A life skill coach personal development idea:

How Can Listening Help You Interview Smarter?

BY JAMIE WALTERS

Reprinted with permission. See below.

Discover how listening can keep you from hiring the wrong employees and from driving employees nuts.

One frustration commonly voiced by small business owners from throughout the country is how to find the right people for their small, entrepreneurial, multiple-hat-wearing companies. While we all know, unfortunately, that a great interview does not necessarily make for a great fit, being as clear as possible during the interview can help a business owner bypass a few obvious mismatches. The key to more effective interviews is what questions you ask and how well you listen, and, of course, how well you apply the lessons of the past.

Think you already ask good questions and listen smartly? Well, many of today's interviewees have been schooled on savvy interview books and workshops. Canned answers flow like the great Mississippi. It's well worth your time to take your skills up a notch to help you choose good-fit employees.

The great thing about refined communication skills is that they're useful in just about every situation, whether at the office or at home or at a community meeting. So time invested in learning and practicing the tools outlined below can be money in the bank and stress off your shoulders.

Before the interview:

Know what you need. This seems like a no-brainer, but small business owners can easily miss or misinterpret this step because they've got a lot of other responsibilities, as well as time and budgeting pressures. Take a few minutes to map out a job description that includes key tasks and the sort of traits associated with a person who handles those tasks well.

Look at what works. If you've got other employees, notice what personality traits makes someone a good fit for your small-business culture. Ask good-fit employees what sort of person would be most successful on your team, then invite them to interview the candidates. You might be surprised when they raise insights and concerns you've not considered.

Schedule multiple interviews. Let candidates know up-front that you'll be scheduling multiple interviews for all candidates you're considering. You might conduct a telephone interview first, to screen out obviously inappropriate candidates, followed by a group interview with selected employees. Once your employees have met with candidates and have forwarded an assessment to you, meet with the candidates yourself.

Plan and issue an employment test. At IVC [Ivy Sea Consultants], we've created a test that makes work style, skill level and personality type more clear. All candidates invited to participate in a second round of interviews take the same test, the results of which give us more information for making a good decision.

During the interview:

Be realistic. A candidate is more likely to be a good fit if they've worked in-happily and productively-other small business, entrepreneurial or start-up environments. Someone who has worked only in corporate or bureaucratic environments, even if they're incredibly nice and may ultimately make the transition, are in for an extreme culture shock on your dime. If you don't have the six or 12 months to wait for the person to transition, look for candidates whose work history shows a preference for the responsibility, juggling, hands-on and wearing many hats that comes with working for a small business.

Ask questions that will give you the info you need. The questions you ask can help you find out whether a person is more comfortable with details or the big picture, is a self-starter or an order-taker, or thrives on a diverse, ever-changing environment or a stable, routine-oriented one. Most recruiting ads feature requests for conflicting skills, like asking for an accountant who's strategic or big-picture oriented. While someone may hone capacities for both, most of us are much more effective and efficient in one or the other. This is where it's helpful to know what you need.

Close your mouth and open your ears. Too often, insecure interviewers turn the conversation into a self-centered diatribe about their wants and needs. Why is this too often a disaster? Because you can't listen when you're talking, and listening is exactly what helps you identify a good match. Aim instead for a dialogue, where you ask pointed questions and listen, carefully, to the response.

Notice and match language for deeper understanding. Human beings have certain ways of taking in and digesting information. Some people rely more heavily on their visual pathway, while others demonstrate a preference for their auditory or kinesthetic mode. What does this mean? If you're more comfortable in auditory mode and a candidate (or client, for that matter) operates predominantly in visual mode, you might experience frequent miscommunication; it seems like you're on different wavelengths. The preference shows up in language, among other things, so ask an open-ended question and notice whether a candidate's language emphasizes visual, sounds or physical/feelings. You can create a better rapport and perhaps have a more productive meeting if you're speaking the same language. (Look for books by Anthony Robbins or on NLP for more info.)

Go with your gut. Sometimes you can't put into words why someone is or is not clicking with you. If you aren't sure whether to trust your intuition, delay the decision for a day or two until the direction from your instinct becomes more clear.

Sample questions to consider:

Ask: If you had to choose a favorite job or project to date, what would it be? What did you like about it, specifically? (If they diplomatically say, "I liked them all," ask, "Well, if you absolutely had to pick one, what would it be?")

Listen for: Whether the sorts of things the person is describing are a match with the kinds of things he or she would most often be doing in the job you're filling.

Ask: Describe a project when you've had to coordinate a multitude of details. How did you approach the project?

Listen for: A detailed description; comfort in describing a specific process for managing details.

Ask: Have you had experience working in small or entrepreneurial environments before?

Listen for: Experience with family-owned small businesses or a trail of experiences working with small businesses. This question might also bring to light mismatches between your own understanding of what constitutes a small or entrepreneurial environment and what the candidate's understanding of those things includes.

Ask: Share an example of a time when you had to take the initiative, be a self-starter. How did that opportunity come about, and what did you have to do?

Listen for: How the candidate understands "taking the initiative"; whether they've got one or several examples where they contributed ideas or can demonstrate that they took a project from request to completion with the sort of supervision you're typically willing and able to provide.

