9 Book Recommendations for Hiring and Inspiring Great Behavior Analysts

Great leaders know how to hire and inspire great people. No one knows better than a behavior analyst how complicated people are and how important it is to create the right environment and stimuli for people to achieve their best.

Through my more than 20 years of experience leading people, I have learned about 3 specific areas that can make a difference.  First, it’s important to have good business practices in recruiting, hiring, and developing people.  Second, understanding the power of coaching and applying coaching best practices is key to unleashing the full potential of your people.  Third, building a strong team is essential to a successful organization and that depends on deep trust. In this blog post, I’d like to share a resource in each of those areas along with a further reading list.

How to Hire A-Players by Eric Herrenkohl

Key Takeaways:

• The Value of A Players. When you have the right person in the role who has all the knowledge, skills, and abilities required of the position as well as the right motivation, it is better for your customers as well as your organization.
• Leveraging People You Already Know. Building a network of high talent people is a long term effort that pays off.
• Reaching Out. You have to reach out to many potential candidates to find the ones who are a good fit.
• Basics of Online Recruiting. There are efficient and effective ways to use websites and online resources like social media to generate applications.
• Interviewing. A behavioral interview where you ask how someone has handled the types of situations critical for job performance are the best ways to identify qualified candidates.
• Keeping A Players. A players want to work with A players. To retain good people, it’s critical to create an environment where they thrive and are recognized and rewarded for their performance.

Why behavior analysts might find this of interest:

• Best practices in human resources management will enable you to stay focused on the clients and clinical practice.
• Assessing the job requirements, recruiting, hiring, and onboarding are an end to end process with the same continuous improvement opportunities as developing and executing client focused care plan.
• Herronkohl presents practical tips that make it.

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

Key Takeaways:

The 4 agreements are helpful lessons in personal development:

1. Be Impeccable in Your Word. Choose your words to have a positive impact on yourself and others and follow through on your words.
2. Don’t take Anything Personally. If people have a problem or an observation, it has more to do with the situation, the environment, and themselves than with you personally.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions. If you assume what my intent and motivation is, you will make an ASS out of U and ME.
4. Always Do your Best. Stay focused on your mission and use all of the resources at your disposal vs. focusing on distractions or drama.

Why behavior analysts might find this of interest:

The Four Agreements help separate the importance of positive behaviors and actions from the jumble of internal events that can confuse human interactions. They enable you to focus on your client and your work and avoid the noise of unhelpful opinions.

Additional Resources

Here are some more sources of great ideas to help with people management:

Practical Tools and Methods

• Traction by Gino Wickman, Entrepreneurial Operating System
• Discover the Entrepreneur Within by Verinder Syal

Coaching

• Change Your Questions Change Your Life by Marilee Adams
• The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
• Developing the Leader Within You by John Maxwell

Developing Team

• Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey

I’ll be sharing more on these concepts of people management and taking your questions on a webinar in May. Please join us!