All In: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams Business & Charities Edition

Why Most Teams Just Don't Care

There's busted. And then there's busted.

On paper, Elliott seemed like the one. We needed a solid computer tech and he seemed to have all the right credentials. He was proficient in the right hardware and software. He had years of experience doing the same thing we did. I didn't notice one single typo on his résumé, a clear demonstration of his attention to detail. And a bonus-he was fluent in Spanish!

His interview went well. He was articulate and likable. His suit fit and his tie complemented his shirt, which is a small miracle for a computer guy. Even though I had only met with three candidates at that point, I hired him on the spot. It wasn't that I had necessarily hit the jackpot with Elliott. I chose not to interview anyone else because he checked all our boxes-and I was already overwhelmed. Wasting time interviewing more folks would be costly and draining. I needed someone pronto, as in yesterday.

My business partner and I couldn't handle the workload anymore. We had started our company, Olmec Systems, to provide tech support to local businesses, and as we grew, we both kept doing the client work we'd always done. By the time we posted the job announcement for a tech, we were beyond exhausted. We felt paralyzed and helpless. Helpless to find the help we needed. Isn't that frustrating? When you need help the most, you have the least amount of time and energy to make it happen.

Those days, I dragged myself home from work, long after my kids went to bed, and then got up early to do it all over again. Every Monday I told myself, If I can just get past this week, I'll have the time to find and develop the right person. But it never happened.

We needed our clones, or as close to clones as we could get. Someone who had a pulse, could type at a keyboard and plug in a few wires. The other two candidates we interviewed were questionable on the pulse part. So a guy with the experience we were looking for, who wore a fitted suit and had a résumé on heavy-stock paper, was nothing short of a godsend.

On his first day on the job, I immediately sent Elliott out into the field to support our clients-with no substantial training. Clearing my throat here-when I say he received "no substantial training," I really mean he got none. Squat. Zilch-ola. No meeting. No "get to know you" chat. No there's the bathroom, there's your desk, feel free to walk around. When Elliott showed up on the morning of day one, I gave him the addresses of clients to visit, problems to fix, and pushed him out the door-literally.

We had clients who urgently needed services that day, and when Elliott turned back to ask, "What should I . . . ?" I put my hand on his shoulder as if to say, "You've got this," and gave him a gentle shove (aka, a hard-ish push) out the door. As he walked toward his car carrying the tech tool kit I gave him, I cried out after him, "Call me if you need me."

Yeah, sending him right out into the field was another hasty move, but I didn't have the time to train him. We needed him to pay for himself starting from day one. Plus, that's how I started my first job. Trial by fire! On-the-job learning! If it's on your résumé, you can do it.

Within hours, Elliott started calling with questions. "How do I do this?" and "How do I configure that?" and "Why won't this thing work with that thing?" And my favorite question (as in my least favorite of all time): "Hey, this client only speaks Spanish. How do I ask them where the bathroom is?" Didn't the résumé specify he was fluent in Span . . . ugh, forget it.

The person we hired to help us manage our client load couldn't handle anything on his own. Instead of freeing up our time, he put more of a burden on me and my partner. I couldn't do the tech work I needed to do when I was talking Elliott through his. But wasted time was the least of our problems. He quickly formed the infamous reverse "golden handcuffs."

As he became familiar with our clients and their systems, Elliott started to learn elements of their technology that only he could support. He set up computers his own way, not ours. I wasn't aware of how he configured certain technology and (sinfully) didn't know some of the passwords he set. Within a month, Elliott didn't feel that he had to stay with our company; I felt I needed him to stay.

Elliott had tied my hands behind my back and the handcuffs were locked. He had the golden key. I was at his whim. If one of our clients had a problem, I was required to have Elliott do the work. Talk about leverage. I couldn't fire Elliott, he could "fire" me, the leader, and leave me in the lurch trying to figure out how he supported our clients.

Even though he seemed incapable of doing much of the work and uninterested in taking direction from me, his boss, he had become indispensable. He knew stuff I didn't, so firing him would screw up client relationships and exhaust me further. I was frozen in frustration.

Then Elliott said, "We need to talk compensation. People at my level get paid double what I make. I feel I'm getting shortchanged, Mike. I don't feel good about that and suspect you don't either. I hope you will fix that for me before I'm needed to save a client from a network disaster." OMG. Seriously? Was my employee shaking me down?

I started to think, Maybe if I pay him more, he'll be more motivated. He'll listen to me. He'll do better. That moment introduced me to the weirdest employment vortex I have ever experienced. The exact guy I wanted to fire so badly was the exact guy I was trying to figure out how to pay more. Maybe if I took the few dollars I had been allocating as a salary for myself and gave it to Elliott, it would convince him to stay, and stay happy. (I made $17,000 in my third year of owning a company in 1998. In today's dollars that's negative $500.)

It wasn't so much that Elliott was shaking me down. I was shaking myself down. In the hopes of converting him from a bad employee to a good one, I wanted to pay a guy who sucked at his job more money. I held on to a not-working-out worker because I was terrified of the hiring process that clearly didn't work. The thought of the effort needed for training and retaining made it worse. And now I planned to forgo the few dollars I took home to pay an employee who had all the power.

Maybe I could work with him to improve his job performance.

Maybe I could come up with a way to motivate him to be more invested in our company's success.

Maybe unicorns would fly down from Mars and sprinkle him with magic "caring" glitter, so he'd suddenly start doting on our clients instead of on himself.

