I was talking with a client recently about how his team hires. One of his hiring managers had fallen in love with a single label. If a candidate had it, they were in. Values matched, box checked, offer made. The problem was that a lot of those hires weren't performing. They had the label. They didn't have the behaviors the job needed. That conversation took me straight back to my early days in leadership, because I did the exact same thing. My boss's boss hired D1 athletes, so I hired D1 athletes. It didn't matter if they played four years or one. If "Division 1" was on the resume, I was sold. Being a high school football coach, I also understand what today's Division One athlete has to go through. Over time a pattern showed up. The people who played one season and walked away often weren't the hires I expected. That doesn't mean a one-year athlete is a bad hire. Injuries happen. Life happens. Some people leave for very good reasons. But that wasn't my real mistake. My real mistake was that I stopped asking questions. The label answered them for me. Why did you leave? What happened? What did you do next? I never asked, because I'd already decided. I still respect anyone who commits to college athletics. It is a full-time job on top of a full course load, and that says something about a person. Now I just ask a different set of questions, because the label tells me where someone has been. It doesn't tell me how they behave when things get hard. Labels feel like shortcuts. Most of the time they are blind spots. So here's my question for you: what label do you lean on when you hire? A school, a past employer, a background you trust? Drop it in the comments. I'll go first: mine was D1.

Agree or disagree?

Gallup says only 12% of employees are happy with their company's onboarding. SHRM says 50% of turnover is happening within 18 months.

2027 is right around the corner. Do you want a pay raise, a promotion, to be seen by your peers as a great leader? Whatever your motivation is, you need to choose one area to get better. What's it going to be? Below are some examples: • Stop rescuing. Pick one recurring decision your team keeps bringing you and hand it back with "what do you recommend?" instead of the answer. • Fix how bad news reaches you. Notice where it's traveling sideways instead of up to you, and change what happens the next time someone brings you a risk early. • Close the conflict you've been avoiding. Have the conversation. Get to an actual decision, not another "let's circle back." • Change your first move in meetings. Ask for dissent before you state your view, for the rest of Q4. • Repair one relationship where trust has quietly eroded. Own your part specifically, not generally. • Kill one initiative. A vision without a "stop doing" list is a wish list. • Give the feedback you've been avoiding because nice felt easier. Nice protects your comfort. Kind builds their trust. Drop your one thing below. Not five. One.

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding. Only in expressing his own opinion. Could you be listening more today? Like I tell my kids and players I coach. “Two ears one mouth.”