The interview question you need to ask leaders

I recently read and really liked a March 2020 article by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic called “How to Spot an Incompetent Leader”. It caught my eye because in my role as Head of Executive Talent and Appointments in NHS England I have been leading a project to develop a single competency framework for board-level leaders in the NHS. Something that can be used by Chairs, CEOs, HRDs and others to assess against when hiring and developing people for the most senior positions in the NHS.

So, a headline like Chamorro-Premuzic’s drew me in as I have been living and breathing leadership competency for a while. The article didn’t disappoint. To summarise, he maintains that if we want fewer incompetent leaders, those assessing them for posts need to be better able to distinguish between confidence (how good they think they are) and competence (how good they actually are). There’s a handy self-assessment test you can take to measure your own “general competence coefficient”.

He goes on to demonstrate how mistaking confidence for competence often skews the leadership selection field in favour of men. Or more specifically in favour of overprivileged men for whom confidence is a natural gift of cultural and biological factors. Leading to more men occupying leadership positions.

These overconfident male leaders, I would add, then hold the reins on further selection processes to build teams and choose successors and naturally favour those candidates who display traits they recognise in themselves and therefore value highly – i.e. confidence. And so, the cycle continues.

Meanwhile many competent leaders who don’t or won’t (dis)play the confidence-trumps-competence game are denied career advancing opportunities. Here Chamorro-Premuzic talks about female leaders not being selected and men who are perceived as not being “masculine enough” being passed over for promotion. But I think we can take this wider to include many individuals from a diverse background who present a “difference” to this flawed leadership confidence archetype.

At this point when reading the article my mind sped back to three things that triggered a connection.

Firstly, another article I had read called How Compassion Redefines Leadership by Laura Berland. Secondly, my personal experience over many years of assessing candidates for board positions in the NHS, as well as onto and off some of our leadership development programmes in the NHS Leadership Academy. And thirdly the key question I always have to ask in these settings and which I feel is the one we all need to ask our leadership talent.

In the Berland article she says that when leaders behave vulnerably, the other person – whether it be the boss or staff or peers – get a resonance of authenticity and this “creates a very powerful sense of trust and safety”, helping them connect with teams, building a safe and supportive space and enabling more effective leadership. This supports Chamorro-Premuzic’s position that traits of over confidence in leaders are not conducive to great leadership.

It’s interesting to note that he maintains that these traits tend to be most commonly exhibited by male leaders. Berland’s article about compassion and vulnerability in leaders is written by a woman, points to examples of great female leadership (such as Jacinda Arden), appears on the Women’s Network blog (a place for discussion around female empowerment in the workplace) and highlights the positive aspects of traits that are most commonly associated with women – compassion, empathy and emotional intelligence.

The NHS, where I work, is one of the largest organisations in the world – somewhere just behind WalMart and McDonald’s but quite a bit smaller than the People’s Liberation Army in China and the US Department of Defense. But it’s undoubtedly the largest employer anywhere on the planet whose core purpose is the delivery care.

The delivery of care fundamentally requires the use of compassion. Indeed, it’s enshrined in the NHS Constitution: “compassion and care should be at the core of how patients and staff are treated …. outcomes are improved when staff are valued, empowered and supported”. The importance of being able to appoint leaders in the NHS who can demonstrate compassion, empathy, emotional intelligence and authenticity is paramount and core to our purpose.

So, how do we do that? How do we spot those leaders who are demonstrating confidence rather than competence as Chamorro-Premuzic suggests and how do we instead favour those leaders who, as Berland suggests, are open about their weaknesses?

In my time assessing directors in the NHS I’ve seen a number of methods and tools used to answer this challenge. Sometimes it’s been the use of psychometrics. Other times it’s been staff and stakeholder roundtable discussions as addendums to interview panels. Or it’s been patient and service user panels or roleplay. Or it’s the traditional interview panel but the questions are designed to explore the candidate’s willingness to self-reflect, share mistakes, show vulnerability rather than simply reel off a greatest hits of leadership achievements.

And here’s where I share the only interview question you ever really need to ask if you are looking to spot an incompetent leader. Look the candidate in the eye and ask – “What would others change about you?”. Trust me the answer they give will be revealing.

Broadly they often go one of three ways. The good ones will not be taken aback because they will already know the answer and will be willing to share what areas they are not so good at. Being vulnerable and demonstrating weakness in front of a panel isn’t a problem for them. Appoint this leader and you get someone who can lead themselves compassionately and in doing so can lead others in the same vein.

The not so good ones will be stunned because they haven’t been asked this before and haven’t begun to think about it. They might in the moment give an authentic answer but it tends to be poorly thought through. Appoint this leader and you might be lucky that they are at most guilty of a lack of self-reflection and understanding and this can, in theory, be worked on and developed in post.

The really bad ones try to game you with their answer. They offer up false weaknesses such as - they are so naturally intelligent or work at such a fast pace that others in the team feel left behind. I had one senior leader in the NHS suggest to me when asked the question that others wished he wasn’t so well networked and “plugged in” because it meant he often brought too much great information to the board and they couldn’t cope with it. My hubris-o-meter was off the scale at this point.

Appoint this type of leader and you’re asking for trouble. Their over-confidence may well be masking their lack of competence. But more importantly, their inability to drop the mask, reveal themselves and their imperfections, will mean a lack of authenticity when leading staff. Their teams will not have safe and supportive cultures. Compassion will not be at the heart of how they lead.

Within the NHS leading without authenticity, compassion and trust is a real life and death problem. Look to scandals such as Mid-Staffordshire and the like. But even in other sectors and industries such leadership deficits will have profound impact on productivity, purpose and effectiveness.

If you are serious about spotting the competent leaders who can really lead, steer clear of the usual CV based interview questions and the confident answers. Ask the candidate the one about what others would change about them and you won’t be disappointed.