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LEADERSHIP | Unveiling Top Leadership Habits with William Vanderbloemen, Author of 'Be the Unicorn.
Discover the leadership secrets that can transform your career as we chat with William Vanderbloemen, CEO and leadership sage, who reveals the twelve habits that set extraordinary leaders apart. Vanderbloemen's insights, drawn from his book "Be the Unicorn," are based on 30,000 interviews by his firm, pinpointing the power of authenticity and the simple, yet profound, art of human interaction. Prepare to be enlightened by the surprising teachability of skills that are redefining success in the post-pandemic business world, where being genuine and responsive are not just preferred but essential.
In our discussion with William, we also delve into the game-changing impact that the right hires have on an organization's trajectory. Whether it's tailoring interview processes to uncover those rare 'unicorn' candidates or utilizing innovative tools to evaluate key traits, this episode is packed with actionable strategies. From the boardroom to your personal career growth, the wisdom shared here holds the key to unlocking a higher level of leadership and influence. Join us, and you might just find the blueprint to elevate your team and your own professional path to the realm of the unicorns.
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About Business Owners Radio:
Business Owners Radio is a podcast that brings you insights, inspiration, and actionable advice from successful entrepreneurs and business experts. Hosted by Shye Gilad and Craig Moen, our show aims to help you grow your business and achieve your goals. Join us every week for new episodes packed with valuable tips and resources.
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And now taking care of business, your hosts Craig Moen and Shye Gilad.
Craig Moen:Welcome to Business Owner's Radio, episode 238. Our guest today is William Vanderbloemen, CEO and founder of Vanderbloemen Research 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 Vanderboemen Research Group has regularly retained to identify the best talent for teams, manage the session planning and consult on all issues regarding teams. This year, Vanderbloemen will complete their 3,000th executive search. Good morning, William. Welcome to Business Owner's Radio.
William Vanderbloemen:Hey, great to be with you. I appreciate you having me on.
Craig Moen:Oh, 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. 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 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.
William Vanderbloemen:Yeah, well, that is always the question, isn't it? Everybody thinks you're writing 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. But 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 is just it's not much fun.
William Vanderbloemen: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 and 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. It's kind of a 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.
William Vanderbloemen:And 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.
William Vanderbloemen: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. I even wondered if it was as simple as he was the quarterback and she was the head cheerleader. Nope, nope, nope.
William Vanderbloemen: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 got 12 habits and they're actually all teachable. They're all coachable. I mean, if you wanted 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'd be fantastic. I would practice more than anybody on the planet if it meant I could win. But 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, applyable. 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.
Craig Moen: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. 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?
William Vanderbloemen: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.
William Vanderbloemen: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.
William Vanderbloemen:You say, well, william, the pandemic's over. So what you 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.
Craig Moen:I agree with you. That's really great that you're bringing that forward and I hadn't thought of it in that light. Very strong positive relationships are becoming more and more predominant in the decision making process. I hope that different businesses you might go with for your business or we're looking for subcontracting of resources for our own businesses those 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.
William Vanderbloemen: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 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. They'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.
William Vanderbloemen: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 this 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? They'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.
Shye Gilad: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.
William Vanderbloemen:Oh, that's well said, that's very well said.
Shye Gilad: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. So 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 in 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?
William Vanderbloemen: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. It's not a great term.
Shye Gilad:Oh, it's okay, I wasn't going to put it on you to be figured out.
William Vanderbloemen: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 a 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? And all of them said in some degree or another, and we finally put it in one phrase and all agreed this was it.
William Vanderbloemen: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, its gold. And I think that smart people are going to pay attention to that now, because what's gonna 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. I'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.
William Vanderbloemen: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? Figure out how my software I've already paid for can take over the coding that I'm paying people through the nose for.
William Vanderbloemen: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. And 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 at the same time, it's almost irresistible. It's pretty special.
Shye Gilad:Yeah, I do want to dive into a few of these. You know, 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 to thrive in the decades to come? And so I think, you know, when I'm looking at this is 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?
William Vanderbloemen:You know, I think if you're a business owner, you have to do the 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. The 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.
William Vanderbloemen:I don't have to do as much leadership when I'm at home because we have lots of systems and my wife's amazing at running the household side of our house.
William Vanderbloemen: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.
William Vanderbloemen: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. Now I think it's almost more invoked 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, 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, and then we offer specific, concrete examples for upping your own authenticity.
Craig Moen: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. You know 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 guideers 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. One 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 the process?
