Great Question!

Out of the blue today I found myself in the middle of someone else's blog. Paul Hassing writes a very nice blog over on MYOB and today the topic was on interview questions. You'll find that here .

Questions are funny things. Not all questions are equal when it comes to getting down to the nuts and bolts of why you asked the question in the first place!

So what makes a good question?

The first place to go when you want a good question to ask someone else - is yourself. What purpose is there in asking the question? What is it that you really want to know? What's important about this question? What will knowing the answer give you?

Critique Your Own Questions

• What is the purpose of the questions I will ask at this interview?
• What precisely am I looking to understand by asking these questions?
• Does this question align with that purpose?
• Does this question have a trap set in it?
• Will this question put my candidate in a position where they have to guess what I want and just tell me what I want to hear?
• Is there a better way to ask this question?
• Is there a different question that would be more useful?
• I really need to know the answer to this question because... (insert answer)
• What's my objective means of measuring the responses to the questions that I ask?

How we ask questions and the quality of our questions is just one aspect. The next hurdle is in interpreting the answers that we receive.

When you ask questions that are not concrete with measurable, quantifiable, or verifiable answers then you are out in no-man's land without a compass. You have to translate that answer into something that is meaningful for you and that can leave a wide gap between what the person meant when they responded and what you thought they meant when you heard it.



Facebook Foolish

Which brings me to another issue that is more and more a factor in hiring and that is checking Facebook and social media platforms. In the same way, the information that may surface (leaving aside legalities and ethics) is subject to interpretation. Not everything that you see online is real or true and not every situation that looks bad on social platform, tells you anything about the ability of that person to show up and perform  in an excellent manner in the specific role for which they have applied.

Indeed, the worry is that many who are vetting the sites for this information may have little or no experience of the online environment and no knowledge of how to reasonably make judgment about work suitability or competency, based on irrelevant information from a completely different non working environment.

Over time we have been reminded that 'we don't know what we don't know'. Just as tricky, is separating what we assume we know, from what we just think we know.

Ask yourself if you really have done enough to know your questions are the best ones to get you the information you want to know and that this is information that you also need to know.  Make sure you are not asking a bunch of questions that don't further your purpose while failing to ask the questions that really do matter.

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Focus Before Goals

The new year is a notorius time for people to talk about resolutions and think about setting goals for the year ahead. Often people jump into thinking about goals without spending time thinking about:

1) What they want
2) What purpose it serves
3) What the potential downside might be, to getting that goal.

Which is to say, that getting one goal is not much good... if it means that the really important outcomes you want, are jeopardised by you getting that. Let me give you an example. A business goal could be, with good intentions, to reduce expenses within the company. Now if this is achieved, but at the cost of funding ongoing and systematic marketing plans for the business, then the goal can be achieved, and the health of the business be at peril, in the process.

So getting the mix right, and maintaining good ecology with setting goals and implementing a system to achieve them must have at the outset, good clearly defined parameters about what the person wants to achieve in a more global context, long before refining down to the individual goals that may be set as a means to achieve that broader outcome.

It doesn't matter whether we are setting personal goals, family goals, or goals for our business. Understanding and clearly articulating our purpose in setting our goals, can make all the difference and let us achieve just what we set out to do. By setting our goals with a consistent purpose in mind, it allows us to focus in a way that aligns our actions with our objectives, across a range of contexts. That's a healthy way to set goals, and allows more scope for really being motivated to achieve, and be happy with the results when they come.

Lindy Asimus
Business Coach & Social Media Development
Design Business Engineering
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