The Metiss Group's Blog

Selecting leaders may be the most difficult and crucial decision a hiring manager makes.  The new hire is going to impact the development, careers, and success of many others within the organization.  According to Jim Collins in “Good To Great” a Level 5 leader is proficient in:

1.  Individual accomplishments
2.  Team interactions
3.  Managing others
4.  Leading others
5.  Humility and will

Most hiring managers are pretty good determining whether the leader is capable of demonstrating Levels 1 through 4 (and maybe even will), but pay little attention to screening for humility.  Ask the leader candidate the following questions to get a feel for how they have demonstrated humility:

• Give me an example of a time you and your team accomplished something significant; how did others in the organization recognize the team’s contributions? Listen for whether the leader promotes their team first and minimizes their own recognition.
• Give me an example of a time you and your team failed to accomplish a goal; what happened?  Who fell flat?  Listen for whether the leader took personal accountability for the failure or shed the blame on others.

Empower hiring managers to screen leaders for humility and the whole organization will be more successful.

This entry was posted on December 2, 2011 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Leadership, Selection. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.