William Vanderbloemen:Well, I think it's the first of the 12 habits. Each chapter is one of the 12 habits of these unicorns. So in B the unicorn, the first one. Why is the first one? First one, I'm not real sure, but it might be mis-titled is 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.
William Vanderbloemen:We found that humans are horrible at getting back to one another, just 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 gonna 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 is 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 kids Softball game and you're the coach. But the unicorns develop a system where everyone feels like I know they're gonna 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.
William Vanderbloemen: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 and I kept getting comments like, wow, you really got back to us. Wow, that's unusual. Happen. 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 that is 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, you know. Growing your agility that's a daily labor. Just get back to people. That's pretty simple. That's why it's first.
Craig Moen:And it's amazing how that causes so many businesses to not have business in the fact that they don't value that, they 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 there's stem-set time and and Business to business. We all are dependent on contractors, subcontractors and partners to move forward quickly and actually and Having this weight thing. I often tell my close friends and 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.
Craig Moen:So 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 gonna work with, we're gonna 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. You know the accumulation of all of them have this major impact, probably in your perceptions of the persons you're interviewing, going after Curious 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?
William Vanderbloemen: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 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 you know companies would be nowhere without the rank and file employees, the middle managers who drive the spine of the business. So 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.
William Vanderbloemen:In the NFL, if you hire a mediocre deep snapper who you know pretty good at his job and can get the ball to the place kicker and holder, that's fine.
William Vanderbloemen:You are bad, mediocre quarterback and it's really bad. I can tell you I've been a houston texans fan for 20 years Mead or 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 got a lot of friends who do search for the sort of mid management and lower and will do that for really large organizations, 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 him find the right people in the top positions. 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 gonna focus more on human to human skills than a line worker at a factory, so I think it's just more exacting and does tend to focus on the soft skills that are human to human interactions.
Shye Gilad:William, I'm curious about your process. I realize there's a lot of secret sauce in there for your firm. I 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 us out people that, if they're not purely unicorns, at least exhibit some of these traits and have the most potential.
William Vanderbloemen:Yeah, no, that's 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. What's super important when you're interviewing is say, okay, what of these habits is super important for this particular job, and then let's tailor the interview around that. For instance, back to the sales and marketing example If you're interviewing for a head of sales or head of marketing, responsiveness is super important. If you're interviewing for a chief compliance officer and not so much even really a bookkeeper and they need to respond but like super fast response is no. Thoroughness would be more the strength there. So when you're interviewing for sales and marketing, you're gonna look and see where they score. We actually built a software tool people can take. It's called the vendor index. That shows how they measure up in their unicorn skills against unicorns, against the rest of the world.
William Vanderbloemen:I would be looking, if I'm hiring sales and marketing person and 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 twelve 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?
William Vanderbloemen:And if I give one little hack Two business owners out there right now, it took me a long time to realize the interview is not just the ninety minutes that say interview on your calendar. Interview starts well before. How did the email interchange go? It starts with text interchanges and you can start those at any point without it being in the ninety minutes. It goes to punctuality, I mean. So Think about your interview more holistically than just the hour or ninety minutes you have and start to see how people behave. Test for the habits that best lineup with your particular hire that you're making, and I think it will lead to a better outcome.
Shye Gilad:William, I want to thank you again for your time today. We really enjoyed having you here.
William Vanderbloemen: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 your business owner, I didn't learn much in school. I went to wake forest undergrad, prince and 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.
William Vanderbloemen:If you go to our website, vanderblumen dot com, you can spell it how ever you want to google, you will find it. That's how messed up my name is. Go to the end of the dot com. I'm not kidding is why we name the company. What we did. You'll find about forty five hundred 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 the unicorn book dot com. Now, if you can't remember all that, just go to amazon and try typing Vanderbluen you'll. You'll get there. It's that messed up, the last name but Vanderbluen dot com, the unicorn book dot com. And thanks to both of you, shea and craig, for having me on today. Appreciate it.
Craig Moen:Our studio guest today has been William Vanderbluen, ceo and founder of the Vanderbluen search group and author of the new book be the unicorn Twelve data driven habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. You can learn more about William as well as find links to his book, website and resources all on our website at businessownersradiocom.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on business owners radio. We hope you enjoy today's show. As always, you can read more about each episode, along with links and offers, in the show notes on our website, businessownersradiocom. We want to hear your feedback. Please leave comments on this show or suggestions for upcoming episodes. Tell your fellow business owners about the show and, of course, you would love the stars and comments on itunes. Till next time, keep taking care of business.
