My Favorite Interview Question to Ask
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Hiring the right people, and making good hiring decisions is a crucial part of building great teams. It can be really hard to gauge how employees will perform as part of a team and in their role before they are actually hired. It’s important to not only dig into their knowledge and skills around the job they’re applying for, but also how they will contribute to and impact the rest of their team based on how they show up and interact with others.
Today I’m sharing my favorite interview question to ask a candidate. I personally believe that EQ is as, or more important than someone’s ability to perform their role. It doesn’t matter how skilled someone is at their job or craft, if they are miserable to work with they can do a lot of damage to the rest of the team in terms of morale and interpersonal issues. These dynamics result in a drop in performance, engagement, retention, and often cause having to waste a lot of time putting out fires that should never be lit. Hiring wrong is expensive, both in time and money.
This question is geared to measure EQ, self awareness, empathy, accountability, and someone’s ability to be vulnerable.
Here it is:
“If I were to talk to every single person that you've ever worked with in your entire life: co-worker, leader, employee, everybody, who would give me the worst feedback about you, and specifically what would they say about you?”
Here are the reasons that I really, really like that question:
1. It’s unique.
No one is going to have a prepared, canned answer to that specifically. It’s an opportunity to have some real talk about this without them already knowing exactly what they are going to say. Even if they anticipate a question to the effect of “Tell me about a time that you worked with someone that you didn’t get along with,” they likely won’t be expecting to have to play things out from the other person’s perspective.
2. Every working adult has butted heads with someone at work at some point.
If you've had more than one job and you're an adult, you've worked with someone that you didn't like or get along with very well. It’s commonplace to have butted heads with somebody else along the way and interact with someone that didn’t have a good impression or experience of you.
For me, what someone is willing to share, or not willing to share with me tells me a lot about them; their emotional intelligence, their willingness to be vulnerable and share someone else's perspective or experience with them that is negative.
This question speaks a lot to their self awareness and ability to self reflect as well. Understanding how other people perceive you, and being able to put yourself in their shoes and see their perspective is paramount to empathy for others.
The other critical piece of this question is around accountability. I always ask how they contributed to the situation and the dynamics of the relationship, and what part they played in having things be contentious or challenging with this other person.
And I don't let people wiggle out of this question by not being specific or really answering it, or saying something benign like, “Oh, they would say I'm too dedicated,” or “An old coworker and I didn’t really get along.” or something to that effect.
If a candidate tries to keep things surface level I’ll clarify with “If that person were here right now and you weren’t, and I had magically teleported them here from the time that you worked together and things were challenging between you two, tell me what they would actually say out of their mouth about you and how they feel about working with you.”
I want to know if a candidate is able and willing to see from someone else's perspective, and to put themself in that person's shoes and consider what that person thought of them, and how they came across from the other person’s point of view.
It says a lot about someone's EQ by how accurately they can self-reflect like, “This is how this person saw me from their perspective, and this is why and where they were coming from.” This gives a lot of insight into people's ability to have compassion, empathy, and see other's perspectives.
Based on what they say, it also provides a lot of opportunity to ask questions and dive deeper. I can ask things like, “Why do you think they felt like that, what led to that, how did you contribute to that, how did you end up resolving that or did you resolve that, what did you try, how did you approach that?”
Measuring accountability.
I also like this question as a measure of someone’s personal accountability and ownership. If you have a situation with somebody else where there's conflict, it's important to understand what things you’ve done to contribute to that.
It’s a huge red flag for a candidate to paint themselves as squeaky clean in these types of situations.
It’s important to know that employees can and will take ownership of the ways that they showed up, even if they believe that they acted in the right. It may be just that they have very different personalities or working styles or communication styles. And understanding that about yourself, and how you are, and come across or impact others, or rub them the wrong way, is vital.
Ultimately, I want to know if a candidate will be real with me, and just really answer this question in a vulnerable and transparent way. Those things are important because generally people who are willing to do that, and be honest and take ownership and accountability for how they contributed to a situation, are more open to feedback and have a much easier time navigating conflict or challenging situations.
Someone who constantly puts up a false front like, “I have no faults, I did nothing wrong, I'm not to blame,” tells me that they have a hard time being vulnerable which is key to emotional intelligence. Someone who will be real and say, “Hey, I'm know I’m not perfect, this is how I contributed and came across, this was their perspective,” is wonderful to hear.
It also allows me as an interviewer to ask some of the most important questions around this which is what they learned from it. Find out how they would handle things differently if they had to go back and do it again, and what they gained from that situation. Growth mindset, accountability, great stuff. The answers to these questions say a lot.
Perfect for leaders too.
I think this question is also fantastic for anyone being hired for a leadership role. Having them share about an employee or someone that they worked with on a team that didn't like them, or where they butted heads. Asking the same things; what would they say about you, why, how did you contribute to that? Great insight into a leader’s ability to recognize and navigate that successfully with others, which is vital to being an effective leader.
Vulnerability, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, accountability. If you want great teams and leaders, these things need to be non-negotiables.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop