Toxic leaders can damage a team, affecting job performance, employee engagement, creativity and more. So when it is time to hire for a leadership position, such as a manager, evaluating a candidate’s interpersonal capabilities is crucial.
Harvard Business Review shares the following steps to help you avoid hiring a toxic leader.
- Identify the interpersonal requirements of the role. Before the interview, talk to the candidate’s future peers and individuals who will work closely with him or her to help you determine teamwork requirements, partnership needs and cultural expectations.
- Draft interview questions. Toxic candidates often easily answer questions about successes and strengths but have difficulty with questions about failures and others’ experiences working with them, which are questions that give the candidate the opportunity to recognize their mistakes. Ask questions that dig deeper into how candidates have handled interpersonal challenges in the past and see whether they show humility.
- Define your ideal responses. It can be easy for a candidate’s charisma to affect your decision. Before the interview, write down what an ideal response would be for each key question. Be specific about what you are looking for in the answer. It also can help to think about what a concerning answer might be so you can look for any red flags during the interview.
- Master the follow-up. When candidates describe their accomplishments or challenges, dig deeper regarding who helped them succeed and how team members felt during the process. Push for candidates to name specific people and how they helped—if they have difficulty answering, they may have a pattern of taking all the credit.
- Separate technical and interpersonal assessment. You may overlook interpersonal red flags when candidates are technically excellent. You can separate the two by assigning the technical evaluation to team members with significant expertise regarding the role’s technical demands. Then, the hiring manager can focus on interpersonal and leadership capabilities. Both sides ultimately can meet and share their evaluations to see whether the candidate is strong technically and interpersonally.
- Validate with multiple sources. One interview can catch a candidate on a good day or bad day, but multiple interviews can provide a more reliable view of the individual. Have others conduct a similar interview so you can see whether their view of the candidate aligns with yours. When checking references, ask questions addressing interpersonal concerns, such as how team members related to the candidate or whether the person would rehire the candidate.
