Wake Up Eager Workforce 
Episode 139 Transcript

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In this episode of the Wake Up Eager Workforce Podcast, host Suzie Price takes leaders behind the scenes of one of the most costly challenges in business—bad hires—and reveals how to eliminate guesswork with The FIT Formula, a data-driven system for hiring, onboarding, and developing top talent.

Suzie begins by addressing a hard truth: most hiring failures don’t happen because of a lack of skill, but because of missing intangibles like poor self-management, weak communication, or misaligned motivation. With warmth and clarity, she introduces the Performance Dashboard—a simple yet powerful tool that helps leaders define the top three to five priorities that drive success in any role.

Through her signature car analogy, Suzie breaks down the five components of true fit: Roads Traveled (experience), How They Drive (behavior style), Under the Hood (personal skills), Gas in the Tank (motivators), and Where They Park (culture fit). She reminds listeners that hiring based on résumés alone is like buying a car just for its color—you need to know what powers it, how it performs, and where it belongs.

Suzie also shares real-world stories of mismatched hires—including a cautionary tale about a brilliant but misaligned physician—and how TriMetrix® tools reveal the hidden traits that predict true success. From there, she shows how the FIT Formula extends far beyond hiring, becoming a lifelong system for coaching, engagement, and leadership growth.

By the end of the episode, you’ll understand why clarity is kindness in leadership—and how the FIT Formula gives you confidence, structure, and heart in every hiring and development decision.

Whether you’re hiring your next team member or coaching your current stars, this episode will help you create alignment, reduce drama, and build a Wake Up Eager Workforce—one great hire at a time.

Read the full transcript of Episode 139: The FIT Formula — From Hiring Hopes to High-Performance Habits below and discover how to turn every hiring hope into a high-performance habit.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Suzie Price : if you've ever hired someone who seemed perfect on paper but didn't work out in real life you are not alone faulty hiring and retention challenges drain time money and energy and they're some of the biggest reasons leaders lose momentum and confidence if you're ready to stop guessing and start hiring and developing with clarity consistency and staying power this episode is for you stay tuned because today we're breaking it down a simple proven system that helps you hire right keep your best people reduce drama build trust and create a truly wake up eager workforce I can't wait to share it with you very important topic Michael hit it

[00:00:46] Intro : welcome to the wake up Eager Workforce podcast a show designed for leaders trainers and consultants who are responsible for employee selection and professional development each episode is packed full with insider tips best practices expert interviews and inspiration please welcome the host who is helping leaders trainers and consultants everywhere Suzie Price

[00:01:14] Suzie Price : welcome to the wake up eager Workforce podcast where we help leaders build a high commitment low drama wake up eager workforce and a life you can't wait to wake up to I'm your host Susie Price and it is my honor to share this episode to with you today it is sponsored by my company Priceless Professional Development clients hire us hire us at priceless for four main things the 1 we want to we help them make better hiring decisions 2 we help them become proficient and expert in using the triometrics assessment throughout the employee life cycle 3 we help leaders lead more effectively and 4 we help teams work better together

[00:01:52] Suzie Price : so if you find value in today's episode be sure to follow and like and share the wake up your workforce podcast with your team colleagues and on social media today's topic is the Fit Formula from hiring hopes to high performance habits and it's episode No. 1 39 we have complete show notes with a complete transcript so it's easy to skim or go back and find some information and you can always find our show notes and they're always full transcripts and the one for today's episode is at Priceless professional.comslashfit Formula priceless professional.comslash f I t formula all one word lowercase

[00:02:33] Suzie Price : so today we're going to talk about how clarity creates confidence and how you get that clarity through something called the Performance Dashboard and how it can change hiring chaos into something that will really help you drive success the second thing we're gonna do is remind you to hire the whole person and that's where the fit formula comes in it helps you look beyond the resume understand who someone really is figure out where they'll thrive and if they're gonna thrive in your role I'm gonna tell you exactly how to do that and then thirdly we wanna use data driven development so we're gonna show you how to use the tools that we talk about today to extend beyond hiring help you keep people in the business and they feel onboarding coaching and leadership growth throughout the employee life cycle

[00:03:20] Suzie Price : so today we're putting on our detective hats to solve one of the biggest mysteries in business why do hiring mistakes keep happening even when leaders have the best intentions have you ever wondered that

