Scott Drake, Founder and Trainer at JumpCoach
After seeing several high-performing teams fall apart due to bad hiring decisions, Consultant and Trainer Scott Drake set out to learn what makes teams tick. He embarked on a five-year research project which led to innovations that transformed his approach to interviewing, hiring, and leading teams.
Today, Scott helps leaders improve hiring outcomes. He is the Founder at JumpCoach, a social enterprise that helps leaders assemble high-impact teams, and grow the leaders to guide them.
Previously, Scott was Vice President of Technology for medical education disrupter ScholarRx, and his 25-year career includes stops at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., and at start-ups and scale-ups from coast-to-coast.
Connect with Scott on LinkedIn.
What You’ll Learn In This Episode
- How can a leader improve hiring decisions
- How can a leader conduct better interviews
- How can a leader get teammates involved in interviews
- How can an interviewer inspire a candidate to be more authentic
- How can the interview process impact diversity, equity, and inclusion
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com To learn more. Now here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Scott Drake with jumpcoach. Welcome, Scott.
Scott Drake: [00:00:42] Hey, thanks, Lee. Appreciate you having me on.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Jump Coach. How you certain folks.
Scott Drake: [00:00:49] Yeah, so Jump Coach is primarily a leadership accelerator. We work a lot with emerging leaders and newer leaders and leadership teams who just want to work better together. So, you know, my backstory is when I came up through the ranks, it took me kind of a long time to to really become an effective leader. And as I became a leader of leaders, I began to see the next generation having the same struggle. So I thought there’s got to be a faster way to do this. So so that’s where I jump coach came to be. And then the other thing we get into and spend a lot of our time with now is how do we also help those those leaders hire better, especially for knowledge workers and in tech world, which is where I come out of is how do you how do you improve hiring decisions? How do you interview better? How do you do those things? So so those are the two areas that we really focus a lot on, which is on how do you hire better and then how do you just grow leaders in general to lead those teams that you’ve built?
Lee Kantor: [00:01:36] Sure, I’d like to get to the hiring part, but I’d also like to delve in a little bit about the emerging leaders, just kind of the mindset shift that has to occur. Are you of the belief that kind of everybody has a leader inside them and they just need to be nurtured and taught and kind of encouraged? Or is it are some people kind of just natural leaders? And then we’re kind of stuck with those people and hope you get one?
Scott Drake: [00:01:59] Yeah. So I think the data shows that about 10 percent of people are natural leaders and that about 10 percent of people lack the ability to develop the emotional intelligence to become a leader. But about 80 percent of us, and I’m definitely in that 80 percent we can become great leaders. We truly can become great leaders, but we’re not the naturals right. We have to be nurtured and and led around a little bit to just kind of make that mindset, the mindset shift that you kind of alluded to, which is really why we run an accelerator program more than a training program or a workshop is that are the first piece. The biggest piece of that accelerator program is to help people learn to start thinking like leaders instead of like experts, right? They rewarded their whole life for being the expert. Now you’ve got to stop that right. You’re rewarded for something different now. And it’s and it’s a really hard transition to make for a lot of people, but 80 percent of people can make it. It’s definitely doable.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:50] And then at the crux of that, it sounds like, is the fact that you don’t have to be the expert anymore. You just have to get the most out of your people. And that doesn’t require you of knowing everything they know. And that might some people might feel like they’re kind of, you know that fake it till you make it or I’m an imposter because I really don’t know more like, how am I this young person now leading these, you know, kind of older people, these seasoned veterans, and I’m now in charge, like, how do you know, who am I to tell them how to do anything like? I think the mindset is just really at the heart of this. If you can’t kind of reframe that your role, it’s going to be very difficult for you.
Scott Drake: [00:03:29] Yeah, I mean, on my last team again, I come out of the tech world. On my last team, I had architects, engineers, data scientists. The technology has just grown so much and change so much that there is no way a single person can be good at any of this right. But I have to lead these people. So leadership is really about about helping people solve problems and get unstuck using their own brains and their own skills and their own thinking, right? Your process and your skill and what you’re bringing to the table is your ability to work through others to get things done right. It’s no longer your own ability to do those things. And a lot of us, when we come into leadership, we have those false beliefs of the best or the most senior person gets promoted. And that’s that’s all it means to be a leader is that you’re the most senior or you’re the best. But that’s really not what leadership it is. And that is that mindset shift that you have to really start thinking about your own status and value in a different way. And your job is to unlock the best, the best work of other people. And it is a different skill and it’s a different it’s a different job and some people like it. I was a great computer programmer. It took me a long time to really become a great leader and enjoy being a great leader. As much as I enjoyed being a good computer programmer, some people are never going to enjoy it as much as their work, so they should not really become leaders. That’s that’s the bigger thing. It’s like, you know, they can do it, but they may not enjoy it. So they may not they may not want to do it.
Lee Kantor: [00:04:52] And isn’t that what you find in a lot of organizations? They just choose the person that’s the best at some area and then they make them in charge, or they’re the leader now when they really aren’t suited or they’re not even interested in being the leader, they want to just be the best in their little kind of domain.
Scott Drake: [00:05:10] Yeah, everybody wants status gains. Everybody wants raises, right? Everybody wants new challenges, right? And unfortunately, in a lot of workplaces, the only way to get those status gains or to get more money or to get something slightly different to do is to go into a leadership type of a role or a management role that are a lot of people aren’t going to enjoy are not going to be well suited for. So a big challenge for companies and is is to say, how do we help people get those gains of status? How do we help them do more? You know, from their current seat or from a similar seat without having to necessarily make them people managers or ask them to become leaders? So yeah, it’s it’s it is. There’s a lot of reasons behind the great resignation, but I think part of it is that people get stagnant. They just want change and they want something different. And companies don’t have a way to do that. But if they had other ways to give those things to people, then I think people would be more inclined to stick around.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:07] And and it’s almost like kind of blowing up the org chart where the path isn’t that linear and you can get that status gain. You can get more money, you can get the things you want and just still stay in this expertize in this sweet spot where you are being the best you you can be. But it takes a rethinking from, you know, the upper management and upper leadership to really want to shake things up to that degree.
Scott Drake: [00:06:35] Yeah, it’s an organizational design. I mean, it is basically and it and it fits really well with knowledge work and in tech. Where I come out of it is to say that, you know, we stand up teams for six months to 18 months to two or three years, sometimes to solve specific problems. And then we stand that team down and we stand up other teams, right? So there’s all these opportunities for people where we need leadership, right? We need people that can lead those teams within without necessarily becoming managers. So it really it’s the it’s almost in alignment with some of the changes of the business as a whole that it is much more project work versus, you know, routine, you know, manufacturing work, distribution work, work that follows a set process is is being done more and more by machines and the computers. And then that irregular work, that project work is what humans are doing more of. So that’s why, again, I think more people are falling into that realm of doing that irregular work, and the organization structure has to change with it and the leadership within that has to change with it. So I think it’s all kind of. Coming together and tied together,
Lee Kantor: [00:07:44] So it’s how much of it is kind of the senior leaders being comfortable with this level of chaos and this having things not as maybe well defined and designed as, you know, their lawyer or accountant wants them to have it
Scott Drake: [00:08:01] Or their board right? Right. It’s the board and the investors demand efficient, predictable return on investment. And so so we’ve trained a whole generation or three of MBA students. That efficiency is God, and efficiency is what you strive for and it’s efficient return on capital. Right. But efficiency is again being now done mostly by machines and computers, and the work of human beings is irregular. It’s organic. It requires a different approach to management. You can’t manage creative work through the lens of efficiency, and that’s where so many upper leaders are struggling that I see them struggle with, you know, just like the work from home was a great example. Like, if my people are at home and I can’t see them, how do I know that they’re working? And it’s like, Well, why do you feel the need to control them to that level? They’re not on a manufacturing floor, punching rivets, right? They are doing creative work. And I do my most creative work at six o’clock in the morning, so you should be really happy that I’m at home working at six o’clock in the morning instead of a nine to five job. You can’t see me, but I am doing my best work for you right now, right? So so that’s the mindset that that the senior executives are going to have to learn and in our MBA programs and all those things are going to have to come along with it because they are going to start failing and they’re going to stop delivering results in a way that even makes the investors happy. Right. So so yeah, it’s a big mindset shift that is going to have to happen at that upper level. That’s different than just the basic leadership mindset level mindset shift.
Lee Kantor: [00:09:38] Now how are you? What are the conversations look like when you’re talking to the senior leaders about how you can help them with hiring and helping them? You know, you do interviews better and all these things that are kind of symptomatic of these larger structural challenges.
Scott Drake: [00:09:56] Yeah, so so leaders often approach me with with with the different different types of problems. Number one, they may be growing a team like I tend to work with a lot of companies that are in that fast growth mode. Hey, we’ve got to hire 10 or 20 engineers to to to take on this new project or the new work. And we need to we need number one where we’re struggling a little bit to find them. But then, you know, I find some great candidates and I send them over to the team and the team interviews them and they hate them. All right. Why right? We don’t have there’s no alignment or structure between what I think we need and with a team thinks we need. So it’s like, how do we get everybody on the same page, right? How do we improve our decisions? Like how do we actually improve our hiring decisions so that we can? We know that we’re making good decisions? And in how do we how do we lower our false or false negatives like we’re rejecting too many people we feel like so we can’t get everyone in the same team, so they often will come and say, How do we get everyone on the same team? How do we interview better in a fairer way that’s less biased? And then how do we really look at our hiring outcomes over time? So those are the bigger things that are kind of in their head when they when they approach approached me about working with them on hiring.
Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] So let’s talk a little bit about. How in order to hire a more kind of representative, maybe well rounded cast of characters. What are some of the mistakes that people have historically been making? So it always seems like the same type of person gets the same type of job where now we’re trying to at least be mindful of, Hey, let’s cast a wider net, and let’s invite some folks that maybe not necessarily have been invited to this party before. How do you kind of implement something like that to prevent that so that all the people don’t always look the same in the roles that they’ve historically had?
Scott Drake: [00:11:53] Yeah. So I think part of it is I’m a big fan of of a guy named Dr. David Rock, who’s a neuroscientist who neuro leadership institute as his organization. And one of the things that he that he found in his studies is that there are things that cause people to to to be happy and feel good about their workplace. And there’s things that cause them stress that’s kind of the fight or flight. There’s things that trigger that, that fight or flight. And one of those is is relatedness. There’s there’s five, but one of them is relatedness that that things people, environments that are different than we are. They’re different than what we’re used to. They actually trigger in our brain that emotional fight or flight response. Right. So and it happens across anything where there’s differences between people. So it could be I was talking to a guy who was the head of one of the one of the big giant international conglomerate that everybody would know. It’s it’s a huge company right there, head of talent acquisition worldwide. And he said one of the biggest problems he has is that people have that with their schools. Like, you know, if I graduated from this school, I really want to hire people for my school so it can be as simple as simple as a school, but it can also be, you know, gender.
Scott Drake: [00:13:05] It can be a race ethnicity, those types of things that when things are different than we are, it actually emotionally triggers a response in us that is fight or flight. We all have it right. We cannot turn that off. It is just part of who we are as human beings. That’s what neuroscience proves. What we have to do as leaders is that we have to recognize that it’s why emotional intelligence is so important. But that’s also what we have to train anybody who’s in the hiring process to recognize that your brain, your your emotional brain is going to have this response. The things that are different than you. And it’s OK, right? That’s you’re wired to do that. But your intellectual brain can take over and say that I’m not going to act on this. So no one is just helping people understand that things that are different than them are going to cause them some stress, and the number two is to really be open to. I see this a lot in the tech world that that again, our ego is attached to our status as being great at our skill or our craft or whatever that is.
Scott Drake: [00:14:03] It can be accounting, it could be science, it could be whatever and that we want to feel like the expert and we want to feel like we are experts want to feel like we have to have experts to do this job, even though the job might not really require that. So it’s really being honest about what are the requirements of the role. Who’s going to enjoy that? And then there is not always the straight linear path to feed people into those types of roles. Sometimes there are alternatives. And and that’s what a lot of companies and hiring managers are also beginning to look for. As I say, how do we what are some of those alternative tracks, the guy I was talking to from the big conglomerate? That’s one of his big focus is going forward is how do we tap into some alternative tracks to funnel people into roles where historically it’s been college graduates, all these other kinds of things. So I think there’s a couple of different pieces to that, and that’s kind of a long, long, winding answer. But that’s that’s those are the areas that I think people need to explore in that in that area.
