b. Satisfactions
Everyone breathes different psychological oxygen. What is fulfilling for one person is asphyxiating for another.
Great accountants love the fact that two plus two equals four every time they do it. Great salespeople get a kick out of turning a no into a yes. Great flight attendants gravitate toward the tired, angry business traveler or the boisterous school sports team at the back, because they enjoy turning around the tough customers.
A person’s sources of satisfaction are clues to his talent. So ask him what his greatest personal satisfaction is. Ask him what kinds of situations give him strength. Ask him what he finds fulfilling. His answers will help you know what he will be able to keep doing week after week after week.
5. KNOW WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
Many managers have a list of favorite questions they resort to every time they interview someone. So do great managers, but with one important distinction. They ask only questions where they know how top performers respond.
In their mind, the question is not nearly as important as knowing how the best answer.
For example, here is a question that can identify the different striving talents of salespeople and teachers: “How do you feel when someone doubts what you have to say?” You might think that the best salespeoplewould say they like a little doubting, that it would give them a chance to show just how persuasive they could be. Surprisingly, they don’t. They report that they hate it. It upsets them to be doubted (although they may not show it) because, as we described earlier, great salespeople are selling themselves. To doubt them is to question their personal integrity. Disagree with them, argue with them, choose not to buy from them. But don’t doubt them.
Average salespeople are not personally invested. They don’t mind being doubted, so this question doesn’t strike any emotional chord with them at all.
For sales managers, then, this has proved to be a good question, because what they listen for is, “Upset.” (Of course, this isn’t the only question great sales managers ask. As we described earlier, the worst salespeople are also upset by rejection. Managers must ask further questions—”how” questions and “who” questions—to discover whether the candidate possesses other vital sales talents, like innate assertiveness or a love of breaking the ice with people.)
By contrast, it turns out that great teachers say they love being doubted. They cherish those moments. Great teachers instinctively interpret the “doubters” as students, and they see this doubting as a sign of an active, inquisitive mind. For great teachers, then, doubting means learning. Conversely, average teachers say they don’t like to be doubted. Their first point of reference is their own competence, not the students’ learning. Being doubted means having their competence challenged, and for them there is nothing worse.
This question works well for selecting teachers, then, but only if the desired response is, “I love it.”
The question doesn’t work at all if you are selecting nurses. Why? Because the best nurses do not answer in a way that is consistent with each other and different from their less successful colleagues. When you think about it, this is hardly surprising. After all, on those rare occasions when a nurse is doubted, how she reacts to the doubting probably has little to do with how good a nurse she is overall.
How can you develop these question/listen-for combinations? First, you can try out a question on a few of your best employees and a few of the “rest” and then see if the best answer differently, consistently. If they do, the question/listen-for combination is a good one. If they don’t, as with nurses and the “doubting” question, then the question might not be worth asking.
Second, you can ask the question of all new applicants. Write down what they say and keep a record of it. After they have been hired, check back to see if the people who subsequently performed well answered your question in a consistent way.
This takes time and focus, but, as with any art, time and focus are required to cultivate the art of interviewing for talent.
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