Biblical Business Radical: Who Are You Attracting?

Christ attracted all types of people. Look at His first inner circle: a tax collector and those who owed taxes and even a person identified as opposed to Roman rule (probably not a person who would support someone who's profiting off of Roman rule), a person probably of mixed heritage (half-Jewish, half-Egyptian), a guy with ties to the religious elite and those who distrusted the elite, and so on.

In business, we often hire people who will make us look good. If we're authoritarian in management style, we don't hire self-assured, self-starting, initiative-taking, quick decision-making, risk-tolerant people. We hire more passive, risk-averse, comfortable with direction-taking (not direction-making), more likely to ask-for-permission versus ask-for-forgiveness people. This is a dynamic I'm also learning with a church staff search team. We're trying to hire a self-starting, direction-making, quickly decisive, innovative, visionary person. Yet our search team doesn't reflect that. We're being slow, methodical, perhaps a bit fearful over a poor hiring choice, unclear about criteria or end result--what are we hiring for: the person's process or the end result.

If we want diversity, how do the hiring processes reflect that desire? How diverse is the hiring team in cultural backgrounds, personality styles, behavioral styles, values (while focused on the common mission and corporate values), etc.? How well does the hiring process reflect expected future behaviors by the candidate?