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Q: When
interviewing candidates for a CEO position, what questions
can you recommend that fall outside the usual routine?
Neil Eckersley, Johannesburg, South Africa
A: Ah,
yes—the usual routine, in which executive job candidates
are lobbed air balls like, “How would you describe your
leadership style?” and, “What was your biggest management
challenge and how did you overcome it?” It’s no wonder you
want to avoid that ritual: such interviews can be so
perfunctory—for both sides.
They
happen for good reason, though. Real interviews—truly
meaningful and illuminating—are incredibly hard to
orchestrate.
It’s one
thing when the candidate is internal. You have years of
shared experience and accomplishments to talk about and
typically some level of personal rapport to set a candid
tone. Moreover, you can augment your interview evaluation
by talking with the candidate’s subordinates and peers
throughout the company.
But when a
candidate is an outsider, you’re in a tougher place. Most
references tend to be positive in a careful sort of way,
thanks to a widely ingrained sense of lawyer-fear. Which
leaves boards, human-resources executives and other search
types with interviews that too often play out like a
series of first dates: shiny, polite and full of
exaggerated promise.
Fortunately, there’s a way out. First, it involves making
sure every candidate has a well-established reputation for
honesty and fairness before even getting in the door, as
integrity is a given for any CEO. Once that step is done,
the interview charade can be significantly mitigated by
tightly linking questions to the key characteristics you
want in a CEO: vision, leadership, crisis-management
ability, “runway” and authenticity.
Taking
vision first, your questions should seek to uncover a
candidate’s ability to see around corners, probe consensus
thinking and competitive data with a healthy skepticism
and swiftly make change when the markets demand it. For
example, you might ask: in your career, what’s the best
example of you anticipating market changes that your
competitors did not? When did your curiosity lead you to
probe deeply and uncover a competitive trend or
marketplace dynamic that others didn’t see—or didn’t want
to see?
With your
leadership questions, you’re looking for examples of each
candidate’s track record with people. Thus, you might ask
for a few examples of their hiring successes and
disasters, and to explain what they got right and what
they missed. (That last query also serves as a nice test
of candor!) You might also ask: Can you point to any of
your people who “grew up” with your support and guidance
and have gone on to succeed in your own company or outside
of it?
Every
leader faces a crisis, or two or three. You want your CEO
interview to uncover whether a candidate has the
experience and courage to overcome another. Try asking:
What was the toughest integrity violation you have ever
encountered and how did you handle it? Have you ever had
to define yourself in the midst of heavy criticism, and
how well did you succeed?
As for
“runway,” when you hire a CEO, it is not just to lead the
company as it is but also to continually see the
organization and its future with fresh eyes. To that end,
ask about reinvention. Has the candidate ever gone through
a personal or professional metamorphosis—willingly?
Finally,
authenticity. Well, hmm. We have to stop here. Because
authenticity—arguably the most important CEO
characteristic—is so hard to ferret out with questions.
Sure, you might ask, When have you been blindsided in life
and why did it happen? But judging authenticity is more a
matter of observation. Does the candidate have a sense of
humor about life? Does he seem excited—in the bones—about
watching people grow? Does he seem comfortable in his own
shoes? Is he candid? Watch—and listen.
“Listen,”
incidentally, is the key word in all of this. Questions
are, after all, only questions. You can start to feel
quite full of yourself asking good ones—you’ve done your
job—but the real power of an interview ultimately lays in
how well you listen to the answers. Really listen, all the
way to the end, between the lines, through the pauses and
after the awkward silences. That discipline is so much
harder than it sounds. And yet, when you let candidates
talk, even seasoned veterans of the interview game, they
often, in time, reveal what you need to know: whether
you’ve found your CEO or not.
****
Jack
and Suzy Welch are the authors of the international
bestseller Winning (Collins). Their latest book is
Winning: The Answers: Confronting 74 of the Toughest
Questions in Business Today (Collins). They are eager to
hear about your career dilemmas and challenges at work and
look forward to answering your questions in future
columns. You can e-mail them questions at winning@nytimes.com.
Please include your name, occupation, city and country. |
