A List of Great EQ Questions to Ask in Interviews

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If you want stronger teams, where people work well together, embrace change and feedback, and navigate conflict more easily, then hiring for emotional intelligence is a must. In fact, I feel strongly that EQ is equally or more important than someone's ability to perform their job function and role.

When it comes to tasks and skills, you can teach just about anyone to do anything in the universe if they want to learn it.

Emotional intelligence however, is far more difficult to teach people. One reason for that is that generally people who don’t have high emotional intelligence think that they actually do. EQ is heavily intertwined with self awareness, and the catch 22 is that people with high and low self awareness both believe that they are highly self aware.

Hiring for EQ now means better leadership down the road.

“People with high emotional intelligence make better leaders, so hiring and promoting for high EQ is one of the best short and long term moves that organizations can make.”

People with high emotional intelligence make better leaders, so hiring and promoting for high EQ is one of the best short and long term moves that organizations can make.

To help with that, it’s important to have an arsenal of great questions to ask in interviews that gauge a candidate’s emotional intelligence.

Here’s what you’re looking for:

It’s important to figure out what kind of employee someone will be once they join the team. Yes, performing the technical tasks of their role matters, but also having insight to how they’ll show up in regards to behavior, attitude, and impacting others is paramount to making a great hire.

“Someone can be the best fill-in-the-blank (salesperson, accountant, marketer, graphic designer…) in the world, but if they’re hard to work, with or an asshole, then who cares?”

Someone can be the best fill-in-the-blank (salesperson, accountant, marketer, graphic designer…) in the world, but if they’re hard to work, with or an asshole, then who cares? They’ll come in and ruin your company’s culture by tanking the morale and performance of your other employees and ultimately cause more headaches than they’re worth.

An employee with high emotional intelligence will possess most of the traits that make them great employees and team members. A willingness to be vulnerable, to communicate well, interact with and influence different types of people and personalities, manage and navigate conflict more effectively, higher personal accountability, openness to feedback and change, an ability to create trust and strong relationships, the list goes on and on. All of these characteristics are a reflection of EQ.

When it comes to asking the right interview questions, I’m a big fan of questions that candidates can’t possibly anticipate and won’t have prepared answers for. Stop asking “What is your biggest weakness?” People have rehearsed that answer for decades.

“Stop asking “What is your biggest weakness?” People have rehearsed that answer for decades.”

What I’m looking for is a candidate’s ability to be vulnerable, authentic, honest, and real with me. I also am looking for some insight into their self awareness and how well they perceive what other people think about them and their impact on others. I also want them to show and explain to me specifically how they have and would handle challenging situations, and their ability to self reflect and learn from mistakes.

There’s a lot of data that gets farmed when asking these questions including what candidates choose NOT to say or share, their body language and nonverbal communication, and how they handle any emotions that come up throughout the process. It’s always good to have a couple great follow up questions to dive a bit deeper when asking great questions too, to go a level or two below the surface and get more thoughtful, juicy dialogue happening.

My goal is always to make candidates feel relaxed and calm by also being real and authentic with them. If the conversation gets to the point where it feels like two friends who care about each other just having a pretty casual conversation, that always feels like a huge win to me.

Here are a handful of my favorite EQ interview questions:

1. If I were to sit down with every single person you've ever worked with in your entire adult career, co-workers, leaders, everybody, who would give me the worst feedback about you and what exactly would they say?

I like this because everybody in the universe has worked with someone they didn’t like, or that didn’t like them. This gives insight into a number of things for me. First, how in tune they are with how others perceive them, as well as how they characterize that to me from their point of view, and the other person’s. Secondly, it shows empathy. Can they see where that other person who didn’t like them was coming from and do they have perspective that shows me that they are willing to see through someone else’s eyes, especially someone they didn’t get along with. Third, it’s also a measure of vulnerability. Will they honestly share with me this negative feedback that somebody else would have for them, and own up to how they may have contributed to that relationship or feedback.

When I ask this, I want to know exactly who it was and exactly what they would say to me. So if I get a “It was a coworker and they would say that they didn’t like me” I’ll dig a little deeper and have them tell me exactly what they would say as to specifically why. This question is ripe for great follow up questions; “What would you do differently now if you had to work with them again?” or “In what ways do you think you contributed to them feeling like that?”

2. If you worked here for this company for 10 or 15 years, a long time, how would you want to be remembered by the people you worked with?

I like this one because for me it gives insight into what they value about themselves and what they think their biggest strengths are, as well as how they want to impact the company, the team, and be seen by others.

3. If after working here for two or three months, you noticed some major problems or challenges with the company, and you recognized that those problems were because of me, as your leader or boss, what would you do about that and how would you approach it?

This is a question I don’t let people wiggle out of. If they say, “Oh well, I’d have a conversation with you,” I’ll ask, “How? What would you say? How would you approach that?” I have them walk through how they would approach it, what language they would use, etc. I like to get a sense of their capacity to frame up and navigate difficult conversations as well as give direct feedback.

4. Of everything you know about this role and understand about this position so far, what is the thing that you think you're the least qualified for?

This is one that I ask later on in the interview process. Again, it's a sense of vulnerability and honesty. I want to know will someone be real with me and tell me these things. Another good question around this is asking them what they are most excited about in the role, and what they are least excited for in the role.

5. Tell me about a time when you had to lead a project or move something forward, and you didn't have all the information or everything that you needed to go forward in that process.

Great for follow up, “What did you do?” “How did you figure it out?” “What did you learn?” This is also great structured as “…a time when you had to give difficult feedback to someone.”

6. After working together for five or six months, when the job honeymoon has worn off a bit, what will I say is my most favorite thing about working with you? And what will I say is my least favorite thing about working with you?

7. What does it feel like for somebody else to be on the receiving end of your communication style or leadership style?

A great follow up or addition to this is “How do you like to give and receive feedback?” or “What leadership style do you prefer from your direct leader?” No matter what answer they give to any of these I almost always follow up to dig a bit deeper with “Tell me more about that.”

8. I like this one a lot. I’ll have them take about five minutes, or more, to teach me something that I probably don't know, about something that they really love, personally. Something unrelated to work that they love, can be a hobby, etc, just something that is not work related.

I really dig this one because it gives a window into seeing someone really fired up about something. I just want something about their human experience that they love. It can be D&D, ballet dancing, weaving, knitting hats, astrology, makes no difference, but it has to be them teaching me something about it that I probably don’t know. I don’t want to just hear them gush about how much they love something, I want to experience them relating information from a place of their own confidence and knowledge, speaking from a teaching perspective.

EQ is by far one of my favorite topics when it comes to teams and leadership. Hiring and promoting for EQ is something that should be on every hiring manager and company’s agenda. It’s critical, keep it high priority and it will pay dividends for years to come.

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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 

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