Lee Kantor: [00:14:55] Now, for some folks, it isn’t just the fact that like, I’m going to hire someone when you’re going to say I’m only hiring one person, just the fact that that person is so precious, you’re afraid to take a risk that you might take if you were just change the thinking to say, OK, we’re going to hire five people to do this type of a role, or 10 people where, you know, I can kind of. Player in the edges a little bit, and I can go into look in places that I normally wouldn’t have looked because I might uncover something there and it would be OK. But if I’m I’m limiting my hire to just one or a couple, then I feel like I can’t make a mistake. So I’m going with, like you said, this kind of risk averse. Oh, well, I went to this school, so I’m going to get somebody. I know this school turns out those people, so that’s where I’m going to look. And then I’ve eliminated, you know, ninety nine point nine percent of the population by doing that.
Scott Drake: [00:15:51] Yeah. So I think what I typically what I try to get people to do is to think holistically about the position and think about not what I need people to do necessarily, but but as much who’s going to enjoy it, right? If you can hire me to do the things that I’m an expert in and I’m going to be bored and I’m going to be miserable in that job, and yes, I can do it, but I’m not going to be happy and you’re going to wish you had hired me, right? But you can go hire somebody who’s an up and comer who can grow into that role and who can learn and is going to find it really exciting is going to love showing up every day, right? And they’re going to be a much better employee than somebody who may have done exactly what you need to do. So it’s really about about stopping and assessing your role. And if you’re just hiring for one or two positions, that’s fine. But stop and assess it in this four factors. There’s there’s what are the skills or the aptitude? But then it’s also, you know, obviously our extrinsic motivators like paying Park, who’s going to accept these? What’s our fit? What’s our culture? What are our values? How do we behave? Who’s going to be happy behaving in the ways that we need our code of conduct adhered to? And then who’s actually going to enjoy it, right? Who’s going to find us fun? Who’s going to find this intrinsically motivated? And the intrinsically motivating is probably the most important, but it’s also the one that people find the hardest to interview for. But it’s really if you can find somebody who’s excited to show up and they have the aptitude to do the work, then often they are going to outperform someone who’s been doing that exact role for the last five years because that person is going to be bored. So, so it’s really you’ve got to think holistically, right? And that’s what we coach people to do is to think beyond skills, beyond experience, think holistically about the whole role and who’s going to be happy.
Lee Kantor: [00:17:29] Now, when you’re doing an interview, and let’s say I buy into what you’re saying that that you know that element of it this way, if it’s fun for them, they’re going to be a better fit for me. Is there are some clues that a person really enjoys it and they’re just not, you know, telling me they enjoy it. Is there some things I can look for as an interviewer to kind of glean that information? Am I looking at their hobbies or the, you know, how they’re behaving when they’re off the clock? Like, what are some clues that they really, really do enjoy and they’re just not telling me they do?
Scott Drake: [00:18:01] Yeah. So I always start with with the job descriptions I put publicly are very specific to the written not in a what I need, but there I know what you get to do. Right? It’s not. I need. I need, I need. And these are the demands I’m going to put on you. They are. You get to do X and you get to do Y, and you get to solve this problem and you get to work with these people and you get to help these customers. Right. So I am selling the the the intrinsic motivators. And if they haven’t read a job description, then that’s what I spend. The first five minutes of the interview saying is these are all the things you get to do, right? They’re not the demands I’m putting on, right? And then on what I want to know is why is that interesting, right? Why is that interesting to you? What’s interesting about that? What’s interesting about this position beyond pay perks, remote those extrinsic motivators that any company can offer? I’m hoping to find something in their response that says, you know, Scott, my last job was a medical education. My wife is a doctor.