Ask: Based on our discussion, how do you see the job and our company?

Listen for: Accurate interpretation rather than idealized or glamorized perception.

© Jamie S. Walters, Ivy Sea, Inc. San Francisco, CA (www.ivysea.com). Reprinted with permission. No additional reprint, distribution, or reproduction in any form without express permission or VIP membership from Ivy Sea, Inc.

DO YOU DRIVE EMPLOYEES NUTS?

Usually when we hear horror stories about a manager's behavior, we can easily and honestly say, "I'd never do that." But if you, as an organizational leader (or employee), are alienating staff members or causing frustration, stress or confusion that keeps others from giving their best to the company, wouldn't you want to know? Unless you're one of those relatively rare Certified Jerks (C.J.), wouldn't you want to do something about it?

Based on both external research and personal experience, here are several typical leader behaviors (as well as a few real doozies) that can irritate the heck out of the people with whom you work. In low-key to moderate cases, employees, and even the leaders, lose time and energy they'd rather spend making the company-and their own job-better. In the mid-range to worst case scenarios, C.J. leader behavior can result in lawsuits, worker's compensation claims, plummeting productivity, and turnover of employees you'd rather keep onboard.

Potentially destructive leader behaviors

Do as I say, not as I do. One of the things that crops up often in employee surveys is, "He tells us to do one thing, but doesn't walk his own talk." For example, if you're evangelizing about providing great customer service, but nay-say, condescend and remain inaccessible to the very staff that interacts with customers, you're providing a model you probably don't want them to emulate with customers. Make sure your own behavior is in line with your rhetoric. Demonstrate the behavior you want from employees.

Follow the Guru. If adopting the management theory du jour is routine behavior for you, it could suck the life energy right out of even the most terrific, enthusiastic employees and derail progress toward the company's goals. In competitive markets and seat-of-the-pants start-up environments, doing what worked last year or even last week isn't usually realistic. But changing strategies without adequate communication, or changing strategies without a centering vision, makes it tough for staff members to want to commit their energy on your (or the company's) behalf.

Did I say that? This is the leader who assigns a project, often with a rush deadline, then casually tells the employee, as she's submitting it as requested, that he no longer needs it. Or assigns the same task to several people without telling any of them that a coworker's also working on it. Or makes promises she conveniently forgets about once the staff member has fulfilled his part of the agreement.

Therapist-Mom (or Dad). You could easily mistake this leader's domain with group therapy at a psychologist's office, because emotional and dysfunctional behavior rule the day. A wanna-be psycho-therapist, this leader draws no guidelines between personal and professional behavior, so therapeutic personal discussions about or resulting from various dysfunctions flourish. Hugs, encounter sessions and tissue boxes are more abundant than efficiency and professionalism.

Ask, don't act. This is the leader who asks for feedback or ideas that then seem to fall into a black hole of inaction. Suggestion boxes go unanswered, brainstorm sessions yield no follow-up action, reports get filed and collect dust, and feedback yields no changed behavior. The only things that shift are employee morale and meeting participation levels, which decrease.

Master of equality. Often seen in small business and entrepreneurial environments, this leader doesn't want anyone to feel left out. He willingly shares information about all aspects of the business, from strategic plans to financial details. He's the leader who says, "I want my employees to care as much about the business as I do" and is disappointed when they don't. Sooner or later, though, he learns the Rules of the Wise Entrepreneur: 1) They who don't pay the bills and carry the risk will never care as much about the business as she who wakes up at 2:00 a.m. worrying about how to meet payroll, pay the quarterly taxes or increase revenue; and 2) even the flattest organizations have some hierarchy because not everyone wants the responsibility of a truly egalitarian environment, and someone has to make the many decisions required in a business. The buck does, in fact, stop somewhere.

Attila the Hun (or Cruella DeVille). Stories abound about men and women who reduce others to tears by screaming, hurling objects, threatening or insulting others. Entire cartoon lines and web sites have sprung forth thanks to such anecdotes. Granted, if a person allows someone treat her this way, she or he shares the responsibility. But some behavior is so unexpected, so curt, even cruel, that it catches one off-guard. Perhaps some leaders get so lost in their own insecurity or intense pressure, they lose sight of how their behavior looks and sounds to others. In the worst cases, C.J. Leaders don't care, until they get a letter from their former employee's lawyer, find themselves the subject in a nasty news headline, or lose business as a result of unhappy employees and a continual revolving door through which the best and brightest eventually escape.

Uber Geek. This leader doesn't like to be fenced in, and doesn't realize that the people who work for him don't all thrive in environments that have no structure, no policies, no job descriptions, no direction save "making cool software." After all, he's not a Suit, he's a brilliant programmer (or marketer or chef) who wants to build a cool, flat, phat, creative, egalitarian work environment. Pool tables and pinball machines abound. But while Chaos Theory rules, chaotic offices do not.

Temperamentally yours. This is the leader who thinks consistency relates only to the preferred thickness of his Fruit Smoothie. Employees never know quite what to expect from her; she's happy and chatty one minute, sullen or snappish the next. The only thing that's consistent are his mood swings! But hey, it keeps those employees guessing (and stressing). How marvelous!

© Jamie Walters