Larry Stybel Of Stybel Peabody Associates On How To Hire The Right Person

An Interview With Ken Babcock

… When doing the first level interview with candidates, I always state the following: If we move forward with your candidacy Stybel Peabody will conduct thorough reference checks, confirm receipt of all degrees you have listed on your resume, examine State and Federal Court records, look at your credit history, and even check to see what you have been putting up on Social Media. The existence of a negative item is not necessarily a disqualifying factor. If you go through this process, we will keep your information confidential and will consider it along with other factors. Is there anything you wish to tell us now? That one question results in useful information that helps me avoid hiring mistakes!!

When a company is looking to grow, the choice of who to hire can sometimes be an almost existential question. The right hire can dramatically grow a company, while the wrong hire can be very harmful to morale and growth. How can you know you are hiring the right person? What are the red flags that should warn you away from hiring someone? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who can share insights and stories from their experience about “How To Hire The Right Person”. As a part of this series I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. Larry Stybel.

Larry Stybel is a Harvard University trained licensed doctoral level psychologist, co-founder of two companies, and Entrepreneur in Residence at a private equity firm. He specializes in recruiting Board members, CEOs, CFOs, and COOs.

Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?

I co-founded Stybel Peabody Associates, Inc. with Maryanne Peabody in 1979 as an executive outplacement firm focusing on CEOs, CFOs, and COOs. Over the years we learned how people in these key roles FAIL to make it. And we wanted to bring what we have learned to the other side of the hiring process. Now we ALSO are involved in recruitment of Board members, CEOs, COOs, and CFOs.

You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?

One day I was retained to provide executive outplacement to a CEO. I foolishly said to the CEO, “You are lucky your company is sponsoring you. We can get you a nice resume and teach you how to network.” He replied, “I’ve got a nice resume and I know how to network.”

That response forced me to ask the CEO the question I had failed to throw out: “How can we help you?” He said, “I went to a Board meeting thinking it was a regular Board meeting and I was fired! I didn’t see the train coming until it hit me! I never want that to happen to me again! Help me learn from this disaster.” That response got us on the journey of board-CEO communication failures and resulted in the creation of our second company, boardoptions.com.

What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?

This is a current story: we were hired by the Board of Directors of a second-generation family business to help it find its first non-family CEO. This family was so dysfunctional, momma disinvited her children from her Christmas party. I worked with this dysfunctional family to find an appropriate CEO. And then I worked with the family and the CEO to help the CEO be successful. Three years later, the CEO has retired. The family has reached out to me to do another CEO search for the second non-family CEO to run the company.

To me, repeat business is the highest compliment I can receive!

How about a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away?

Am I only limited to ONE mistake? There was a Vice President of Human Resource I greatly respected. When she retired, she started consulting with companies on HR issues. I approached her about joining Stybel Peabody Associates. We had a pleasant conversation over dinner and agreed to role, compensation, and start-date. I thought everything was settled. I had her bio and added her bio to the Stybel Peabody team on our website. I asked her to review what I had done and said this was only a draft. She called me and expressed outrage that I had moved so fast. One of her clients was also a client of ours and we had not settled how we would communicate with that client.

It damaged our relationship and I take full responsibility.

Since then I follow-up verbal agreements with written summaries and ask the person to confirm my understanding.

How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?

I have been very fortunate to have had some fabulous mentors. One of them was the President of a well known Harvard teaching hospital. His hospital became my first health care delivery client and he forced me upon his VP HR who didn’t want to use me. I have no idea why this President was such a fan.

The net result was that having this hospital as a client raised my credibility in New England and I ended up working with 11 of New England’s largest 15 health care delivery systems.

This President died fifteen years ago. I am now proud to say I am working with the President’s daughter. She is the CEO for a Public relations firm and I am working with her to help her design and execute board of director opportunities in her career.

It was a thrill to get such fabulous assistance early in my career and it is an equal thrill to payback that kindness to his daughter.

Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?

There was a famous television show in the 1980ss that made a BIG impact on me: “M*A*S*H.” It stands for the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. It is a dark comedy set during the Korean War. The staff of this hospital are all highly skilled knowledge workers: doctors, nurses, and administrative personnel. Half of them are there because it would be good for their careers. They are called Regular Army. Half of them have been forced to be the hospital because of the draft. They hate the war. They hate the Army. There is culture conflict. It is similar to the conflict I see between those employees who MUST be at work because they physically deal with customers or physically handle merchandise to be manufactured or delivered versus the professionals who work in hybrid or work only from homes.

At the same time, like any emergency room health care delivery system, they move into an undermanned situation as soon as the casualties of war come pouring in. Thus there is high stress and danger in the work environment.

Another theme in this show: the best surgeon in the hospital hates the Army and everything it stands for. He hates anyone associated with the Army and treats them with contempt.

Into this leadership situation steps Colonel Sherman T. Potter, M.D.

I love how he uses calm assertive leadership to turn enemies into chums. Not friends. Chums.

