LEADERSHIP | Unveiling Top Leadership Habits with William Vanderbloemen, Author of 'Be the Unicorn.

0:00And now, Taking Care of Business, your hosts, Craig Moen and Shai Gilad.

0:08Welcome to Business Owners Radio, episode 238. Our guest today is William Vanderbloomen, CEO and founder of Vanderbloomen Search Group and author of the new book, Be the Unicorn, 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. For 15 years, the Vanderbloomen Search Group has regularly retained to identify the best talent for teams, manage succession planning, and consult on all issues regarding teams. This year, Vander Blumen will complete their 3 ,000th executive search. Good morning, William. Welcome to Business Owners Radio. Hey, great to be with you. I appreciate you having me on.

0:51Oh, we've been looking forward to this. The topic is just really front center with so many of our audience. So it's going to be a fun deep dive into this topic area. And this is really a challenge from so many different angles as far as the change in our business world and recent changes over the last decade. So I'm curious, though, you spent a lot of time and investment into writing this book. And so I have to ask why and what led you to write it? Yeah, well, that is always the question, isn't it? Everybody thinks writing is this fabulous endeavor. And I'm glad I get to do it. But A, you don't make any money writing books unless your name is Rowling and you write about wizards.

1:35But B, just getting the thing out there. I mean, if you're a business owner out there, you know, like patience is probably not our strong suit, right? If you're a small business owner that's growing and having the message inside you and then having to get it out, it's just it's it's not much fun. But this sort of came to me out of a research project we were doing to try and be better at our business. It's kind of strange. We're an executive search firm and we get hired all the time to go find C-suite talent for our clients. And during the pandemic, we, like a whole lot of people, had some extra time on our hands because clients weren't hiring.

2:14And we dropped back and realized, you know, in every one of the searches we do, we have a handful of people that get a long format face-to-face interview. Well, now we've realized we've completed 30 ,000 of those long format interviews. And we were able to say, I wonder if we could find the best of the best. The kind of person that turns ahead, you meet them in five minutes and you're like, yes, I know that I want to be around this person. This person's a winner. So we said, okay, let's find the best of the best and then let's figure out what they're doing that causes that weird reaction that just makes you like them immediately.

2:48And we thought if we could figure this out, then we'd be able to spot these kind of people faster, be better as a search firm. And so we figured out who they were and it was pretty cool. And then we asked the question, okay, what are they doing? What do they have in common, if anything? And the answer was, they do have things in common. And what they had in common was not anything like the list I thought it'd be. Very, very surprised. I thought this will be all super smart people, high IQ, not necessarily. This will be people who are well networked because they got to go to a good school. No, not really.

3:24I even wondered if it was as simple as he was the quarterback and she was the head cheerleader. Nope, nope. What these really unique magnetic people had in common were 12 habits. Habits about how they treated other people that were very common to them and then very uncommon to the rest of us. And the cool part about the finding was we've got 12 habits and they're actually all teachable. They're all coachable. I mean, if you want to be the best in the world at something, usually it's not attainable. I would love to win the Masters, the golf tournament. It would be fantastic. I would practice more than anybody on the planet if it meant I could win.

4:08But it doesn't matter how much I practice. I'm not good enough to win that tournament. These 12 habits, however, are actually all teachable, learnable, appliable. And when we saw that, we said, you know, this can't be just a selfish research project. We now have a roadmap for people about how they can become one of those standout people. And that led to saying, I guess we're going to go through the labor and work of putting this out in a book. Wow. It's rare that we have someone on the show that has so much research, you know, 30 ,000 face-to-face interviews over all of these years. Before we get into some of their findings, key thing, I love the element of it being data-driven.

