Student:My name is Austin Hunley and the question I have is; when hiring leaders, what do you use to evaluate the candidate’s leadership capabilities?

Marie Williams:You can just jump right in this time and then we’ll compete for air time.

Joe Daylor:Well, I’ll take a crack at it. One of the first things I ask folks is to give me some examples, whether this is their first job or someone that’s seasoned, I ask them to speak to some of the leadership experiences they’ve had in the past. I find this useful for a couple reasons. One of the things it does is allow me to understand how they define leadership. It gives me a sense of, when they talk about themselves in a leadership position, it gives me a sense of sort of the way they define it and what they see leadership as being. So I get a real good sense from that perspective of where they’re coming from. In addition to that it gives me some examples of some things they’ve actually done. I can start to probe on this style that they have, whether or not they’ve been successful. I like to ask them about things they were especially proud of when they were in a leadership role in the past. This gives me again, great insight into what they think is important in addition to what they’ve done. I like to ask them some things that they’re not especially proud of as it relates to some of the things they’ve done around leadership. So I try to see them not with too much around my expectations and really get a sense of the way they define it, what they think is really important about leadership and then how they’ve demonstrated it.

Dr Reimann: Bill?

Bill Nussbaum: I guess the thing that I really want to know and I want to understand how they deal with people. You’re going to be dealing with people no matter what you do. It’s really important to be able to have an understanding of people and how they react to what you do and the things you’re going to be expected to do. You have to be able to motivate people. You have to be able to listen. I want to basically assess those kinds of skills and see what you’ve done. Where do you feel like you’re going with yourself? Where are your skills and abilities? Where do you want to be? You’re going to be faced with many situations where, if you’re going to be in a leadership position you’re going to have to deal with those kinds of things and deal with where do your people want to be? Where do you think your organization’s going to be? So you have to be able to listen and handle the relationships because you can’t do anything alone. If you’re going to be a leader you’ve got to be able to deal with all those situations all at once.

Dr Reimann: Thanks Bill. Marie?

Marie Williams:I think we’re going to hear a common theme here. I use behavioral interviewing. So that you look at the knowledge needed. But I really pay attention to a balance of knowledge, skills and attributes that are important in terms of the organization. I do concur that the definition of leadership is to get people to move to a place they’ve never been before and to get them to go there freely for the common good. So, with that I pay particular attention to how well they listen. For me, the single word that encapsulates great leaders is the ability to listen and then give back in terms of needing. So I pay attention to that. I ask them what their passion is and learn the use of silence in the interview process to see how they respond with that so that you can then identify; what are you most proud of? People will then ask you, are you talking about business; are you talking about personal? What are you most proud of? And the other; tell me about a time you absolutely fell on your face. It wasn’t an egg on your face. It was a dozen. What did you do with it? What did you learn from it? And I will tell you, great leaders can tell you ‘here’s where I had an omelet and here’s what I carried forward with that’. You want leaders to carry success forward but not carry your failures around. They get heavy.