[00:03:34] Suzie Price : well it's called the silent killer of corporate profitability and it's faulty hiring and it's more expensive than you might think costing anywhere from one and a/2 to 8 times an employee's salary very very expensive when we make these hiring mistakes here's the kicker 90% of the time when someone is let go it's not because of their resume it's because of missing intangibles things we didn't ask about in the interview that were important on the job things like poor self management low accountability weak communication or misaligned motivation

[00:04:11] Suzie Price : leaders miss it during the interview because they talk too much they rely on gut instinct or get dazzled by the resume but as Einstein said the definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple today we're simplifying the hiring labyrinth with a framework I call the Fit Formula and that Fit Formula is powered by performance dashboards and superior performance attributes we call SPAs for short hiring templates

[00:04:43] Suzie Price : and as I talked about at the start this isn't just a pre hire tool it's a life cycle system from onboarding to coaching that helps you create a wake up eager workforce and I really really want that for you and I want it for every one of your employees think about what the world would be like if people were in the right jobs doing the right work how much more happy the business would be how much more successful the business would be how how much better lives people would live if they were waking up every day eager to come do the work it just is a win win all the way around so we're gonna map this journey and we're starting with the performance dashboard

[00:05:28] Suzie Price : start where clarity begins that is the performance dashboard think about your car's dashboard it doesn't overwhelm you with every mechanical detail it gives you the essentials speed fuel and direction the Position Dashboard works the same way it pinpoints the three to five priorities that define success in the role the things that must happen for superior performance we use a simple process called RPM to build this dashboard which is created by one or many people who have a vested interest in the success of the position

[00:06:03] Suzie Price : okay so anybody can create this dashboard if you have a numerous people who have a vested interest you'd have them as part of the process the one person you can't get it wrong having the dashboard is the dominant goal here so I want you to while I go through these steps I want you to think about challenging you to apply this to your own role when I first Learned this that was the first thing I did I did the process on myself and it really is interesting how much clarity you get about what's important in your role

[00:06:33] Suzie Price : and so I want you to experience the clarity your team and other leaders will feel when they work to create this performance dashboard or position dashboard with you okay so the acronym is RPM and the first thing we do is for the R is respond and brainstorm and so there's two questions they're both the same question one is a positive version of of it and one is a negative version and it is what are the top outcomes or achievements that the new hire must accomplish to be considered successful in this role

[00:07:05] Suzie Price : what are the top outcomes or achievements that the new hire must accomplish to be considered successful in this role said in the negative light that's the second way or other way you can say it is if these key outcomes are not met the new hire will struggle or potentially fail in this role so that's the R you're gonna think about answers to those questions if it's just you you just straight brainstorm if it's just you and another person just straight brainstorm if it's a group of people I'll give you some options for that next but once you've

[00:07:34] Suzie Price : made your list of what the top outcomes should be then you place and prioritize them so you take all the outcomes and you use a little bit of a facilitation technique where you group like responses together into three to five cateagerries and this instantly aligns the entire hiring team on what matters most once you have those cateagerries and it helps each leader understand what is most important in the job for development as well as hiring clarity

[00:08:06] Suzie Price : alright and so when you're putting them in each cateagerry you create a headline for each cateagerry so you understand what's in there just like you do a headline for a newspaper it's not the whole article but how would I summarize this so as I mentioned this can be a 1 to 1 brainstorm I've done it with leaders they're driving somewhere I'm driving somewhere we're in the car talking it through I've done it with a team of people who are who run centers that hire the same position all over the country there's 50 people in the room and we have a flip chart and then we facilitate it with post it notes

[00:08:38] Suzie Price : they pick their top three things that they are answers to the question when they respond and then we place and prioritize the post it notes usually have them put them on post it notes I also have a virtual process that if you're working with people and they are all on a zoom call and so I will put in that Excel spreadsheet for this process in the show notes so that you can access that it has the question up top and it allows you to capture priorities

[00:09:03] Suzie Price : people are listing and helps you bucket them and it really works so the the clarity that you get out of this is amazing if I've had CEOs say oh my gosh I'm so clear now about what we need in this role once they understand the priorities I've had people say that big group that I talked about where we had 50 people in the room they're like we have never been more clear about what this position is across our

[00:09:28] Suzie Price : our whole company and then what happens is we take those priorities and then that's how we pick the attributes for the assessment because every one of the attributes in the assessment are attributes everybody likes but you need to put them against something so you know you can't pick an attribute in the Tri Metrix assessment when you're trying to create the hiring assessment without saying does it matter to these priorities so it it it does so many benefits

[00:09:54] Suzie Price : along with using it for development in the hiring process it removes bias and it gets people on the same page about the job and so I said that the process is RPM R respond and brainstorm p place and prioritize the m is metrics so at some point along the way you want to define how success will be measured you don't want to go too far into the process without doing that but you want to come to some agreement and the measurements could change they could change from quarter to quarter a new hire's measurements will look different in six months and they will when they first start but it gives the new hire a lot of clarity and then what we do is we link interview questions to the outcomes and to the attributes that we select

[00:10:35] Suzie Price : so as I've said the dashboard isn't just a one time exercise it's your ongoing performance GPS and it isn't just static criteria it's a dynamic tool for performance measurement and since I love peloton so much and I think about peloton and how it relates to so much of what we do here in this process it is a lot like their training system so I'm a super fan of it I'm a super fan of Power Zone classes which is a type of class on the bike and what happens with peloton is it's an interactive fitness platform it tracks your rides it ranks your progress it celebrates milestones with real time feedback

[00:11:15] Suzie Price : it doesn't just tell you how far you've gone it shows how you're improving rewarding effort and consistency along the way you don't just pedal you get badges and feedback and opportunities to create ride benchmarks and stats that push you to improve so if you create and reference the Performance Dashboard on a regular basis you can bring that same sense of focus and motivation to the workplace so everyone always knows where they stand how they're doing and how to improve what I have found and leaders tell me this often is when they have the performance dashboard they're wondering how they LED without it before this time because it gives a clear and objective way to review and talk about performance with every person you're not waiting to the performance review they're clear on what the priorities are you're clear on what the priorities are and then it's a matter of having a conversations so how are we doing on the priorities it enables direct and honest conversations on a regular basis it gives clarity it gives confidence it gives employees the same focus and sense of progress that I see on the peloton bike where we just have a focus and you know what winning looks like and you know how you're doing so when you hire for background you get workers when you hire for fit you build a high performing team

[00:12:40] Suzie Price : next let's talk about the car analogy and finding true fit now that we know what success looks like let's talk about who can deliver it that's where the fit formula and the hiring template comes in because hiring based on the resume alone well that's like buying a car on the color of the paint

[00:12:59] Suzie Price : there are five components to true fit that go way beyond the color of the paint or how someone looks it's first of course always the roads traveled and future plans we're usually pretty good at this the resume background and experience it's also future plans where do they want to go it's necessary but it's only about 10% of what drives success

[00:13:20] Suzie Price : you want to figure out how they drive that's another aspect this is their behavior style it's measured by the disc assessment do they like to spend five days a week moving fast and assertively or do they prefer a methodical precision approach five days a week every job has its ideal driving style and you wanna make sure the person that you're interviewing is a match to that driving style all right under the hood

[00:13:48] Suzie Price : you can't see it it's the horsepower it's the engine and every job requires mastery of seven personal skills we measure 25 skills but these seven skills fuel great performance specific to each position and there are things like personal accountability self management resiliency leadership conceptual thinking there's a whole host of like I said about 25 items that are selected based on the dashboard and the position to say what are the seven that are required for mastery so you have those selected you look for those in the interview and then you look for them on the candidate scores in the assessment

[00:14:29] Suzie Price : okay the next thing we're talking about that we're measuring so that we're not just looking at the paint job and saying oh hired is gas in tank this is the internal motivator so you don't see this but you will if you learn about what their motivators are and you get to know them you will see evidence of this in their life but you don't usually see it in an interview

[00:14:50] Suzie Price : and so that's why we want to get that from the Trimetrix assessment it tells you why they'll show up every day kind of a big thing right when the job rewards what someone truly values performance soars someone loves to learn and they've got a lot of things they need to learn and become an expert in they are going to love their job if they love creating efficiency and that's what the job rewards they are going to have high performance cause they want to be there they want to do it so we measure that and we see if the candidate matches and then the third thing you want to or fifth thing out of all of these is where they park where are they gonna be what team are they gonna be working with what leader are they gonna be working with how do they fit in your culture even a high performance vehicle stalls in the wrong garage when you've assessed all five you're no longer guessing you are engineering a great hire the best tires aren't just polished on the outside they're the right driver in the right car headed in the right direction

[00:15:57] Suzie Price : so now let's look at the next segment which is real world matches and lessons Learned okay so let's get real we've all made the classic resume only hire here's one for my own career and I have others I could share I once hired a brilliant physician Doctor Hurd and yes that was his name he had impeccable credentials but what we really needed was a warm patient focused Mother Teresa instead we've got doctor efficiency he was abrupt cool and task driven completely misaligned with the people first culture of the wellness team the result it was a painful situation low engagement high complaints and ultimately a tough termination