Scott Drake: [00:18:56] I love the idea of I come from a family of doctors. I love the idea of building software and education experiences for medical students, right? So I’m looking for something in their background that says I have some interest in this beyond just the pay and perks. So, yeah, the first interview that’s really all I’m trying to do is I’m trying to I’m not trying to say no to this person. I’m trying to say, what would I say yes to about this person? Where do they fit? Where do they belong? Where are they going to be happy? That’s my whole first interview is just trying to answer that question. And then if that aligns with my role, great. And if it doesn’t, maybe it aligns with the role I’ll have in 60 days. Or you know what? I know somebody else who runs a business. I think this person will be grateful, right, to help them in that in their particular problems. Yeah, it’s really about being authentic, about about what you have to offer and then seeing who’s going to respond to that and who’s going to be excited about it
Lee Kantor: [00:19:47] And really try to understand the why that candidate is getting up in the morning and what excites them and seeing if it’s a fit or not.
Scott Drake: [00:19:54] Yeah. So so the five questions I sort to answer in a screening interviewer is why are you interested in this position, right? What are your career goals? Just kind of, where are you in your career? I’m just trying to get a feel for where are you in your career? Where do you where are you trying to go? What are you trying to do? What’s what’s interesting? And then I try to boil it down to What are you really good at professionally, right? What do you hope to get to do when you get up in the morning? What do you like to do? What do you what do you want to go charge headfirst into, right? And then with most roles, it’s there’s things people like to do and things they don’t. So the second question is, what are you not good at professionally like, what do you really hope that a teammate will do, like if you’re working on a team? And there’s these six tasks and you’re going to gravitate toward four and you’re going to be perfectly happy when a teammate picks up these two because you just hate them. What are those things like? What are some of those things that you don’t enjoy professionally? And then as you look at that next year, what are the what are the three things that are going to make the next year great for you, like as you assess and you think about what next year would be great if X, Y and Z happened and most people don’t have a good answer for that when we start the conversation.
Scott Drake: [00:20:53] But my goal over a 30 minute conversation or a 60 minute conversation is to really help them stop and think about what, what, where have I been happy in the past? What have I been happy working on? What do I think’s going to make me happy going forward? What am I really need in my next job in the next year? Like what’s really important to me? And if I can get them to settle that, to kind of settle that in their own mind, then I can say, is there a match? Is there a match here? But the funny thing is, the feedback I get from that interview is how much people enjoy it because they walk out of that interview. People love to talk about themselves, right? So it’s an opportunity for them to really, though stop and think about what it is they want and what they like and what they don’t like in a way that a lot of times they haven’t. And they often walk out of that interview really excited, even if it’s not about me, just that they feel like they’ve learned something about themselves. That’s the feedback I get often as I learn something about myself from this interview.
Lee Kantor: [00:21:45] Now, in your practice, are you working primarily with tech companies because that’s your background? Or is that just your background? Or is this kind of industry agnostic, the kind of work you’re doing?
Scott Drake: [00:21:57] It’s generally industry agnostic, but I do tend to a lot of the innovations and the things that I’ve done are very useful for knowledge workers and for professionals. It’s probably less, you know, if you’re you’re dealing with largely unskilled workers in routine situations, then a lot of the things I get into just aren’t applicable. They’re just not as interesting. But yeah, typically tech, world stem, world science, anything with with knowledge workers, professionals are the the areas where I tend to excel.
Lee Kantor: [00:22:28] Now, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what’s the website?
Scott Drake: [00:22:34] Yeah, jump coach dot com is the best place to go. That’s where you can get into all of our leadership training. There’s a contact thing on there. We haven’t put a whole lot up yet on hiring. That’s the stuff that we’re were slow rolling this out. We’re doing some workshops with companies and we’ve got some other stuff that we’re going to come out. So if you’re if you’re interested in talking more about hiring some of these kinds of things, just a contact link on the page. And as this interview’s out, over time, there’ll be some, some stuff that shows up on Chepkoech dot com about it as well.
Lee Kantor: [00:22:56] Good stuff. Well, Scott, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.
Scott Drake: [00:23:02] Lee, thanks so much. Appreciate having me on.
Lee Kantor: [00:23:03] All right, this Lee Kantor. We’ll see, y’all next time on Coach the Coach radio.
This transcript is machine transcribed by 
