Testing Leaders

Serial job-seeking may not be a way to greatness but much is to be learnt from the mating dance between company and candidate. Interviews and increasingly these days, ‘concalls’ are a great way of picking up the latest buzz words from around the world as well as the latest techniques to test your nerves. At one interview, for instance, I could have sworn that I was asked to pour out the coffee purely to see if my hand was steady (any tremor would have hinted at sustained use of opium at some point in my life). A friend told me that at a meeting for a C-suite position he was constantly heckled and pushed by the HR manager till he finally asked the young whipper snapper if being thrown off the 22nd floor was one of the hazards of his job. Upon which, the sly fellow told him that he was just testing to see his reaction in the face of recalcitrant employees.

But I liked how one company went about hiring a new CEO. Besides the usual dinner and drink routine, they got a couple of the younger managers to meet the incumbent and ask him how he would handle real-life issues they were grappling with. It was an unusual but very effective way of gauging whether he had the leadership skills to handle the job and equally there was a automatic buy–in from the managers since they were part of the process of selecting their new boss.