The Pitfalls of Hiring Charming People

Is the charm­ing per­son you’re about to hire tru­ly capa­ble — or just capa­ble of charm­ing you?

Mer­ri­am-Web­ster defines ​“charm” as:

1. the chant­i­ng or recit­ing of a mag­ic spell: incantation
2. a trait that fas­ci­nates, allures, or delights. Com­pelling attractiveness.

Be very skep­ti­cal about hir­ing charm­ing people.

The most mis-hired per­son­al­i­ty style I’ve seen is that of the charm­ing person.

A great exam­ple is from a Cana­di­an CEO I worked with years ago who told me about a new exec­u­tive assis­tant he’d just hired. He said, ​“She was so impres­sive, I hired her on the spot.”

“No-o‑o!”

We mis­take charm for capability.

The best exec­u­tive assis­tants in the world are smart, tech­ni­cal, sys­tems-and-process­es peo­ple who keep oth­ers orga­nized. They are clever tech­ni­cians, not cheer­lead­ers. Although like­able, they are not like the typ­i­cal charm­ing sales­per­son that makes you want to hire them on the spot.

He hired a charm­ing cheer­leader with a won­der­ful per­son­al­i­ty – and not much more.

I’ve seen it again and again. Now when I meet some­one charm­ing, a flash­ing red light goes off in my brain. I know I’m going to like them, and that my judge­ment will be cloud­ed: I assume they’ll be good at their job.

In real­i­ty, they are sim­ply very good at get­ting peo­ple to like them. And that’s dangerous.

It’s dan­ger­ous because we fall in love with the per­son and don’t scru­ti­nize enough.

It’s dan­ger­ous because they are fun. They paint a beau­ti­ful sto­ry. They per­suade us to get excit­ed about new ideas and ini­tia­tives. Because we like and trust them, we give them a lot of respon­si­bil­i­ty. We let them run with very bad deci­sions. And often they make a very big mess because the idea was based on get­ting peo­ple excit­ed, rather than good strategy.

I’ve seen exec­u­tives do major dam­age in a com­pa­nies because of this.

Com­pa­nies need charm­ing peo­ple in the right role – and need to lever­age them on the team for their gifts. Oth­er­wise, we give them cred­it for things they don’t have — and set them up to fail.

Match the gifts with the require­ments (and few jobs do), and you’ve found the right person.

If the job is only about being charm­ing you’ve found the right per­son. But if you real­ly need strat­e­gy, detailed exe­cu­tion, analy­sis, then assume it’s not there — and search twice as hard to prove otherwise.

We make hir­ing mis­takes for oth­er reasons:

• When we talk to some­one from a well-known, rep­utable com­pa­ny, we get ​‘brand blind’. We assume they are very good at their job – and stop look­ing for proof of their capa­bil­i­ty. We for­get that every com­pa­ny has amaz­ing, mediocre and hor­ri­ble people.
• When a part­ner or col­league rec­om­mends some­one to us, we stop look­ing for proof of capability.
• When a per­son was edu­cat­ed at a very good school, we stop look­ing for proof of capability.

The things that get us to drop our fil­ters are the very rea­sons they should be increased – the rea­sons we should be more skeptical.

Learn more about lead­er­ship account­abil­i­ty and align­ment here.