By George McQuain
Let’s assume you are hiring a new member for your team.
While reviewing the resumes/CVs of potential candidates, you come across a
resume that contains the following “accomplishments”:
1. She/he
started two businesses that both failed
2. She/he
ran for political office six times and lost all six times
3. Knowing
one of her/his references, you call them and find out that she/he has gone
through many “bad” circumstances in their life and that he/she may suffer from
depression
Now, would you interview this person or offer them a job on
your team?
If you said “No”, you just failed to interview and/or hire
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States and, arguably,
one of the greatest leaders and statesmen to ever live.
In my last blog entry, I wrote about hiring people based
upon the attributes/attitudes needed for the role you are trying to fill and tailoring
your hiring process and interview questions so that you make sure that the
candidate hired has those attributes and attitudes. Today, I am going to address
three very important attributes/attitudes that I think are critical and often overlooked
in hiring—tenacity, humility and the willingness to learn. In my opinion,
these three attributes/attitudes are critical in hiring for a leadership
position, a turnaround or for a start-up team that will be charting new territories for your
organization. In fact, tenacious and humble are the two main
attributes/attitudes of leaders who are “Level 5” leaders in Jim Collins’ book Good
to Great--Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't.
If you study the life of Abraham Lincoln, you will find that
he demonstrated all three of these attributes/attitudes.
On numerous occasions during the U.S. Civil War, Union
forces lost battles and many people called for Lincoln to end the war. Lincoln
persisted and persevered, continuously searching for a way to achieve victory. He
was tenacious in his belief in the Union cause and that victory could be won. Lincoln
demonstrated an ability to withstand adversity and to move forward in the face
of losses. Lincoln had an intense will to win and a do or die attitude. He knew
what was important and never wavered in his pursuit of it.
Lincoln often demonstrated humility in his interaction with
people and in doing his job (President of the United States) in such a way that
put mission first (preserving the Union), team second (the army and people of the
Union) and himself last. We also see Lincoln’s humility demonstrated in his
interaction with others and in his habit of giving the credit for success to
others. An example of Lincoln’s humility, is that after he delivered the
Gettysburg Address (which some believe is one of the greatest speeches in U.S.
history) Lincoln received a letter from Edward Everett who spoke for two hours just
before Lincoln spoke. In the letter Everett praised Lincoln for his eloquent
and concise speech, saying, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself
that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you
did in two minutes." Lincoln replied that he was glad to know the speech
was not a "total failure" (The Lincoln Forum: Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, and the Civil War by John Y. Simon, Harold Holzer and William
D. Pederson). Lincoln appointed one of the best and brightest cabinets in U.S.
history (individuals who were also some of his greatest political rivals) because
he was focused on his mission, not on appointing people who he would outshine
and make him look good.
Lastly, Lincoln had a willingness to learn. It is well
documented that Lincoln was an avid reader and that he read most, if not all, of
the books in the Library of Congress on military strategy because he knew that military
strategy was central to his mission (preserving the Union) and he knew very
little about the subject. Lincoln often sought and used feedback, asked
questions, sought the input of people from numerous, often different and “off
the wall”, perspectives, and learned from his mistakes. He didn’t object when
people disagreed with him.
Interestingly, a willingness to learn is often very closely
tied to tenacity and being humble. Tenacity, at its core, means doing
whatever it takes to be successful and often you have to learn what that is.
Being humble recognizes that you do not know everything and you are willing to
try new approaches and learn from others to be successful.
I’ll close my discussion of Abraham Lincoln with what Leo Tolstoy;
the great Russian author said of him, “He
really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a
skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy
expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of
his character.”
Now, how do you go about hiring someone with these
attributes/attitudes? I admit it’s not easy and that it will require you,
as a leader, to possess these same attributes and attitudes.
If you look at Lincoln’s “resume” at the beginning of this
post, you will see hints at his unwillingness to quit, but often, you will need
to interview the candidate with these attitudes/attributes in mind or put them
through a battery of “personality assessments”. Regardless, it will take digging and work on
your part.
Here are a sample of some possible interview questions:
1. Describe
your most challenging assignment, and how you met the challenge.
2. Describe
a situation that did not turn out as you planned. What was your reaction? What did you learn
from it?
3. Describe
a situation at work where someone created a problem for you. What did you do to resolve it?
4. Tell
me about the biggest failure in your life. What was your reaction? What did you
learn from it?
5. Tell
me about the biggest success in your life. Was it difficult? How did you go
about achieving it? What setbacks did you need to overcome to achieve this
success?
6. What
is your philosophy of sharing credit for a success? What is your philosophy of
sharing blame for a failure? Give me an example of when you put these
philosophies into practice.
7. What
new knowledge and skills did you learn from your last job? How did you learn
them?
8. Tell
me about a time when you took on a role or project that you knew nothing about.
What did you do?
9. If
you had to build a team, what types of people would you ask to be on that team?
10. How
do you deal with people who have a different opinion than yours on how to
complete a project?
Use these types of questions to gain an understanding of the
person you are interviewing so that you will be able to determine if they are tenacious,
humble and willing to learn. In our often risk averse world, it is sometimes
worth it to overlook an occasional “failure” and focus on what the candidate
learned from the experience. Often, what the candidate learned in their “failure”,
their willingness to keep on trying and never give up and their willingness to
give credit to others will be much more valuable to you than what someone with
a “perfect” career has learned and experienced. Who knows, you might hire the
next Abraham Lincoln.
