How do I convince a top candidate to choose my team when they have other offers?

I was competing for a sales leader named Paul. Highly compensated, heavily recruited, and we were not his first pick. Every hiring manager in that position says the same thing in the interview: “I invest in my people. I will coach you. I will develop you.” Paul had heard it before. Every A player has. The claim costs nothing to make, so A players discount it to zero.

So I asked Paul for his references, and then I gave him four of mine: four people who had worked for me, so he could check my claim the way I was checking his. He called them. All four told him I was the best leader they had ever worked for. That is what got him over the hump.

Understand why it worked. The reverse references only held up because the coaching and development behind them were real. Attracting Paul was funded by years of retaining and coaching people. Each part of the talent system pays into the others, and you can’t fake one of them for long.

What’s the most important skill to build if I want to be a CEO someday?

Talent. Study the best CEOs and that is what they share, ahead of financial acumen and ahead of strategy. And talent is not one skill. It’s six, and almost nobody is strong at all of them:

1. Identify. The job description is table stakes. Know which soft skills the seat requires, how to interview for them, and what disqualifies someone no matter how good the résumé looks.
2. Attract. A players always have a job and always have a choice. You are selling them. Be hyper-present and hyper-responsive from the first minute of the process.
3. Retain. Retention runs on praise, not acknowledgement, and on opportunities instead of boxing people into what they’re already good at. Using someone and developing someone are different acts, and your best people know which one you’re doing.
4. Coach. One dedicated hour, once a month, per person. Not a one-on-one and not a status meeting. If it isn’t a protected block on the calendar, you’re checking in.
5. Develop. Deliberate stretch: the assignment slightly beyond reach, the exposure to a room they’ve never been in, planned ahead and reviewed on a cadence.
6. Upgrade. A standing process for assessing fit: right seat, right time, right values, right contribution.

Only about one percent of people leaders are world class across all six, and the reason is time, not ability. Leaders spend hours mastering financial analysis or the newest AI tool and almost nothing studying the art and science of talent, which outleverages all of it.

Can I raise the bar on my team without losing my best people?

Yes, and the two numbers belong together. As SVP of Sales & Marketing and Managing Director at DigitalGlobe, a publicly traded company, I led a team that grew revenue from $320M to $703M in four years, about 22% a year. I upgraded 51% of a 120-plus person team, unwanted attrition stayed under 3% throughout, and a formal coaching program moved engagement from 44% to 97%.

Anyone can churn half a team and call it raising the bar. Anyone can keep attrition low by tolerating mediocrity. Doing both at once means every exit was deliberate and almost no one I wanted to keep walked out the door.

How do I stop making bad hires?

Write your rules down. Every hire, every mishire, every upgrade and every coaching conversation goes into a playbook: what worked, what failed, and what rule it produced, refined over years. If you can’t write your talent playbook down, you don’t have one. What you have are instincts, and instincts don’t scale to 120 people. Start with your last mishire. What did you document from it, or did you just move on?

My top performer is damaging the culture. Do I let them go?

If it’s a values violation, yes. In my first 90 days at DigitalGlobe I let go my number one performer, a regional VP with too many dead bodies in the rearview mirror. Values violations do not get a pass for performance. The team watches what you do with that person, and that decision set the culture for the rest of my tenure. The Talent Optimization Framework shows how to score it so the decision isn’t a gut call.