[00:16:46] Suzie Price : the mistake I hired for roads traveled but ignored communication style how you like to drive around gas and tank and under the hood the things we measure in trimetrics I didn't know to look for those I didn't have a context for which to look for them I didn't have a performance dashboard I made all the mistakes another example is Chris she was an exceptional VP of finance at her previous startup she was known for her innovation she thrived there high performer she really wanted to advance and go to the next level so she joined a 100 year old non profit that was all over the United States and she thought that that would give her a bigger platform the non profit valued stability and tradition no surprise given their 100 year old history and her energy tanked her motivator profile about was about efficiency and futuristic thinking and moving things forward and they really clashed with the system that was built there for maintenance not innovation she didn't fail the fit failed her

[00:17:56] Suzie Price : that's why we use the tri metrics hiring templates they give you 55 data points across behavior motivators and acumen to reveal hidden gaps before the hire it transforms interviews from intuition to insight so don't be fooled by a shiny paint job make sure the person behind the wheel can get to where you need them to go

[00:18:23] Suzie Price : so our next segment now is from higher to high performance the life cycle advantage here's the real secret and I've already mentioned it in this discussion today but the fit dashboard doesn't stop after hiring it powers the entire employee journey for onboarding share the dashboard on day one that simple act tells new hires we believe in you here's what success looks like gives clarity to the new hire and that and usually when we're starting out we are overwhelmed new people to meet new places to go new things to know 22% of turnover happens in the first 45 days so clarity early on is everything a big long job description maybe something they want to have in their file folder but it isn't going to help them be clear about what's important you need to give them that performance dashboard

[00:19:13] Suzie Price : and meeting with them using our onboarding process that we give you that gives you a chance to meet with the employee and have them talk about who they are from their assessment and create some connection between you and the employee in the first 90 days we have a three meeting schedule that we recommend our agenda and it's about getting to know the person can also talk about their job and what they need to do but it's really this part of these meetings are about getting to know each other which will create connection and will shorten the possibility of the person wanting to leave or feeling disconnected from the work or not feeling like they belong

[00:19:49] Suzie Price : all these tools are also great of course for coaching and development as the person is with you longer and what you do is you revisit the dashboard and the person's tri metrics results so don't put them in the drawer after hiring see how you can use them we give you all kinds of tools we give you team building workshops we give you debrief videos we've got Trimetrix University we've got Trimetrix Podcast we want you to use these results and get full advantage of them because they really are a playbook for assistance to help you help this person be successful so when performance dips use the data to diagnose not judge

[00:20:29] Suzie Price : ask yourself is this a skills gap a motivation issue or a behavioral match when leaders coach through this lens they move from frustration to fascination from reactivity to results clarity is kindness in hiring when everyone knows the destination the journey becomes energizing instead of exhausting

[00:20:50] Suzie Price : so building a wake up eager workforce that's what we're about here that's what this podcast is for The Fit Formula gives you what most hiring processes lack clarity consistency and confidence we started out with this and I will reiterate clarity creates confidence the Performance Dashboard the top 3 to 5 priorities transforms hiring chaos into precision that truly drives success in any role next you're always wanting to hire the whole person you need to know who the person is they are more than their resume

[00:21:30] Suzie Price : the Fit Formula helps you look beyond the resume to understand how they work why they're motivated and where they'll thrive and if they will thrive in your role it helps you reduce the risk there is always a risk you need to know more to reduce that risk and lastly data can drive development use the superior performing attributes the spas hiring template and the tri metrics tools and have them extend far beyond hiring they can fuel onboarding coaching and leadership growth throughout the employee lifecycle and we have all the tools that can help you do that

[00:22:08] Suzie Price : and help you use this the assessment throughout the life cycle so stop betting on gut instinct and incomplete data start hiring and developing with rigor and heart it's a whole lot more fun because when people are in roles that that fit they don't just perform they thrive they contribute and they wake up eager

[00:22:36] Suzie Price : I'm Susie Price and this has been the wake up eager workforce podcast thank you for listening the show notes for today can be found at Priceless professional.comslashfit formula and don't forget we have a transcript if you want to revisit you can find more tools templates and insights and you can reach out to me anytime if you'd like to try Trimetrics and these processes with your next hire at Priceless professional.com and in closing remember how you lead matters lead with purpose reduce the drama and keep building your wake up your life one step at a time and one choice at a time if you found value today please be sure to follow like and share the wake up your workforce podcast with your team and on social media now go out and build your next champion