It’s possible to access Emotional Intelligence skills right from a leader’s process of recruitment and selection. There are assessments like EQ-i 2.0 that can help to evaluate emotional intelligence skills. In this article we are going to focus on the questions that you can ask in order to understand which candidates have an high emotional intelligence, opposing to them with the potential to leave collateral damage in an organization.
Any executive search firm provides detailed information on each candidate’s career history, their reasons for leaving prior employers, and their most applicable career accomplishments, as well as the recruiter’s insights into each candidate. But it’s often asked to understand the candidates and dig further into their match for expertise and culture and it’s here where emotional intelligence can help.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is a far better predictor of success in a role and with a company than intelligence quotient (IQ) and expertise.
Identifying candidates with EI
Identifying a candidate’s aptitudes for the leadership competencies of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management can help you identify candidates with high EI who are poised for success and disqualify those with the potential to leave collateral damage in their wake. My advice is to spend 20 to 30 percent of your interview time focusing on these EI competencies.
It may not be important to your organization to ask all of these suggested questions. One question per competency may be more than enough. Alternatively, you may decide to focus only on the competencies you determine are most important to ensure a successful hire
There are some tests and tools you can use in addition to using interview questions to evaluate EI, but EQ-i 2.0 is the more used worldwide. These assessments can be an important tool in the overall evaluation of a candidate, but they may not tell the whole story. Adding your own evaluation to the data received from your industrial psychologist can help you further interpret their reports.
Self-awareness
EI allows an individual to be aware of and read cues in different situations, adapting their behavior accordingly. Answers to the following questions may give clues to a person’s awareness and perception of these cues.
- Can you think of a time when one of your team members or a customer interpreted something you said or did in a negative way, even though that was not your intention? Explain to me what happened.
- Have you ever been in a situation where you thought you needed to adjust your behavior? How did you know? What did you do?
- Tell me about a time when you purposely prepared yourself to deal with a situation that you knew would be negative or stressful. What did you do? How did it work out?
- What skill or expertise do you feel like you are still missing?
- Can you tell me about a time recently when you had to ask for help?
Some candidates may be reluctant to admit they had to ask for help or were interpreted negatively. You can ease the candidate into a sense of safety by introducing such questions with, “We all have had times when we had to reach out to others for help,” or “We all have had times when people misinterpreted our communications.”
Self-management
As you assess the answers to the first two questions below, look for tendencies to give excuses. Some candidates may say they didn’t want to hurt others’ feelings or they were afraid the organization wouldn’t back them.
The third question tests for resilience. Look for methods a candidate may use to overcome a negative situation.
- Describe a time when you and one of your executive team members were at odds about a particular decision or direction for the company. What did you do?
- Tell me about a time when you decided not to address an issue with one of your executive team members. What did you consider?
- Describe a time when you didn’t think things could get any worse for your business, and yet, they did. How did you handle that?
- Tell me about a time when you thought to yourself, “What have I gotten myself into here, and how will I get through this and be successful?” What happened?
- Give me an example of a time when you made an error or mistake. What happened? What was the outcome? What did you learn from the situation?
Social awareness
Quite likely the most important competency for fit with your company’s culture. Use the following questions to assess a candidate’s natural propensity toward empathy, humility, and willingness to take responsibility for their actions:
- Tell me about someone with whom you work on a regular basis that you find difficult to get along with. What have you done to build a stronger relationship? What was the result?
- Tell me about a time when you rejected one of your team member’s ideas or opinions about a project.
- Describe a time when someone felt you were unfair. What did you do?
- How do you know we will be a culture fit for you? What traits do you have that match those of current employees? What is different about you or what skill set do you have that could better our company and assist us in attaining our goals?
Relationship management
More than just interpersonal relationships, this competency focuses on the ability to inspire others, create resonance to a company’s mission or vision, challenge the status quo, and bring out differing perspectives in a collaborative fashion.
- Tell me about a time when, as a leader, you found it necessary to bend the rules. What did you do? Why did you do it? How did you feel about it?
- What evidence do you have that you have created a positive climate or culture at your current employer?
- On an average day, is your main focus on results and tasks or people and emotions?
- Describe the most difficult boss you’ve had. How did you find common ground? Tell me about something you learned from that boss. How has that knowledge furthered your career?
- Give me an example of a time you failed to establish or maintain a relationship with a peer.
These are tough questions to answer. Watch for and consider carefully any answers that suggest the candidate avoids or deflects issues. And watch for body language clues that may tell a different story than the verbal one provided by the candidate.
One note of caution — do not load all these questions into your interview. You will overwhelm and maybe even scare away the candidate.
A good balance is to spend 20 percent to 30 percent of the interview on questions designed to highlight EI competencies and the other 70 percent to 80 percent on questions that focus on expertise and past experience, with an emphasis on asking the candidate to provide metrics about the outcomes or results. As you work your way through these traditional expertise-related interview questions, remember to watch for how the candidate reads and responds to cultural situations and works with others.
To help you evaluate Emotional Intelligence you can also use EQ-i 2.0, the most tested and used assessment worldwide.
Jack Welch, former chairman of General Electric, sums it up succinctly: “No doubt, emotional intelligence is rarer than book smarts, but my experience says it is actually more important in the making of a leader. You just can’t ignore it.”
Original articles “How to screen leadership candidates for emotional intelligence” and “10 emotional intelligence questions to ask leadership candidates” by Laura Fries (in Biz Journals, 2016)