. And either way it’s not good for the experience.
Sabrina Starling: Yeah. Well and I think it deters A-players from working in our organizations when we maintain policies and procedures that are designed for people who are different than them.
Roger Dooley: Yeah, it’s so important. And we also have to suppress our natural instinct as bosses or managers, because somebody comes to, you tell somebody to do something, they come and say, “Well why do I have to do that? Or why do we have to do it that way?” And your first reaction is sort of like a parent talking to a child, well just do it. Dammit. Do it because I said so. I don’t have time to explain everything. But you really need to maybe reflect a little bit and say, “Well hey, maybe they have a point. Do we have to do this at all? Or do we have to do it this way?” And that’s where you get some of your breakthroughs.
Sabrina Starling: Well, and I can share a personal example around that. Going through a book launch with How to Hire The Best. We have someone on our team who is working on our electronic communications and so she’s in the back end looking at how everything is set up. And she would send me messages in Slack and she said, “I don’t know if you’re aware, but this is set up this way. I think it’s creating these problems, and here’s a solution.”
And for me, my first thought is, Oh my gosh, we’re in the middle of the book launch. There’s so much we have to get out. I don’t have time to deal with this thing, but I had to stop. And I looked at it and I thought, you know what, she’s not asking me to deal with it. She’s identified a problem, she’s coming to me with a solution. She just wants me to say, “Go for it and fix it.” And I so appreciate that. And so I want to nurture more of that on our team. But just like what you just got to there, Roger. My first reaction is I’m so busy, I’m so overwhelmed, I can’t deal with this right now and I could have easily brushed it off, which is very un-motivating for an A-player.
Roger Dooley: Right. And I think there’s another lesson there too, Sabrina, and that is if you are going to identify a problem to your boss, always offer a solution along with that. Don’t turn your boss into being the problem solver. If you’ve got a solution then not only explain what that is, but offer to implement it if it’s within your power and you will then be seen as a far more valuable person than somebody who just raises issues that need to be fixed.
Sabrina Starling: Absolutely. And just to speak to that, one of our clients, we teach about immutable laws and identifying the core values or immutable laws of the company and hiring based on that. One of our clients has an immutable law that says, “We appreciate and nurture problem solvers, not problem identifiers. So be the problem solver, come with the solutions.”
Roger Dooley: Yeah, that is a great lesson. I think that that should be part of everybody’s business ethos. But we were talking about A-players, and a couple of things I’d like you to explain a little bit more about how an A-player differs, but also you make a fairly provocative statement in the book, Sabrina, that one A-player typically does the equivalent of nine C-players to 12 D-players. That math seems kind of extreme at first glance. Why don’t you explain how that works?
Sabrina Starling: Oh, absolutely. I love getting into the psychology of A-players. It’s fascinating. So it’s not that somebody, somebody is going to be an A-player, but the role that they’re in can determine how effective and productive they are. So for myself, I remember when I was in high school, I worked at a Mexican restaurant as a hostess. And I repeatedly won employee of the month awards. Did a great job in my role, until one evening at 11:59 on a week night. And granted I had school the next day. I was closing up, I had closed out the cash register, and I was going to go lock the door. And as I walked up to the door, it had a window in it and I could see someone walking up and they were about to turn the knob and I just kind of waved my hand at him and shook my head, no. Like you’re not coming in. I’m going to bed. So he walked off and I finished closing up. Well, turns out he was an owner of the franchise.
Oops, no kidding. I almost got fired. And so I think that’s, I use that as an example of here I was an A-player, but in a different context, I was not showing A-player behavior. And his point that the reason I almost got fired is we close at midnight, not 11:59. But I had been put into a situation where I was working excessively long hours because the manager was out on maternity leave. So I was having to, I was just kind of burnt out at the end of my rope. So we have to hold that in mind about A-players. We all have our breaking points and we all have different contexts where we will give our best behavior and our best, and be that 900 to 1,200% more productive than a warm body. But there are other times when we can really turn into what appears to be a warm body.
And the way that we get this outstanding performance from A-players is putting them in a role that aligns with their strengths. When we get to work from our strengths, work feels effortless and the people around us will really feel like, wow, they’re getting a lot done and look at them go. They really are excelling in this role, and for us, because we’re working from our strengths, it’s just kind of, it comes easy.
And we’re doing something that doesn’t require a lot of effort from us. And so when we are being mindful of looking out onto our teams and identifying what our team members strengths are, and then looking at what needs to be done around here, how can I take this jigsaw puzzle of my team and pull in their strengths and get them into the right roles? And if they are an A-player working from their strength and they’re in a role that aligns with their strength, that’s where you will see that 900 to 1,200% increase in productivity from them.
Roger Dooley: Does that mean the job descriptions have to be kind of fluid, too?
Sabrina Starling: Role results need to be clearly defined. Those should never be fluid. So when someone is in a role, we want to be really clear with what is the result that is needed from this role, but then recognizing that people can move in and out of those different roles to deliver that result.
Roger Dooley: So if you’re trying to build your team, how important is it to start by evaluating the, either the role or the job description or whatever you want to call that. It seems like that’s sort of a necessary precursor to hiring the right person.
Sabrina Starling: That’s the very first step is to define not so much the job description, but the result that is needed and to work backward from that, reverse engineer. So if this is the result that’s needed from this role, that’s going to determine the personality strengths that you’re going to look to hire for. And a real simple example to think through is someone who is in a receptionist role, in a busy office. The one result that is needed is that information gets communicated to the right person and that it is delivered accurately. That’s the one result. And so if we know that’s what’s needed, then we can think through, okay, what are the personality strengths that someone’s going to need to have to do that consistently well, day in and day out. And I think that is really key, is to recognize it needs to be done consistently well, day in and day out.
Any of us could deliver communication accurately for an hour. I don’t think that I could do it in a busy office, consistently well, day in and day out. I think it would totally wear me out. And so this is something that we see a lot when we hire, we bring in people and their resumes look good. They sounded really good during the interview. We gave them a work sample to do and they did good. But then when we put them in that role and they’re doing it every single day, all of a sudden they don’t look so good. And that means that we have hired someone and they don’t have the strengths that are needed. So for a busy receptionist or a receptionist in a busy office, you need someone who’s really good with people, who gets energized by a lot of interaction with people.
So most likely that’s going to be an extrovert, not an introvert. They need to be really good with handling detail and a lot of detail, and they also need to be good with their followup because the information comes in and they need to make sure it gets out to the right person. So that follow up needs to happen. And so we want to hire with that in mind and pay attention as we take someone through the entire application and interview process. This is what we’re looking for, and is what I am seeing about this person in the interview. When I check references, is everything lining up that those are indeed the strengths that they have.
Roger Dooley: Well, that makes a huge amount of sense, I think. And although I’m sure some listeners are thinking, well yeah, that sounds great, but it’s hard to identify some of these, how this person is really going to work out in the job. Because we’ve all had those experiences where that person did seem to be extroverted and their past boss said they were detail oriented, and so on and so on, but in the final analysis they were okay but not great.
Sabrina Starling: Right, right. And one of the things that I really encourage, comes from a book called Top Grading, and that is using the threat of a reference check and actually following through with a reference check. And it’s a little bit different way of checking references than is typical. And what this means is at the top of the application you have a statement that says, “I acknowledge that if I advance in the application process that I will put the business owner or the leader in contact with people of their choosing.” And so, and then they sign that. And what that allows to happen is as you’re going through the interview and you’re asking them to, and I really encourage asking a lot of open ended questions where they’re storytelling that’s happening because that’s where people’s real values come out and their ways of being in the world really come out.
And you’ll start to pick up on personality strengths in that too. As you’re hearing those stories, listen for who in this candidates world could verify that the story is true. So if it’s a coworker, ask to be put in contact with that coworker and say, “I interviewed Joe and he shared this about him. Tell me about that.” And then listen as the reference is commenting on Joe and his behavior. That oftentimes will suss out what appears good, is it really good? Is this what we’re really getting?
Roger Dooley: Right. And I guess some people might be thinking, well boy this seems like a lot of work to hire somebody. But I’m sure the point you would make, Sabrina, is that if you are really trying to hire A-players that it is worth investing the time up front. Even if it, the hiring process takes two or three times as long to get that person who will both be a high-performer and also not leave within six months.
Sabrina Starling: Right. So the cost of turnover is exorbitant for a business to be absorbing. And especially if it’s a small business, two to three times the person’s salary is the conservative estimate. But that doesn’t even account for if you bring someone on who’s a bad fit, the disruption to your team and the morale on your team, kind of the soft costs of poor fit employees. And the other thing in terms of thinking about friction is when we’re setting up our interview our attraction system to recruit A-players into our business, I really encourage putting filters in place to create friction so that the wrong people are, there’s so much friction they don’t get through, but the right people don’t experience it as friction. They experience it as, wow, they’re really making sure I’m a good fit.
They value me as a team member and what my contribution to this team is going to be.
Roger Dooley: So what would an example of that be, Sabrina?
