I have a lot of scar tissue when it comes to hiring.
Enough to know that some frameworks earn their place for a reason, and enough to know that real life tends to expose the parts they do not fully cover on their own.
Over the years, I have worked in growth-stage businesses and startups where hiring rarely felt clean. Roles changed while you were filling them. Expectations moved faster than job descriptions. Budgets lagged behind the talent you really needed. And in those seasons, you were not just hiring for a tidy role on paper. You were often hiring for ambiguity, urgency, adaptability, and a willingness to run hard without much structure.
That environment teaches you a lot, sometimes the hard way.
Patrick Lencioni's The Ideal Team Player has always resonated with me because it gets at the kind of person you want to build with. Humble, hungry, and smart is simple, but it holds up. I have seen firsthand how much those traits matter, especially in smaller companies where one person's posture can affect the whole team.
EOS has also proven incredibly useful to me for a different reason. Does this person get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it? That framework adds a level of role clarity that a lot of leaders desperately need. It helps separate whether someone is simply likable or impressive from whether they can actually thrive in the seat.
To me, those are two of the best hiring frameworks out there. One helps you understand the person. The other helps you understand the fit.
But if I am being honest, some of the hardest hiring lessons of my career came from the places in between.
I remember one hire at a tech startup where we brought in an engineer who was a great fit. Great guy. Great cultural fit. Talented. This was during the period when engineering salaries were skyrocketing and remote work was pulling Midwest talent toward the coasts almost overnight. Someone essentially doubled his salary overnight, and there was nothing we could do. I do not look back on that and think we got the framework wrong. In some ways, we got a lot of it right. But it reminded me that compensation is not some side conversation in hiring. It is part of whether a person can stay, whether they feel valued, and whether the business can realistically hold onto great people in a changing market.
I have also had the opposite experience. I hired someone who looked strong on paper, but over time it became clear they did not really have the hunger or the "get it" factor the role required. That was a hard lesson because you want experience on paper to mean more than it sometimes does. Eventually I had to let them go. It was not easy, but my team respected me for making the call. That experience gave me even more appreciation for both Lencioni and EOS, because both frameworks were trying to protect against exactly that kind of mistake.
Then there was another hire where the issue was not attitude. It was capability. He did not really have the technical chops the role required. To his credit, he recognized it quickly. I still remember the moment of basically saying, "This is not working, is it?" and finding an amicable way to part ways. What stayed with me from that experience was not just that he was wrong for the seat. It was that I had not set expectations clearly enough in the hiring process. That one sits with me because it was not only a hiring miss. It was also a leadership miss.
That is part of why I have become more careful about how I think about hiring. Not softer. More honest.
Because in startups especially, companies fall into a pattern of hiring someone and then quietly piling on work that sits well outside the original scope of the role. We tell ourselves that is just part of building. And sometimes it is. But sometimes it is also a sign that the role was never fully honest to begin with.
I have been guilty of this in my own way. For a period of time, my mindset was basically this: everyone has their own lane, and I need you to come in, take very little direction, and run as fast as you possibly can. In a growth-stage business, that can sound reasonable, even necessary. But for some people, especially those who need clarity, coaching, or context to really excel, that posture is not leadership. It is chaos. Looking back, some of what I called high standards was really a reflection of poor stewardship on my part. I was not always casting enough vision. I was not always giving enough direction. I was asking people to thrive in ambiguity when some of that ambiguity should have been mine to resolve.
That is why I think two questions are too often overlooked in hiring, even when you are using great frameworks.
First, is this person being compensated fairly for what they are actually being asked to carry?
Second, will this person actually be stewarded well once they get here?
I do not mean those as soft questions. I mean them as deeply practical ones.
Compensation is not just about fairness in some abstract HR sense. It communicates value. It tells someone whether the company understands the burden of the role or is hoping to get more than it is willing to recognize. It shapes whether a person feels respected, not just recruited.
Stewardship matters just as much. A company can make a strong hire and still fail them with poor onboarding, fuzzy expectations, lack of feedback, inconsistent leadership, or a role that keeps changing without support. Sometimes we blame the hire when the truth is the person was never given a fair chance to succeed.
I have seen the other side of that too.
I was once acquired into a business where someone under me was on the verge of quitting. He was talented, bright, and clearly not feeling valued. I remember pleading with him, saying, in effect, "Give me a chance. Give me a chance to be your boss. Give me a chance to right the ship here." I could see how much potential he had, and I did not want the business to lose him because of poor leadership or a lack of belief. Over time, he changed dramatically. He went from grumpy, discouraged, and checked out to becoming one of the best and brightest people around me. He always had the talent. What changed was that he felt seen, valued, and led.
That experience stayed with me.
It reminded me that hiring is not just about identifying talent. It is about what happens after the offer letter too. Sometimes the difference between someone leaving and someone flourishing is not who they are. It is whether they are being stewarded in a way that brings their best out.
So when I think about hiring now, I do not want to diminish The Ideal Team Player or EOS at all. If anything, I respect them more because they have helped me avoid mistakes and understand others more clearly. I think both frameworks are excellent. I think they deserve distinct credit. Lencioni gives us a lens for the kind of teammate we want to multiply. EOS gives us a lens for whether someone can actually win in the seat.
What I have learned from scar tissue, though, is that real hiring requires us to hold two more questions with equal seriousness.
Are we compensating this person fairly for what we are asking?
And are we prepared to steward them well once they arrive?
To me, that is the full picture.
Not just humble, hungry, and smart.
Not just get it, want it, and capacity.
But also: will they feel valued, and will they be led well?
That does not make hiring easier. In growth-stage businesses, I am not sure it ever gets easy. The pace is too fast, the resources are too thin, and the roles are too dynamic for perfection. We do not do it all perfectly. I certainly have not.
But maybe that is the point.
The goal is not to pretend hiring can be reduced to one perfect scorecard. The goal is to ask ourselves better, more honest questions before bringing someone into something important.
What kind of person is this?
Can they really thrive in this role?
Will they feel valued by how we compensate them?
And are we ready to steward them the way they deserve?
The best hires happen when all of those are true.
And the longer I lead, the more I think hiring is not just a test of the candidate.
It is a test of the company's honesty too.