'Congratulations, Khun Chalit. I hear you've been named to the nominating committee on your board."
"Khun Kriengsak, the promotion comes with responsibility," Chalit tells me. "Our committee will have to interview three CEO candidates next week. I want your help."
"Okay, what do you want me to do specifically?"
"Coach, you're great at asking the right questions. Please help me to come up with great interview questions."
"Okay. Let's start by asking what questions you have in mind?"
"I've been in the habit of noting good questions whenever they occurred to me and storing them up," Chalit tells me. "The first one came from the book Winning by Jack Welch. He suggested that if he had just one area to probe in an interview, it would be why the candidate left his previous job, and the one before that."
"Why's that, Khun Chalit?"
"According to Jack Welch, there is so much information in these answers. Was it the environment? Was it the boss? Was it the team? What exactly made one leave? He wrote: 'The key is: listen closely. Get in the candidate's skin. Why a person has left a job or jobs tells you more about them than almost any other piece of data."'
"What else?"
"I got another good idea when I was watching the CEO Exchange programme on the PBS channel in the US several years ago. Jeff Christian, a veteran senior executive asked: 'What do you think the misconceptions are about you?' Usually, this question will reveal the weakness of the candidates. Coach, will you share with me some of your questions?"
"In the book The Corner Office, Adam Bryant interviewed more than 70 CEOs. He devotes an entire chapter to 'Smart Interviewing'," I say.
I then go on to list some of those smart questions:
- What is the meaning of life?
- On your deathbed, what do you want to be remembered for?
- What's the most important thing that's happened to you over the last three years, something that's really changed your life?
- Wherever you worked before, what made it a good day?
- What have you done that you are really proud of? Tell me about it.
- What books do you read? What did you learn from them?
- Who are the best people you recruited and developed and where are they today?
- In some organisations the candidates have a chance to meet several executives. You can ask: you have met few executives. If you have to hire them to work with you only one person. Who will you choose and why?
"That's great," says Chalit, who offers some insights from another book, Judgment, by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis. "They identified three critical domains in which most of the most important calls are found: judgements about people, judgements about strategy and judgements in times of crisis. How do I ask questions around these three domains?"
I explain that I have applied the concept of asking effective interview questions based on the book The Selection Solution by William Byham. "One principle that I like is: Use past behaviour to predict future behaviour. You ask questions around these aspects; situation or task, action and result."
He nods his head with great interest.
I continue. "Khun Chalit, what do you want to know about a candidate when it comes to people judgement?"
"Coach, I want to know how good his judgement is in selecting great talent?"
"All right, why don't you come up with some questions based on the principles and criteria I just mentioned?"
"OK, Coach. I will ask the candidate to tell me about his experience in recruiting great talent. What was the situation? How did he do it? What was the result? How did he measure his success? Then I will listen and evaluate his answer."
"That's good. What about the strategy?"
"I will ask the candidate to tell me about his past experience in developing corporate strategy. Tell me about the most successful case _ and why? I also want to learn more about the worst case and why. For crisis judgement, I will do the same."
"I think you have a good stock of questions already. What other concerns do you have?"
"Coach, how do I learn about the candidate's integrity?"
"Khun Chalit, this is probably the most difficult area to learn from an interview. Would you mind if I share some ideas on this?"
"I'm all ears."
"I will ask and observe very carefully _ particularly the eye contact, body language and tone of voice. My questions regarding integrity will be:
- What is the best example of integrity you have seen in your life?
- Think about three people who are very close to you. How does each rate your integrity on a scale of one to ten? Why?
- Nobody is perfect. What did you do in terms of integrity that you're ashamed of and will not do again?"
Kriengsak Niratpattanasai provides executive coaching in leadership and diversity management under TheCoach brand. He can be reached at coachkriengsak@yahoo.com. Daily inspirational quotations can be found on his Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/TheCoachinth. Previous articles are archived at http://thecoach.in.th