Sabrina Starling: You heard me talk about goodness of fit with immutable laws and core values. So we want to know what the immutable laws are on our team. And that’s how we do life. They’re kind of our rules for living and they’re unspoken until they’re violated. And we know that our immutable laws are violated because we feel anger or we feel frustration around it. And an example in my world, I’m a woman of my word, if I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it, or I’m going to follow up with you and say, “Look, I committed to do this for you, but I have to renegotiate this. I am just, it’s not going to be possible.” So there’s no surprises.
I don’t like surprises and not following through. And that’s an immutable law for me. And when someone tells me, “Hey, I’m going to do this and it’s going to happen on such and such date,” and it doesn’t happen, I feel frustration and irritation about that because that immutable law has been violated. So that means that everyone on my team needs to know that and they need to have core values themselves around honoring their word and being upfront if they’re not able to do it. And so that’s what I mean about we want to put filters in place that let us know early on in the application process if someone is going to be a good fit with our immutable laws in our business. So think about what can I ask on the application that may be an open ended question that would reveal if someone’s immutable laws are in conjunction with ours.
I think a simple one on the application is at Tap The Potential, we really believe in being a gift from our gifts. We want to show up and add value in the world from our strengths. And so someone who is stingy with their strengths and doesn’t enjoy supporting and helping others is not going to be a good fit. And so I’m looking for people who have been volunteering and active in leadership roles in their community, in their church, in any organization that they’ve been in, where they really show up and seek to add value. And so, I’m going to look for that on the application. If someone leaves that blank, I’m not going to bring them in for an interview. They’re already identified that they’re not going to be a good fit. And then because the interview process itself is so time consuming, if you ask any leader who’s ever had to interview people, do they enjoy the process?
Most of the time they pull this ugly face and they look like they’re in physical pain because it takes so much time and it’s kind of like this, I don’t know if I’m really going to go through all this and if I’m going to get a good team member after all anyway. And so before we do a long interview with someone, maybe asking them to submit a video and ask them to tell a story about a time in their past where they were asked to do a job, and they didn’t have the tools they needed to do the job. How did they handle it. And let them send you a video with their response to it. This is going to give you a real quick glimpse into their personality, how they present themselves, how they problem solve, and are you feeling like the way that they problem solve aligns with the immutable laws that you have in your company and on your team?
Roger Dooley: Yeah. I want to get to the interview process, but first while we’re on this sort of screening thing, I thought there was a great example in the book about a cabinet company that did a kind of little hiring task. Can you explain that?
Sabrina Starling: Certainly. So even in the job ads that we write, we can screen people out before they even submit an application to us. And so the first thing to do on in that respect is to write a really long job ad because only someone who is really serious and interested in what you’re describing about your company and the opportunity will read all the way to the end.
Roger Dooley: Right. I’m going to interject too, that is adding friction to the process, but in this case it is, might be productive friction in the same way that lead generation companies, companies that try and get people’s email addresses so that they can market to them often make it as low friction as possible. Just type in your email and that’s it. But if their lead process is a followup process, is more expensive, like they’re going to have a salesperson call, they will deliberately add some friction to that process just to be sure that only the more serious inquiries get through. That if somebody has a very casual interest in whatever it is they’re selling, that there’ll be a little bit discouraged by the 12 field form.
Sabrina Starling: Yes. So, and to that point, we want to be thoughtful about how we design these job ads. So we want the job ad to speak to the right person right off the bat. So they are not experiencing friction as they’re reading through the job ad. They’re feeling like, you’re talking to me. And they become more and more engaged as they read. So they’re likely to make it to the end. Whereas someone who is not the right fit will read it and they’ll be, their eyes will start to glaze over. Like this, I’m bored here, I’m just going to send my resume in. And so starting the job ad off with are you the kind of person who, and then you describe the personality characteristics that you’re looking for. And then you start describing the culture of the business. We enjoy people. Details are our jam. Those kinds of things.
And using the real language of how you talk in your company because that will resonate with the right person. The wrong person will read that and just, they’ll tune out, and they won’t even make it to the end. So when the right person makes it to the end of that job ad, give them something quirky to do that will make sure that they’re following directions, because this is a big thing in our world today is a lot of people don’t take time to read directions, much less follow directions. So tell them, an example would be, send us an email with bozo … bozo in the subject line and then you can set a filter on your email to see who responded in the right way and only those get through. And then you can spend more time following up with them. And at that point you’re more confident that they’re likely to be a good candidate and worthy of your time and attention to nurture that relationship.
Roger Dooley: One last topic is interviewing. I think I’ve certainly hired hundreds of people in my career and I always felt that, wow, I really need to talk to this person, engage whether they’re a good fit. At the same time when you read some of the research on interviews, it turns out that there’s a huge amount of bias that can creep in, that we tend to hire people that are like us and we’re less likely to hire people who aren’t like us. We tend to scan for say a likability and so on when that may or may not be an important part of the job. If the person’s in a public facing role, then okay, that interview is really important because it’s almost like a work sample when they’re presenting themselves to you.
