In this powerful follow-up conversation, host Mark Frentz and Jason Woodard dive deeper into one of the most overlooked aspects of leadership hiring — using behavioural traits to build high-performing teams.

They begin by exposing a common leadership pitfall: positive bias toward your existing team. While well-intentioned, this tendency can blind leaders to performance gaps and development needs. Jason explains how leaders often confuse loyalty and familiarity with readiness for higher responsibility — and why this mistake can stall team growth.

The solution? Objective performance tools that measure behavioural traits, potential, and role fit. Jason walks through how to shift your hiring and promotion decisions away from “what someone has done” to “what they are capable of doing.” This reframing helps identify hidden strengths and ensures leaders are positioned in roles where they can truly excel.

They explore what happens when people fail to meet expectations — a critical moment that can make or break trust and morale. Jason offers practical advice on setting clear role expectations, supporting underperformers, and deciding when to realign them to a different role.

The discussion moves into long-term hiring strategy, including:

• How long to keep an emerging leader in an entry-level role before promoting them.
• How to correctly identify organizational needs for future growth.
• How to map behavioural traits to role demands for sustainable performance.

Jason emphasizes that understanding people requires going beyond skills and experience to uncover values, motivations, and natural tendencies. Tools that measure value systems are highlighted as a way to align hires with both the role and the company culture.

Finally, they address succession chaos — the confusion and inefficiency that occur when leadership transitions aren’t planned properly. Jason reveals how using behavioural assessments in succession planning reduces uncertainty and ensures leadership continuity.

This episode is a must-listen for executives, HR leaders, and entrepreneurs who want to hire, develop, and retain top talent while avoiding costly missteps.

0:50 – How positive biases towards are team hurts them

4:20 – Introduction to objective performance tools and how to use them

8:15 – The value of understanding what someone is capable of rather than what they’ve done

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Jason Woodard LinkedIn

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