4:49And curious, though, at a high level, have you seen shifts over the last maybe 10, 5, 3 years that you were surprised with any of that yet? Yeah, definitely some shifts. Every one of these habits is probably something you were told at some point in your childhood you should do. I mean, honestly, the secondary title of the book, Craig, could have been, well, I guess mom was right. Because a lot of these are lessons we've heard over and over. And I forget who said it, but, you know, the greater part of instruction is being reminded of the things you already know. Right. So some of this is, oh, yeah, that's the way it's always been.

5:30But but some of these habits have been accelerated in both their need and their impact in the last three years. Because every one of these habits is how we treat one another interpersonally. And three, almost four years ago now, when the world shut down with a pandemic, everyone got pretty lonely, whether they wanted to realize it or not. Even the introverts were lonely by the end of all the lockdowns. We have since then placed a higher premium than ever on how people treat one another. I think it's going to be the new gold standard for employment. And I think that's only going to increase in the future.

6:06You say, well, William, the pandemic's over. So what? It shouldn't increase. It is going to increase because a lot of the non-human functions that have to be done in the business world are going to be taken by AI. What's going to be left? People who know how to treat other people well. So this is a finding that really couldn't come out at a better time because we're right on the cusp of needing these habits more than ever. And I don't think that's going to go away anytime soon. I agree with you. That's really great that you're bringing that forward. I hadn't thought of it in that light. Very strong, positive relationships are becoming more and more predominant in the decision-making process of the different businesses you might go with for your business, or are we looking for subcontracting of resources for our own businesses?

6:57Those relationships and how we're treated and how we treat others changes the whole environment to a much more positive environment. This element of being a unicorn and defining what's really unique and how does one rise up. From your perspective, define unicorn when it comes to leaders. Yeah, you know, there are a lot of definitions of unicorn. I mean, the tech sector talks about Uber or the latest super high growth disruptor businesses, and they call it a unicorn for a reason. A unicorn is a really mythical beast. I mean, people kind of wonder if it's actually real. And that's what these top talented people are.

7:39They're just that good that you want to hire them on the spot. They're also something that is unmistakable. You see a unicorn, it's like, what is that? No, no one ever says that. Because once you see it, you don't see it often, but once you see it, you know it. And that gets back to really the genesis of this book was me sitting around saying, how am I getting entranced by a handful of people within five minutes? What are they doing? I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I'm also not the most gullible. So what is going on that's causing me to just almost irrationally like these people, want to be around them, want to hire them, want to sign up for their email list, want to listen to their podcast?

8:17They're a unicorn. I know it when I see it. It's pretty rare to see, and it's pretty special once you find it. You know what's really striking to me, William, is when we dive in a little bit to these traits that you've discussed. at the beginning of the book, you talk about all of these things fall under this broader category of soft skills. Would you agree? Absolutely. And I think that I really wish we could abolish the term soft skills because what you're telling me is these are the things that you believe make a concrete difference. Oh, that's well said. That's very well said. And yet I am so struck by how little we do to prepare people to learn these skills, how we expect them to just show up with these skills.

9:03So we've emphasized STEM and then we wonder why people can solve A squared plus B squared equals C squared. But when you ask them to create something or try to problem solve in a situation that they haven't been in before, they just stare at you and blink. What are your thoughts about how we can change the dialogue around this and how we can help people really understand how to connect with some of these things that at first might feel a little intangible, if not scary to some? Yeah, it's so true. I wish there were another name for it. We actually played around with a bunch of titles using the term soft skills and they were all just not appealing.

9:44It's not a great term. It's OK. I wasn't going to put it on you to be figured out. No, no, no, no. I'm agreeing with what you're saying. It's fantastic. But they do make a concrete difference. And, you know, I was sitting around sometime back with the guys that have done more searches for me than anybody on the team. And, you know, we were just sitting around kind of yakking at the end of all company summit. And I said, what do you guys think? You know, when you're doing a search, you've been doing this longer than any of us, except me. When it gets down to those last two candidates in a search, have you guys noticed anything that is the difference maker between the guy who gets the job and the person who's left out?

10:22And all of them said in some degree or another, and then we finally put it in one phrase and all agreed this was it. It comes down to who plays well with others. And that's such a skill. and you can call it soft if you want, but the ability to get along with others, to play well with others, to make people want to be a part of what you're doing, that kind of influence, it's gold. And I think that smart people are going to pay attention to that now because what's going to happen pretty soon, let's take coding, for example. Okay. Maybe somebody out there owns a business that does coding or some form of software development.

11:04I've met more people. When we do a search for an EVP of coding or software, it's like the most brilliant coders on the planet cannot have a conversation with another human. So finding someone who can speak coding, but also speak to the client becomes an enormously valuable person in the equation. Now, think for a second about where coding is going. Coding is going to be automated. Human coding, I predict, will be very, very, very few jobs in the future. I mean, if I'm an AI, what's the first thing I want to figure out? How to code myself to be better. If I'm a coder for AI, what's the first thing I want to do?

11:43Figure out how my software I've already paid for can take over the coding that I'm paying people through the nose for. So smart people are going to look at this and say, oh my gosh, my future as a pure writing code person is over. But if I have the ability to take my coding knowledge and speak to other humans in a way where I'm getting along with others and they want to agree with me, they want to be a part of things, now all of a sudden I can make some magic. Even if AI is doing the coding, the human factor will not go away. So smart people, I think, are already starting to identify. that more than pedigree, more than IQ, more than socioeconomic status, hiring people who are incredibly good with other people is going to be the new premium and the new gold standard.

12:31And when you look at the unicorns in the book and hear from them, you'll see they're pretty special. And these 12 habits, which are all fairly interrelated, when they come together and people are really focused on all 12 of them at the same time, it's almost irresistible. It's pretty special. Yeah, I do want to dive into a few of these. Obviously, we're not going to be able to discuss all 12. What you've helped us do, I think here, William, is you've given us some language to think about what are the skills that we should be investing in? What are the skills that we should be encouraging young people to invest in, in order to make themselves more future-proof and more able to thrive in the decades to come?

13:11And so I think when I'm looking at this, there's a few things that jump out. And the first one I'm going to say, because it's another one of those words, it's sort of hard to follow, which is being authentic, right? The authentic is what you talk about in chapter two. And this idea of authenticity, I feel like we know it when we see it, but we have a hard time decoding that. What have you discovered? You know, I think if you're a business owner, you have to do the raw, raw speech. You have to do the presentation to investors. You have to be the stage guy to some extent. I think the easiest way to understand the authentic is an authentic person.

13:48The stage version of William is the same as the backstage version of William. Or put more plainly, the work version of William is the same as the at-home version of William. Now, there's like tweaks. I don't have to do as much leadership when I'm at home because we have lots of systems. My wife's amazing at running the household side of our house. But when you find someone that has no difference between the way they are in public and they are in private, then you find authenticity. And people can smell that. It used to be pretty easy to smell that. You'd say, well, if all they talk about is their success, they're not very authentic because we're all struggling.

14:26Now, I think it's almost more in vogue to talk about your struggles and your trauma, all of which are valid. But it's almost like the pendulum swung over to the other side where, you know, we're leading with our pain. and people can smell when that's fabricated. I hear it all the time on podcasts and just turn them off. So when you have this stage person, the same as the backstage person, it just sort of shines through. And we found that people who can exude that authenticity rise to the top. So in the book, we do a case study of an authentic unicorn. We hear interviews from the unicorns we've identified and what they have to say about practicing and improving their authenticity.

15:08And then we offer specific concrete examples for upping your own authenticity. William, I appreciate that. There's those elements that you can almost feel, but you try to measure them. It's really challenging. But what I really like and an element of the 12 traits is the teachability. As Shai mentioned, this is something that should be taught within families. We expect our educational institutions to take care of all of this, but that sort of turns over the responsibility. So we as parents or guiders of young people to help them understand these traits and how to apply them. So I love the book from a number of different angles.

15:51One of the elements that came out to me that also energizes me as an employer and hiring occasionally is finding fast and agile. How would you define that and help us through that process? Well, I think it's the first of the 12 habits. Each chapter is one of the 12 habits of these unicorns. So in Be the Unicorn, the first one, why is the first one the first one? I'm not real sure, but it might be mistitled. It's called the fast. But what we're really saying there is responsive. And I think business owners can relate to this maybe more than anyone. we found that humans are horrible at getting back to one another.

16:29Just terrible. Unicorns, those superstar mythical performers that everybody wants to hire, they're almost obsessed with getting back to people very quickly. And we looked at what does that mean for like when marketing hands the sales team a really good lead, how quickly do they respond? And, you know, the quicker you respond to a lead, the more likely you are to get a sales call. And I could bore you with the really granular research there, but like you respond within a minute, you're going to get this done. You respond within 24 hours, you got about a 1 % chance of getting it done. And most salespeople wait 42 hours to respond.

17:08It's ridiculous. We talked to people on dating websites about when the software sends you a notice, you might have a potential match, how long it takes people to respond. And that's really interesting because a dating website theoretically is completely populated with lonely people who are hoping to meet someone. And still they take forever to get back with one another. We've seen it, my goodness, in every vertical you can imagine. But the unicorns get back to people immediately. Now, that gets tricky when five people want your attention at the same time or when you're at your kid's softball game and you're the coach.

17:46true. But the unicorns develop a system where everyone feels like I know they're going to get back to me as soon as humanly possible. And what I've found is it's so rare that if you just respond quickly, you will stand out of the crowd. It happened to me by default when we started our business. I mean, we started on a card table at our house. We didn't take out any debt, no investors, just tried to build organically. And if you called me or wrote into me and said, would you come help me find this person for our staff. If I didn't get business, we didn't eat. So I got back to people right away and I kept doing it.

18:23And I kept getting comments like, wow, you really got back to us. Wow, that's unusual. Didn't seem unusual to me. We were hungry. But I think people don't stay hungry long. When you live in a time of abundance, you forget the hunger and people are bad at getting back to one another. So the responsive or the fast might be the easiest fix for a person if they're looking to stand out in the crowd. Growing your authenticity, that takes real work. Growing your agility, that's a daily labor. Just get back to people, that's pretty simple. That's why it's first. And it's amazing how that causes so many businesses to not have business and the fact that they don't value that.

19:06They don't create that as being a priority. We all get busy at different times, but even getting back saying, hey, things are busy at the moment. It's important to me. I'll get back to you. Even that just sort of stems that time. And business to business, we all are dependent on contractors, subcontractors, and partners to move forward quickly and agilely. And having this wait thing, I often tell my close friends, my worst fear is having to wait. I hate waiting. And we're dealing in a world that is moving fast and decisions have to be made fast. And one company can't move forward until their partner or subcontractor or associates get back to them.

19:55So we're throttling businesses, we're throttling all of the economy in a chain reaction of no one responding. And so I agree with you that this is a factor in decision making of who you're going to work with, who you're going to share future growth with. Having close alliances and partners and even just being a close friend, if you will, in business and in personal worlds. If we can eliminate that, we've taken out a lot of stress out of the systems, out of our relationships. All of these 12 elements that you have all have a synergistic effect. The accumulation of all of them have this major impact probably in your perceptions of the persons you're interviewing going after.

20:44Curious on the recruiting side or the search side, give me a little insight of your process as far as at that level, an executive search. How is that different from, say, an everyday additional employee from a service level or line level? Well, it doesn't matter what person you're adding to your staff. The most expensive way you can hire somebody is hiring the wrong person, because then you've got to go undo it and you've got to pay severance and you lose time, you lose momentum, and you got to redo the search. So anytime you hire the wrong person, it's bad. And companies would be nowhere without the rank and file employees, the middle managers who drive the spine of the business.