But if they’re in some other nonpublic facing role, you can be screening for things that, be biased by things that aren’t really relevant to the job. And in fact in those cases, at least some studies show that simply looking at their skills, their resume, and making some effort to verify that those are accurate is, results in better hires than the combined interview process.
Sabrina Starling: Yeah. So this is where I think it’s so important for us to start with the end in mind and define what success in this role really looks like. And then as we develop the interview to have real clear criteria that we’re looking for and have that articulated going into the interview, because it is very hard when that person is in front of us, for us to be objective at that point. And to counterbalance our own biases, having another team member present with us and for taking it even one step further, doing a group or a team interview with the candidates who are advancing so that the whole team can be a part of the decision making. But again, it’s really important before you have the team jump in and be a part of the decision making that we have defined the criteria that we’re looking for from the beginning. Otherwise, once we’re in the middle of it, all the biases are flying everywhere.
Roger Dooley: Yeah. And I think one of those is confirmation bias because I know I’ve been subject of that myself where I had a candidate that looked good on paper and go through the interview, and I really sort of maybe ignored some things simply because I felt okay, this is the person for the job. And by doing exactly what you said, by having other team members also interview the person, they dug something out that I either missed or just sort of glossed over because I wanted that person to be the fit. So that team approach I think is something that really helps.
Sabrina Starling: Well, and the other thing that gets in here is sunk cost, and how reluctant we are once we have sunk energy into something or someone to shift course. And so when you have that person that looks really good on paper and they’ve interviewed well and you’ve been the main person doing the hiring, and you bring them into the business, and at the end of week one, they’re clearly showing signs they’re not going to succeed. At that point, we have so much sunk into them, it becomes very hard for us to be objective and to see it.
Whereas other team members will be like, Oh my gosh, what just happened here? Who do we have on our team and how come the boss doesn’t see this? And so if we, before we go through the hiring process, lay out, okay, this person, this is what success in this role is going to look like at the end of day one, they need to be doing these things and at the end of week one, this is what I would expect from an A-player in this role. This is what they’re going to be able to do and then three months in, six months, one year, before we even get them into the business, then it’s going to make us much more able to pull the trigger and say, “You know what? You’re not performing. It’s halfway through the first day, I can see this isn’t going to be a good fit for you. Let’s stop here.”
Roger Dooley: It works both ways. I remember one time I had a person who left for lunch on her first day and never came back.
Sabrina Starling: Yeah.
Roger Dooley: It doesn’t happen often, but it was like, whoa, that was interesting. Anyway-
Sabrina Starling: … yeah, well she probably saved you a lot of time and heartache down the road.
Roger Dooley: Exactly. Probably not an A-player. But anyway, let me remind our listeners that today we are speaking with Dr. Sabrina Starling, founder of Tap The Potential and author of the Hire The Best series. Sabrina, where can people find you?
Sabrina Starling: Right at my website. TapThePotential.com. And if you want to get a hold of the book, the book is available through TapThePotential.com/book. And I want to offer something to your listeners, Roger, we offer an assessment around are you creating a highly profitable, great place to work, that is attractive to A-players, that allows you to build that team, that doesn’t depend on the business owner or a particular leader to be there. It’s designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs. So if you’re listening and you’re thinking, I want to really assess my business and see how I’m doing, you can go to TapThePotential.com/assessment.
Roger Dooley: Great. Well, we will link to all of those places and to any other resources we spoke about on the show notes page at rogerdooley.com/podcast and we’ll have a transcript of this podcast there too. Sabrina, thanks for being on the show.
Sabrina Starling: Thank you, Roger. I enjoyed our conversation and especially talking about the different ways that friction ties into this and I just want to give a shout out to you that friction is a game changer for leaders and business owners. I highly recommend putting on your friction goggles and looking for where are we creating friction and how can we start removing the friction.
Roger Dooley: Right. And that was an unsolicited, unpaid for testimonial. So thank you very much, Sabrina.
Sabrina Starling: You’re welcome.
Thank you for tuning into this episode of Brainfluence. To find more episodes like this one, and to access all of Roger’s online writing and resources, the best starting point is RogerDooley.com.
And remember, Roger’s new book, Friction, is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and book sellers everywhere. Bestselling author Dan Pink calls it, “An important read,” and Wharton Professor Dr. Joana Berger said, “You’ll understand Friction’s power and how to harness it.”
For more information or for links to Amazon and other sellers, go to RogerDooley.com/Friction.
