One Great Way to Improve Your Interviewing Skills

Do you interview job candidates? Do you find yourself being interviewed? Would it make you a better leader if you could be both a better interviewer and interview?

There's a lot to improving our interviewing skills, and the reasons to improve are important. When we are more skillful at interviewing it gives us:

More highly qualified team members
Greater leadership opportunities
Opportunities to avoid costly mistakes
Clearer understanding about situations
Useful team development information
Critical problem solving examples
Stories we can share

...and more.

Here's the fastest way that I know to improve interviewing skills. Stay curious.

You don't need twelve action steps or a plan for tips and techniques that take hours of practice. Oh, those will help and do them if you like. But, your biggest single boost in interviewing comes from staying genuinely curious.

Curious about the other person, about what they have to say, about the questions that they ask, about the journey that has brought them to where they are, about their character, about how the react under pressure...all sorts of marvelous treasures waiting for you to uncover just by acting and listening in a curious way.

Centered leaders interview with an open, curious mind.

It makes a big difference (and it's more fun). What are you most curious about today?

-- Doug Smith

Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success

doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals

Comments

High Performance Leadership Combination

We can rationalize anything without making it justified. Leaders should always ask: who is this good for other than me? High performance leadership does NOT mean performance at any cost. It means performance that serves a noble cause while also benefiting people. High performance leadership is a combination. Results without relationships are shallow and temporary. Take care of both, and you'll be a high performance leader. -- doug smith

Your Reputation

More authority means higher levels of responsibility. More power requires more service to others, not less. What you do with your power is who you will be known as. Also, how you use the power you have creates who people will remember you as. How do you want to be remembered? -- doug smith

New Ideas

New ideas won't break you but they can make you bigger. -- doug smith

Personally

Improving performance does require us to take our work seriously. But it does not require us to take ourselves too seriously. Taking things personally is a waste of self-esteem. -- doug smith

Start With Kindness

When you start with kindness you don't have to stay there, but you probably will. It works better for others. It works better for you. If you're human, you'll probably relapse. It does take practice to stay the course. The course starts by starting. When you start with kindness, it becomes more naturally the way. High performance leadership develops from the core leadership strengths of clarity, creativity, courage, and compassion. Build one of those strengths today thru some act of kindness and the others will get stronger as well. -- doug smith

For example

Get good at something that won't obsolete itself. For example: emotional intelligence creating great conversations encouraging people leadership What would you add to the list? Which ones are you developing? -- doug smith

Decide

What do you want? Are you getting what you want? Intention is direction. Decide. And, then go. -- doug smith

What You Need

Use what you've learned to become what you need. -- doug smith

Measures Matter

Some people measure quantify first and quality later. Some people measure money first and impact to the team later (not even second!). How you measure productivity might determine your character and your reputation. Put people first. -- doug smith

Show Integrity

The goals we seek bring a lot of pull to them. We get wrapped in them. It's useful and it's powerful when we care about our goals so much that they propel us forward and keep us working even when we're tired, beyond the boundaries of our usual limitations. But they should not take us beyond the boundaries of our usual values. They should not trick us into bending the rules just because the rules are in the way. Truly high performance leaders of character who are focused, and centered, and noble maintain integrity. No cheating is ever worth the outcome. Integrity is so rare that many people don't even recognize. If you do, be thankful. We need leaders like you. To truly understand integrity you've got to keep it. Even when it's hard. Even the lines are blurred. -- doug smith

High Performance Leadership

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