The risk and reward of hiring can make or break the effectiveness and culture of your team. A hiring misstep can have an unrecoverable impact on team performance. 

We all have them, the puzzle piece that just didn’t fit. Those hires that had “so much potential” but didn’t quite hit the mark. Those that we inherited from another leader, who couldn’t speak highly enough about them, but we just couldn’t find synergy. 

Being twins and leaders in the same fast growing organization, we had a lot of great discussions around what worked and what didn’t. We have both hired hundreds, if not thousands, of people over our tenures. The ones we are talking about are the ones we hired as superstars but unknowingly put them into a role that restricted their unique talents and silenced their communication style. Not on purpose, it was always based on the needs of the business at the time, but misplaced all the same.   

What often looked like underperformance was actually misplaced talent. 

I'm not a boxer.

But I was ready to pick a fight.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Another leadership meeting. Another conversation negotiating who in our leadership team was taking on what portion of our division’s goals. Yet another situation where my team was being pressured to take on an additional 30 Million in quota to cover the shortfall of another team. 

I felt my jaw clench. My voice got inappropriately loud. My hands slapped down on my notebook on the table.

And I had this wild thought: "I could flip this table right now."

(I didn't, of course. But the impulse was real)

That's when I knew something was deeply wrong, deeply misaligned.

Not with the meeting. With me.

Because leaders don't fantasize about flipping conference tables in quota meetings.

But managers who are pretending to lead? We absolutely do.

Here's what I realized in that moment:

I was no longer leading my team. I was managing their problems. I was no longer leading myself. I was managing my resentment. I ...