I give talks about Dr. Potter around the world. He is THE leadership model for the 21st Century. You can still see M*A*S*H reruns on Prime Video, Hulu, and Apple TV. You might be able to get DVDs of shows from your local library.

Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s change paths a little bit. The pandemic forced many companies to adapt. Implementing remote onboarding and professional development — in addition to maintaining culture — challenged organizations. Can you share with us the challenges you have faced, with remote onboarding and hiring? How have your internal processes evolved as a result?

No big changes for me. I was doing video and telephone interviews long before COVID.

Let me tell you a story.

The Forest Stewardship Council of the United States is a nonprofit that sets standards for tree growers and harvesting of trees. The Board is made up of conservationists, Agriculture industry leaders, and American Indians who live on the land. I was retained to find the organization’s next CEO. But they could not pay my full fees. To save money, I arranged initial interviews to be done by phone.

Using this technique, I identified four outstanding candidates to present to the Board. But one of these four was exceptional. I was not surprised when they offered this person the CEO role.

Two months later, the new CEO calls me to Washington, D.C. He wants to hire me to do a search for a new CFO.

I walk into his office and find that he is legally blind! He has a seeing eye dog. He has one of those canes with a red tip. I realize that had I visually seen him, I would have ruled him out as a candidate. After all, the CEO has to travel the country, visiting forests, inspecting tree harvesting, etc. Because I was “blind” to his blindness, I was able to see past his disability.

I’m very sensitive to unconscious bias and am guilty of it myself. In honor of that incident, I try to have first level interviews with candidates only by phone.

So the Pandemic didn’t crimp my style!

With the Great Resignation/Reconsideration in full swing, many job seekers are reevaluating their priorities in selecting a role and an employer. How do you think this will influence companies’ approaches to hiring, talent management, and continuous learning?

I am not sure how to answer that. There was no real “Resignation” in the great “Resignation.” Most people moved from lower paying jobs to higher paying jobs. If we go into major recession, the power balance between employer and employee will shift.

Super, thank you for sharing all of that. Next, let’s turn to the focus of our discussion about hiring the right person. As you know, hiring can be very time consuming and difficult. Can you share 5 techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill? Please share an example for each idea.

1. Write two job descriptions. The first job description will be the public version of the job. It will usually be written up as “Good to Great.” It will be very positive because the document is very public. It can be seen by your customers and competitors. The second description is what I call The Going In Mandate. It describes the job in three ways: (1) What is to be changed in the next 12–18 months (business processes, technology, culture/people); (2) what is to be honored-preserved over the next 12–18 months (business processes, technology, culture/people) (3) what are the Third Rails in this job: “touch this and you surely will die.” This Going in Mandate is to be given to the two finalists.
2. When doing the first level interview with candidates, I always state the following: If we move forward with your candidacy Stybel Peabody will conduct thorough reference checks, confirm receipt of all degrees you have listed on your resume, examine State and Federal Court records, look at your credit history, and even check to see what you have been putting up on Social Media. The existence of a negative item is not necessarily a disqualifying factor. If you go through this process, we will keep your information confidential and will consider it along with other factors. Is there anything you wish to tell us now? That one question results in useful information that helps me avoid hiring mistakes!!
3. “Tell me about your sense of humor and give me an example of a joke you enjoy.” People with no sense of humor often cannot emotionally distance themselves from the crisis of the moment. They lack perspective. But humor runs on a scale of 0–10. 0 is no sense of humor. 1 is “cold” sense of humor. This a person who enjoys ridiculing others. “Laugh against someone else we both hate.” A “10” is a warm sense of humor. Laugh WITH me as I make fun of myself or our situation.” Warren Buffet once made this 10 level joke: “working today in a job you hate so that one day you can afford to do what you REALLY want is like saving sex for your old age!” Nobody is the object of the joke, but a point is being made. Another 10: Abraham Lincoln was accused of being “two faced.” His response: “If I was two faced, would THIS be the face I would CHOOSE to show the world?”

In contrast, what are a few red flags that should warn you away from hiring someone?

Lack of warm sense of humor. Using my framework a sense of humor from 0–4.

Low openness to change/new ideas.

Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.

How can we use humor to agree on what unites us rather than focus on what divides us. A key theme in my professional life is the tendency to define problems in binary terms: pro life versus pro choice. I try to use an ordinal framework to reframe issues on ordinal scales. It is part of my training in cognitive behavior therapy. I have written several articles in PSYCHOLOGY TODAY about these issues. Humor is just the latest.

This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!

About the interviewer. Ken Babcock is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tango. Prior to his mission of celebrating how work is executed, Ken spent over 4 years at Uber riding the rollercoaster of a generational company. After gaining hands-on experience with entrepreneurship at Atomic VC, Ken went on to HBS. It was at HBS that Ken met his Co-Founders, Dan Giovacchini and Brian Shultz and they founded Tango.