If you’ve ever felt the pressure to fill a vacancy fast, you’ll love this one. In this week’s Impactful Teamwork, I sat down with Regina Partain Bergman – co-founder of The CEO Holy Grail and CEO of Bridgeport Strategy – to dig into what really builds high-performing teams as you scale. Spoiler: it’s not headcount. It’s discernment, design and discipline.
Regina has “a closet full of hats,” as she puts it – entrepreneur, former staffing-firm owner (12+ years), leadership adviser, and culture architect. Her purpose? Helping people, from CEOs to emerging talent, reach their full potential by getting the right people in the right roles and enabling leaders to actually lead. Below are the biggest takeaways and the practical moves you can steal for your own team.
Stop Throwing Bodies at Jobs
Regina’s staffing firm won by refusing the industry norm of “warm bodies fast.” Instead, her team front-loaded the fit: clear role requirements, culture cues, and a validated predictive assessment (she cites one that’s ~90% predictive of on-the-job success). That diligence let hiring managers see likely “bumps at 90 days” before making the offer.
Why 90 days? Because the first three months are when the mask slips. People relax and reveal their real working patterns. If you’ve planned for that moment, you’re ready with support, not surprised with regret.
Behavioural Interviews Beat Polite Fiction
A standout moment: Regina contrasted behavioural interviews with traditional ones. Ask for specific stories (“Tell me about a time when… What did you do? What happened next?”) rather than hypotheticals. When candidates go into story mode, you hear the details that reveal values, judgement and default responses—insights you’ll never get from “What are your strengths?”
Action: Build a bank of behavioural questions mapped to your core behaviours. For customer-facing roles, probe real situations with the public; for cross-functional roles, probe conflict navigation and influence without authority.
Check Your Bias—Then Tighten Your Policy
I admitted one of my early missteps: dismissing a candidate because of a plum-coloured suit—classic unconscious bias. Regina’s response was sharp and kind: train hiring managers on the legalities and the process, and make sure your policies align to the job and the law. If you have a guideline (“no ripped jeans”), there needs to be a role-relevant reason—safety, client perception, brand standards—not just taste.
Action:
- Train interviewers annually on lawful, bias-aware hiring.
- Standardise decision criteria before interviews begin.
- Keep interview conversations focused on job-relevant evidence.
The Right Seat Changes Everything
One of Regina’s favourite stories: a bank moved a team member from back-office accounting to executive reception once her profile revealed front-of-house strengths. Instant performance lift, zero new hire. I’ve seen the same: our “spreadsheet-averse” data manager was a brilliant team orchestrator—we just hadn’t named it.
Action: Profile your team (use tools validated for hiring decisions when you’re hiring; use strengths/energy tools for development). Then re-seat for strength, not hierarchy.
Shared Leadership & the Rise of Co-CEOs
We wandered (delightfully) into shared leadership. Regina and her partner built The CEO Holy Grail by pairing complementary strengths—hers in nurturing relationships and his in rapid people-reading and sales—then dividing work accordingly. Done well, a co-CEO or shared leadership model scales capacity without burning the bottleneck (i.e., the founder).
Action: Even if you’re solo at the top, design a shared-leadership operating system: clarify who leads what domains, how decisions get made, and where your blind spots need a counterbalance.
Scaling Without Imploding: People and Performance
Regina sees the same pattern I do: founders try to carry everything; teams get tasks, not outcomes; and KPIs are fuzzy or missing. Add discounting to “win deals,” and you quietly erase your margin. Her advice:
- Know your numbers and run pricing scenarios before discounting.
- Set leading and lagging KPIs everyone can see.
- Sequence growth with systems—or the weight of success collapses the structure.
Action: Establish a simple weekly scorecard (revenue, margin, pipeline health, delivery capacity, client NPS/retention, people capacity/engagement) and review it at the same time, every week.
From Conflict to Cohesion (In One Whiteboard)
Another gem: after a post-profiling “cat fight,” Regina brought the two team members into a room, let each bring a champion, mapped their profiles on the whiteboard, and coached mutual understanding. They left hugging—differences reframed from “difficult” to “different.” It didn’t erase every friction, but it gave language and empathy so collaboration could breathe.
Action: When tensions flare, map differences visually (strengths, stress responses, decision styles). Make the work about the work, not the person.
Diversity Is a Performance Strategy, Not a Slogan
We agreed: homogeneous teams (same backgrounds, same lens) miss risks and opportunities. You don’t need performative diversity; you need perspective diversity anchored in shared values and clear standards. Get people who see differently to look at the same problem—then integrate.
Action: In key debates, assign roles: Challenger, Synthesiser, Risk-spotter, Customer-voice. Rotate them.
The CEO Tool You’ll Wish You Started a Year Ago
Regina’s closing power tip: keep a Decision Diary. For each key decision, capture the context, options, rationale, and outcome. Over time, you build a living archive of pattern recognition—where your instincts are sharp, where they wobble, and how consistently your decisions line up with vision and values.
Action: Use a simple template: Date | Decision | Context | Options | Chosen & Why | Predicted Risks | Check-back Date | Actual Outcome | Lesson.
Your Practical Playbook
- Define success behaviours
Write the 5–7 observable behaviours that predict success in the role. Hire and coach to those. - Switch to behavioural interviewing
“Tell me about a time…” beats “What would you do…” every day of the week. - Use the right tools, the right way
If you’re using assessments for hiring, ensure they’re validated for selection. For development, use strengths/energy tools to re-seat and grow people. - Design shared leadership
Clarify domains, decisions, and strengths pairings. Even if you keep one CEO, spread leadership. - Set a weekly operating rhythm
Scorecard, decisions, roadblocks, commitments. Same time, short, focused, relentless. - Price with discipline
Stop reflex-discounting. Model the margin impact; often a small price rise beats a blanket discount. - Map and mediate differences
When conflict hits, visualise differences and align on outcome, not opinion. - Start the Decision Diary
Future-you will thank present-you.
Final Thought
Great teamwork isn’t an accident; it’s an operating choice. Regina reminded us that fit beats speed, evidence beats opinion, and designed leadership beats heroic effort. If you’re scaling, your edge is not more tools, it’s more truth: about the role, the person, the numbers, the energy, and the decision you’re about to make.
If you want help turning these ideas into action inside your team, I can guide you through a rapid diagnostic and a clear sequence plan.
Next step: Book a short Turbo-Charge Your Team Audit with me and let’s pinpoint your highest-leverage move.
Show Notes
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
01:18 Regina Bergman’s Background and Philosophy
02:13 Staffing Industry Insights and Best Practices
05:43 Behavioral Interviews vs. Traditional Interviews
15:41 Challenges in Scaling Businesses
19:00 The Importance of KPIs and Avoiding CEO Burnout
20:03 The Co-CEO Model: Benefits and Challenges
21:29 Leveraging Strengths in Team Building
23:44 The Pitfalls of Promoting Experts to Leadership
24:26 The Power of Personality Profiling in Organizations
33:20 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
Connect with Regina on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/regina-partain-bergman-a761901/
