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Assessing Leadership Using the Two-Question Interview

By Lou Adler, April 30, 2008

As a recruiter, and as part of a rather callous objective of maximizing income in the shortest period of time, it became quickly apparent that being a better interviewer than my clients was a critical skill. The quest to achieve this was how the two-question Performance-based Interview and 10-Factor Candidate Assessment scorecard were born.

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As you're aware, about 90% of hiring managers are notorious for making bad hiring decisions. The other 10% actually know what they're doing. As I studied the more successful group it was apparent that regardless of the position they were filling, most spent much of the interview digging deeply into the candidate's major accomplishments. They then matched the person's performance on these against the real needs of the jobs to determine if the person was both qualified and interested.

As a recruiter, doing something similar allowed me to defend my candidates from emotional or biased decisions using facts, details, and real examples of comparable work. Collectively, this allowed me to reduce my sendouts per hire by a stunning average of 30-50%! Whenever I took a shortcut, my personal performance declined. As part of the process, something even better happened—I figured out how to measure potential and leadership.

For assessment purposes, I'd like to use the following definition of leadership. It's a combination of a number of different viewpoints, including those of Warren Bennis, John Maxwell, and Peter Drucker. Even if not perfect, determining if someone possesses this definition of leadership will still get you the right answer:

Leadership: The ability to visualize a problem and influence and motivate others to act to successfully address it.

A few years ago I wrote an article on assessing executive potential using this slightly differently version of leadership:

Leadership and Vision: This has to do with anticipating the future, developing comprehensive plans, persuading others (including superiors, peers, and staff), and then motivating the team to excel. The best managers at every level have had to do this to get promoted and move up to the next management level.

As part of our Performance-based Hiring interview training we recommend interviewers use our 10-Factor Candidate Assessment scorecard to summarize their evaluations. There are a number of factors that specifically relate to leadership on the assessment form, specifically: team skills, planning and organizing comparable work, and job-related problem-solving. Here's the ranking form we provide interviewers for ranking these skills on a 1-5 scale from weak to exceptional:

To increase assessment accuracy it's important to use a formal debriefing process. As part of this, interviewers need to use facts, details, and examples, not feelings and emotions, to justify their evaluations. When conducted properly and the evidence is shared, the range of difference in opinion is typically no more than plus or minus a half a point. When the variance among opinions is more than this, it's a good clue that some of the interviews were superficial and the assessments have little predictive value.

Our two-question performance-based interviewing process is sufficient for developing the evidence needed to accurately rank leadership on the above 1-5 scale. Using these three factors, one would expect a candidate high in leadership to score a four or five on each. As a reminder, the first question involves digging deep into a candidate's major accomplishment to develop trend lines of performance over time. The second question involves asking candidates how they would handle a realistic job-related problem.

Using the accomplishment question to measure team skills involves a few important steps. This starts by asking the candidate to describe a major team accomplishment. It could be one where the person led a team to accomplish a major task, or where the person played a critical role as a member of the team. Early in the discussion have the candidate prepare a 360 ° team diagram. Drawing this helps to visually see the team relationships. On the team diagram include peers, subordinates and superiors. Also include those inside the department, in other departments, and outside the company. Get examples of where the person influenced others, especially where there was no obvious authority, like getting a senior executive in another department to act. For direct staff, get examples of where the candidate developed and motivated these people to excel.

This same accomplishment question can be used to better understand how the person organized and planned complex projects. Get details of this, including the management tools used, how the person optimized the plan to achieve the major objectives, and how the person coordinated the work of others to meet individual tasks. For leadership assessment, find out how the person influenced others where there was only indirect responsibility.

Use the problem-solving question to assess the critical thinking and visualization aspects of leadership. The best people can tell you how they would go about solving a problem, how they would plan out a solution, and what other information and resources they would need including staff and other people. Start this questioning with a problem likely to be faced on the job involving some complex team issues. To better understand depth of leadership and potential, describe a project one or two levels beyond the current scope of the job. Specifically look for the point where the thinking and visualization ability starts to become superficial or general. From a leadership standpoint, look for where the understanding of human nature becomes problematic. This is a good measure of the candidate's current leadership ability and potential.

While stretching a person's thinking is okay, don't hire someone for a job too far ahead of their current level of measurable accomplishments. Talking a good game is not the same as delivering results. Conversely, someone who can deliver results might not be able to grow much if they can't describe how they'd handle a more complicated project.

I would rank someone as a strong leader if the person had a track record of developing others, could visualize complex problems beyond their current scope of responsibility, had clear examples of influencing others where there was indirect responsibility, especially if these people were in other departments and functions, and could clearly plan out the resources needed to accomplish tasks bigger than handled before. An outstanding leader would be one who was asked to lead bigger and more complex projects more than once, and was successful. As confirmation, get examples of where those influenced were more senior level executives in other functions, including the CEO and board members, to obtain approval on projects where there was a high risk of failure or where an unusual level of resources was required.

As a recruiter you can use this type of information as evidence that the candidate you're representing is worthy of serious consideration. Strong leaders like this are the types of people you'll need to find to be recognized as a top recruiter in your field. And once you find them, don't let them go.