21:25So I don't want to overstate the importance of the rank and file employee. Having said that, the farther you go up the org chart, the more impact the hire makes for good or for bad. In the NFL, if you hire a mediocre, deep snapper who's pretty good at his job, and can get the ball to the place kicker and holder, that's fine. You hire a bad, mediocre quarterback and it's really bad. I can tell you, I've been a Houston Texans fan for 20 years. Mediocre quarterbacks don't bring us much. So the higher you are on the org chart, the more impact there is. And where we feel like we're gifted, I've got a lot of friends who do search for the sort of mid-management and lower, and we'll do that for really large organizations.

22:08But But where we feel like we've been able to add the most value is helping people avoid hiring the wrong people in their top positions and helping them find the right people in their top positions. Because if you can get the top right, the rest of things work themselves out. So it's a longer process for executive search. It's more thorough. It's certainly going to focus more on human to human skills than a line worker in a factory. So I think it's just more exacting and does tend to focus on these soft skills that are human to human interactions. William, I'm curious about your process. I realize there's a lot of secret sauce in there for your firm.

22:48I'm wondering if you could share, though, some of the types of questions or behaviors that we as an employer can change in our interview process to help suss out people that if they're not purely unicorns, at least exhibit some of these traits and have the most potential? Yeah, I know. That's a good question. I think that what I'm learning is, you know, the unicorns would be great to find somebody with all of those habits. But what's super important when you're interviewing is to say, OK, what of these habits is super important for this particular job? And then let's tailor the interview around that.

23:26For instance, back to the sales and marketing example, if you're interviewing for a head of sales or a head of marketing, responsiveness is super important. If you're interviewing for a chief compliance officer, not so much. Even really a bookkeeper, they need to respond, but like super fast responsiveness, no. Thoroughness would be more the strength there. So when you're interviewing for sales and marketing, you're going to look and see, where do they score? We actually built a software tool people can take. It's called the Vander index that shows how they measure up in their unicorn skills against unicorns, against the rest of the world.

24:05I would be looking if I'm hiring a sales and marketing person, an EVP of sales or marketing, for someone that's extraordinarily fast, and I would build my interview process around that. I might send them a text when they're not interviewing, see how quickly they respond. I might change the interview location a couple hours before the interview, see how quickly they are able to make the shift and the adjustment, which tests not only speed, but agility, another of the 12 habits, and one that is exceedingly common among the growth-oriented jobs in a company like sales and marketing. So I think part of the key is not just looking for the perfect employee, but thinking what of these habits is super important for this particular job, and how do I make the interview focus on that?

24:51And if I could give one little hack to business owners out there right now. It took me a long time to realize the interview is not just the 90 minutes that say interview on your calendar. Your interview starts well before how did the email interchange go? It starts with text interchanges and you can insert those at any point without it being in the 90 minutes. It goes to punctuality. I mean, so think about your interview more holistically than just the hour or 90 minutes you have and start to see how people behave, test for the habits that best line up with your particular hire that you're making.

25:28And I think it'll lead to a better outcome. William, I want to thank you again for your time today. We really enjoyed having you here. Oh, it's been great to be with you. And I hope I can come back. I hope it's been helpful having been a small business owner and still am. I hope that people were able to get something out of this. And I would say, if you're a business owner, I didn't learn much in school. I went to Wake Forest undergrad, Princeton grad, and I learned nothing about how to run a meeting, how to evaluate people, how to like the blocking and tackling of building and running a team.

25:58If you go to our website, Vanderbloomen.com, you can spell it however you want in Google. You will find it. That's how messed up my name is. Go to Vanderbloomen.com. I'm not kidding. That's why we named the company what we did. You'll find about 4 ,500 free resources there. Take them, use them. Hope it helps you lead your team better. If you see something we should be writing about it, please let me know. I want to keep learning. And if you're looking for information about the book, you can find it on that website. The easier way to get to information about the book is to go to theunicornbook.com.