Ace Your Next CxO Interview: Prep Guide for Communicating Your Leadership Approach

Ace Your Next CxO Interview: Prep Guide for Communicating Your Leadership Approach

Winning a CxO job offer requires you to explain a high-impact leadership approach with a proven ability to drive team and organizational performance.

Hiring committees comprised of leadership, Board, VC members, and executive search consultants listen for quantifiable examples of your past performance results which give them an indicator of your future behaviors that may drive success in their organization.

Are you prepared to share your best stories of leadership to win the job?

One way to prepare for interviews is to use the six principles of the Adaptive Leadership model. This newsletter is a condensed version of a longer article I wrote about the six principles and a prep guide I created and use with executives in career transition.

I welcome you to fast-track interview prep and download it for your use here:

Are You An Adaptive Leader: Interview Prep Guide

The Adaptive Leadership Model: Brief Overview

The seminal book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, by Ronald Heifetz, provides the first description of the modern Adaptive Leadership approach. The book describes Adaptive Leaders as those who constantly strike a balance between the ability to pull people into solving complex and previously unsolved problems and concurrently manage people’s resistant behaviors. In short, they are highly effective at change management.

The Six Principles of Adaptive Leadership

1. “Get on the Balcony” – leaders remove themselves to find the perspective needed to engage with people and problem solving.
2. “Identify the Adaptive Challenge” – leaders pinpoint the real challenge – technical or adaptive.
3. “Regulate Distress” – leaders create a psychologically safe environment where people are free to manage the inner conflict felt during times of change and transition.
4. “Maintain Disciplined Attention” – leaders encourage people to focus on the “right” things.
5. “Give the Work Back to the People” – leaders empower employees to take responsibility for their own goals.
6. “Protect Leadership Voices from Below” – leaders pull in and listen to diverse perspectives from previously unheard people.

How do you apply the Adaptive Leadership model to interview preparation?

Download and read the attached article so that you can use the question prompts to ask yourself how you stack up against the six principles and plan to describe how you move teams into action to solve complex problems.

There are over ten question prompts like these:

• When faced with a problem no one in our organization has seen before, how did I engage and activate people? What creative ways did I construct for them to solve problems and direct their own work?
• How have I helped people explore ways to make internal changes needed to manage transitions and motivate people around shared organizational goals?
• How does my leadership approach demonstrate that I am a good steward of people and organizational culture?

Adaptive Leaders work with their teams to diagnose problems and help them directly face and resolve complex issues within dynamic, ever-changing systems. They help mitigate stress caused by uncertainty and transition and keep the organizational engine moving forward.?

To break through the interview process as an executive-level candidate, you must prepare to showcase professional stories demonstrating your leadership capabilities. Vague answers will not help you stand out.

I encourage you to get started today!

Ref: This article references the seminal work of Harvard professors Ronald Heifetz (author of Leadership Without Easy Answers) and Marty Linsky as well as Peter Norhouse’s Leadership, Theory, and Practice (7th ed).

Thanks for reading my newsletter!

? I'm Gina Riley, a leadership & career transition coach passionate about helping leaders and executives hone their career stories so they can land and lead in jobs they love.

?? Ring the bell on my profile by clicking the "follow" button and tapping the bell. (OR - send me a personalized connection request. I like those, too!).

#?? Follow the hashtag?#careervelocity ?for more career-moving advice

?? I welcome you to subscribe to my newsletter?here .

?? You can find a?free career transition planning tool here.