Sean Glaze recommends asking candidates: "What would need to happen to improve if you were in that same situation again?" After they describe a past problem, this reveals whether they take personal ownership or blame external factors. Hire the ones who point to themselves.
So what's one powerful interview question that you can ask to ensure you get the best teammates joining your organization? Well, in the midst of that conversation you're having with a candidate, you will invariably land upon talking about something that went wrong in their last role and how that was handled. And after going through and getting their explanation of what happened to make things right and how they handled the situation, you want to follow up with this powerful question: What would need to happen to improve if you were in that same situation again? And then listen, and they're going to do one of two things. They will either point at somebody or something else that needs to change, or they'll point at themselves and take ownership for what they could be better at so that that problem didn't occur or have the same level of damage. It's the people that point at themselves that you want to make sure become part of your organization. I'm Sean Glaze. That's what effective leaders do.