In mid-December, about three months into his employment, all my "maybes" were answered with a clear "F no." Elliott left a voicemail for me with some sad news. "My grandmother passed away yesterday, unexpectedly. My family and I are devastated. I have to go to Georgia for her funeral this Friday. I will be gone for a week."

Elliott seemed dismayed about losing his grandmother, and yet something seemed fishy. First, his voice sounded funny, as though he had cupped his hand over the receiver to block out surrounding party noise. And he left me the muffled message at 1 a.m. on a Saturday. And, and, I could hear the infectious beat of "Jump" by Kris Kross cranking in the background. Not the typical mournful music played when a loved one passes. We all grieve in our own way, but with wiggida wiggida wack hip-hop?

Despite my apprehension, I would never deny an employee time off to go to a funeral, so I left him a return message offering my condolences and gave him a week off-paid, of course. Then I immediately went to work covering our clients, with one-third of our staff out of commission.

That's when the Bahama Mama hit the fan.

About midweek, one of our clients left me a voicemail. "Oh my gosh. You're the best boss ever," he said. "I ran into Elliott in the Bahamas. It's so amazing that you gave him a week off to be at The Buzz 99.3 FM party."

Say what now?

Elliott had been kicking it at some sort of weeklong party on a Caribbean island while we picked up his slack-and paid for his vacation?

And wait. Just. One. Second. He might not be partying the blues away. Maaaaaybeeeee his grandma's death was a story. As in the made-up kind.

I started my business as an entrepreneur, but after hiring my first employee I was now a career sleuth in training. Since I wasn't 100 percent sure our client had the right guy, I sent a bouquet of lilies to Elliott's parents with a note that read "I'm so sorry about the passing of your mother. Elliott told me how much she meant to your family."

That's when everything blew up. Confused by the note, Elliott's parents called him, and us. Grandma was alive and well after all. (I'll bet you figured that out way before I did.) Turns out Elliott had won a contest on the radio for a party in the Bahamas that prior Saturday (I assume around 1 a.m., but what do I know?), and he'd used his meemaw as an excuse to get paid time off.

Elliott was busted. Not just regular busted. You-fake-killed-off-your-grandma type of busted.

His parents were furious (I hope). I was furious (for sure). And Elliott? He was out of a job. (Most definitely.)

If he had just come to me and said he won the tickets, I would have accommodated him. I would have said, "A weeklong party on an island, for free? Heck yeah! Go forth! Remember to hydrate." Instead, he defaulted to manipulation to get his way. Which I only later realized was his modus operandi.

The fallout after firing Elliott was tough. I had to explain to the clients he served why he had been let go, and then fix all the problems and inconsistencies he'd created. After four months, we were right back where we started-exhausted and doing all the work. Actually, it was worse. We lost trust with some of our clients. Elliott had left their systems in a lurch, and we didn't even have the @#$%@! passwords. We didn't hire an employee who was all in and now we had a handful of clients who were all gone.

According to Trakstar, "bad hires" cost companies thousands of dollars, but you didn't need anyone to tell you that. You might be surprised to learn that according to a Harris Interactive Poll, 41 percent of business owners said bad hires cost them more than $25,000. I hope that is a surprise to you. And I surely hope you are not thinking, "I wish it was only $25K." Beyond the recruitment and hiring expense, there's the cost of unproductive time, unhappy or lost clients, disruption to others. When an employee doesn't fit, it can undermine morale and the performance of the entire team. And the bossy boss, you, loses sleep as a bonus.

Long after I fired Elliott, I kept frothing about the locked accounts, the fake-dead grandma, all that stuff. I ranted to anyone who would listen to me. When I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror after a particularly animated diatribe, my face red and spittle at the corners of my mouth, I made a solemn pledge: No more bad hires.

The Employee Engagement Dartboard

Over time, I learned how to hire more patiently. And I found some good people who really cared. But I still struggled to keep all my employees engaged, and to build a team where everyone cared as much as I did.

Five years later, I sold my interest in Olmec in a private equity deal and went on to cofound a computer forensic investigation business. As I grew as a leader, I knew the essence of a successful company was an extraordinary team. I'm convinced you know the same. But knowing and doing are two different things. And as much as I wanted an unstoppable team packed with rock-star employees, I struggled.

I now consider my second company a Petri dish for team building. It was as if I was tossing darts at a "strategies for employee engagement" dartboard and trying whichever one my mini arrow hit. And when it didn't work as well as I hoped, or not at all, I picked up my darts and gave it another go. I tried paying more money and increasing benefits. I tried shorter workdays and flex time. Longer workdays with shorter workweeks. I tried creating a company culture and set of corporate values. I put motivational quotes on the walls. I tried team-building exercises and employee recognition. I tried rallying my troops around one big goal-and around defeating one common enemy. I even tried bringing in the cheesy foosball table.

Some of the strategies I tried "worked," but they were only temporary solutions. And even when I had one or two superstar employees, the rest of the team seemed disengaged. I wanted an entire team of performers. I wanted a team that cared as much as I did, and I started to believe it wasn't possible. After all, I'm an entrepreneur. I built the business. I am the shareholder. I reap the rewards when we win: the money goes to me, the accolades go to me, the ego is all mine. Who is going to care about the business as much as me?

It's Not You, It's Me

We were in the right place at the right time. Our forensics company became an industry authority, but the engine fueling that company-my team-was fragile. We had three rock-star employees and the other folks all seemed to fall a bit short here and there. Just when we started to fracture, we sold the company to Robert Half International. Unlike my last exit, this time I would stay on with the company for a year. I had no clue what was expected of me or what my role was. Simply that I was to do something.