How Do You Identify Leaders While Recruiting?

In part one of this article we began to look at how to discover leaders during the recruiting process. Today we’ll look further. Have you ever been in a situation where you explain something to people very clearly? You ask them if they understand, they say “yes,” and then they go and do something completely different!

This is due to different ambiguity relief processes, and it’s the cause of time wasted and dysfunctional behavior that affect competency in team members who literally see very different approaches to a single objective. And when what they believe to be the right and proper “process” is not applied or they are not listened to, they lose trust and respect, creating an environment where people lose passion and begin to underachieve.

The key to applying ambiguity relief in recruitment is, as was also discussed in part one, to know who they are going to be working with. Are they going into a group of people with the SAME ambiguity relief process? Will their boss have totally opposite processes that will make them crazy? Are they (or is the team they are going into) aware of their ambiguity relief process?

Unfortunately, new candidates are often not ready; most do not have the awareness of the psychology to harness the power of others to achieve bigger objectives. In fact, the new Gen Z is not very adept at dealing with real people and their performance. This is largely due to much of their communication being with emoji and chat and expressing themselves through short videos instead of dealing with real, and sometimes uncomfortable, situations.

This is a problem being addressed by some new future-minded high schools. One of these schools, Kingsley Leadership Academy, has redefined the education structure. By selecting students according to similar values (HIVES), putting them into smaller work groups with the right emotional drive mix (Wisdom Teams), and mixing students within the team to have diverse ambiguity relief processes using the Colored Brain tool, the school purposefully creates an environment where leadership is nurtured.

Teachers in this school have been redefined to support students to teach each other. They coach students as leaders with an understanding of the psychology of group dynamics—even homework has been redefined. All work has purpose (a requirement for anyone to take on a leadership role). Homework consolidates subjects, and students put them into stories, which, at the end of the school year, become published books instead of unusable and uninteresting homework that gets thrown away.

And this brings us back to “purpose.”

Does a candidate’s own purpose, and the emotions that go with it, fit with the organization’s purpose?

Is the motivational mix of the team supporting the performance emotions (from part one of this article)?

Are the people in candidates’ future teams diverse enough with different ambiguity relief processes to provide a challenge for them to learn and achieve beyond their current perspective? And are they aware enough of their process to harness the diversity as synergy instead of conflict?

Are they set up to become the Axis Leader (from part one of this article), and is there a place for such a leader?

Finding leadership potential in candidates is not a one-focus, multi-interview thing! Just like you when you behave differently with your friends than you do with your family or at work, different environments bring out different parts of who they are.

Match the candidate with the emotional and mental processes that will bring out the leader in him or her. Make sure his or her purpose resonates with a company’s purpose, and you’ll have a WINNER!