There is a distinct difference between interviewing a candidate who has a formal leadership role and those candidates who do not.
When a candidate has reached a position of formal leadership, their technical skills become relatively less important to their ongoing success. The critical factor that has the candidate consistently deliver high performance in a leadership position is, overwhelmingly, their competency in establishing and developing effective relationships. Unless a leader can use relationship building and influencing skills to get things done through others, he or she will fail at their job, regardless of how well they may perform in other parts of their job.
Consider the four primary types of work relationships a leader typically has that tests that leader’s influencing capability:
- The person(s) who report to them
- The person they report to
- Their internal peers
- External stakeholders (including customers/clients, suppliers etc.)
A resume is, in almost all cases, spectacularly ineffective at helping a recruiter understand just how competent the candidate is at leadership, compared to exercising bureaucratic power, which is done through having a job that includes one of ‘chief’, ‘director’, ‘manager’ or ‘leader’ somewhere in the title.
Gary Hamel and Polly LaBarre explain this distinction brilliantly in their Harvard Business Review article.
“…too many leadership experts still fail to distinguish between the practice of leadership and the exercise of bureaucratic power. In order to engage in a conversation about leadership, you have to assume you have no power — that you aren’t ‘in charge’ of anything and that you can’t sanction those who are unwilling to do your bidding. If, given this starting point, you can mobilize others and accomplish amazing things, then you’re a leader. If you can’t, well then, you’re a bureaucrat.”
If you want to be a recruiter or a hiring manager who can consistently identify a genuine leader from a bureaucrat then you will need to be using a range of behavioural interview questions to uncover the relevant evidence.
Here’s a selection of behavioural interview questions you may consider using when interviewing a candidate who is in, or aspires to, a leadership role to enable you to distinguish a real leader from a bureaucrat:
