Think of the last person you hired to fill a mid-level or senior position. When you interviewed them, surely their resumes were carefully studied, their technical abilities, scholarly achievements and, perhaps, books of business were discussed. But what did you learn about them as leaders? Very likely nothing. Overlooking this critical component of managerial and leadership-level positions leads to lost productivity and plenty of employee problems down the road.
At a certain level, technical skills and academic or licensing achievements are table stakes, so don’t waste too much time reviewing them, or listening to the prospect crow about them. What you really want to know is how a person will lead, how they will build relationships with others, how they will guide, persuade, communicate, decide, and execute.
While typical interviews are almost unimaginably inauthentic, you can at least try to uncover aspects of a prospect’s leadership style as part of the process. You can do it by asking the following three questions:
- How do you describe your leadership style?
- How do you handle conflict?
- What would you do in the following scenario? (Then present the prospect with a real-life case study from your own experience. Listen carefully to how the prospect puzzles through a solution.)
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. The idea is to engage the prospect in conversation about behavioral issues such as leadership and conflict to determine whether they fit with your organization’s culture. If you assess that the answers are not a fit with your culture on Interview Day, it’s a darn good bet the prospect will not be a good fit with your company on any other day.
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