BOTSWANA'S GOT TALENT

I sometimes feel overwhelmed by how little I know and the realization that there is so little time to significantly change that. It sort of feels weird writing that and even acknowledging that I care; I am not a particularly curious or studious person but there is something unsettling for me feeling that I don’t have all answers on a subject over which I wish total mastery.

My key skills are interviewing techniques and the ability to assess leadership capability yet even now, it is in this area that I feel frustrated in my knowledge gap. I know that you could argue that my ignorance of nuclear physics might be more substantial but as I know almost nothing about plain physics never mind its nuclear counterpart I don’t feel any deficit of knowledge there – I’m happy to leave that to the likes of Leonard and Sheldon. But I am constantly searching the internet for new or revolutionary ways of interviewing or predicting leadership capability to help me to reinvent the wheel or make the old one run smoother, better, faster.

Interviewing is simply a methodology  to try and predict what a person will do in the workplace and their suitability for the job within the organisation – not rocket science, you might think, but we get it wrong so many times. You can spec a machine perfectly to see what it can do and in what conditions but with people we haven’t mastered that yet.

I have spent the best part of a career interviewing or assessing people in some way or another but has this been worthwhile and will it be the way forward? All of this makes me think of the movie Educating Rita which I first saw back in the 80s. Rita is a married hair dresser who is in her 20s and wants to become cultured and educated and so decides to go to college. She starts studying with an alcoholic professor who, despite his cynicism and personal problems, helps Rita realise her academic potential. At one stage the Professor muses “what can I teach you?” To which she replies “everything”. He responds by saying “All I know, and you must listen to this, is that I know absolutely nothing”. In his mind, education and culture, the things which Rita yearns for and what he once considered as expressions of a higher or deeper wisdom, he now sees as a pretentious exercise in futility and of little value .

Have I become like the cynical professor who has lost his way?

In interview we try to measure what we consider to be critical competencies - let’s take, for example, decisiveness. Now this is a standard leadership competency, normally interpreted as a willingness to take decisions even when not having all the relevant information. But who is to say what is right? Some managers are quick decision makers and this can produce an array of positive outcomes but just about as many negative ones. In some situations deciding quickly may result in the best commercial outcome but in other situations waiting until you have all the relevant information may prove to be more beneficial. Now there is nothing wrong with testing decisiveness in an interview but it is critical that we see it in context. In other words quick decision making is great but not if the person has poor judgement because then you have the wrong decision. And then what if the person really is a poor decision maker – is it acceptable if they recognize it, and manage the situation by delegating decision making to those better at it? Can you see the dilemma?

People aren’t like photocopiers whose output lacks complexity when it is required to spit out 60 colour copies per minute (same way every time with the same outcome). We may decide to produce 20 copies now for immediate use, stop production to deal with a crisis, maintain the machine’s functioning before doing another 20 before opting to hold off on the printing of the remaining pages because of new information emerging like the price of toner and paper will be lowered tomorrow. Unlike the copier we have choice and the ability to think – should I make a decision quickly or in this instance is a slower more meditated approach best?

To muddy the water further, add the statistic that 81% of people lie during interviews, if you are to believe Ron Friedman the author of The Best Place to Work. He says the nature of the interview creates the condition where people are being dishonest – because they have to if they want to get the job. Now I am not saying that people lie outright but let’s say you are being interviewed. If I ask you about a skill you don't have, and it's pretty clear that if you admit that you don't have that skill, you aren’t going to get the job, the only option you have is to talk around it and give the interviewer – your potential boss - a false impression and the result of that is consistently getting spoon-fed dishonest answers.

But then I think even if you were getting 100% honest answers in an interview from a job candidate, there's a real question about whether the interviewing panel, which is how we mostly do things here, can accurately evaluate the person sitting in front of them, if you consider all the unconscious biases we have as individuals. It has been found that ppeople who speak with a deeper or lower-pitched voice are viewed as possessing greater strength, integrity, and trustworthiness! Of course that’s crap but it illustrates the effect that unconscious bias has.

I find that I want to replace the interview with harder more reliable data – testing is one way – as it is harder to argue with a score for numeracy than to say she is good at reading a balance sheet, because she said so and has a low pitched voice.. Friedman's argues that we should disrupt the HR process of live, in-person interviews and replace them with "job auditions" which are relevant to the tasks for the job. He argues that this makes sense: musicians and singers have to audition; actors have to audition. The people employing them don't sit down and dart scripted questions their way. They want to see them play, sing, perform. Doesn't it make sense to audition a prospective employee for the same reasons, before they sign an offer letter?

So in future if you get a call from my company to attend an interview – don’t expect the normal testing for decisiveness – we will take our cue from those reality talent shows and challenge you to sing, dance and act your new part and only after that will we be ready to announce the cast.