Michael Lovas and Pamela Holloway

What would you do if the CEO of your firm came to you and said, “I need your help. It is imperative that we start hiring better leaders. I need you to figure out how to recognize them in an interview. Can you do it?” What would you do?

Across America and in every possible industry, companies are crying for effective leaders. But they don’t know how to find them. They don’t know what psychological characteristics make-up a leader. Do you? And even if you did, would you know how to spot it in an interview?

Across America, around the globe, organizations are pondering these questions:

How can you spot a leader?
What characteristics do they possess?
How do they think?
How do they make decisions?

The EEOC has a problem with giving a psychometric assessment to determine if someone meets a certain criteria. So, you can’t use Myers-Briggs or DISC or any of these types of instruments. So, what if you could recognize leaders by the way they talk and the things they say? What if you could read beyond the content and facts in their conversation and look deep into their minds, simply by paying attention to the way they talk? You would be significantly more effective and successful.

Let’s look at the characteristics you might want in a leader.

Vision. An ability to see into the future and spot problems and opportunities

Confidence. Not arrogance or hard-headedness, but confidence in their ability to make things happen

Energy. The energy to initiate activity and energy to keep going

Creativity. The ability to come up with different approaches to age-old problems

Goal-driven. People who focus on goals achieve them more than those who don’t.

People-focused. Leaders motivate people. The people who focus on people have the best chance of influencing them.

NOTE: This list is based in part on research conduced by Bruce Avolio, Ph.D., director of the Center for Leadership Studies at SUNY-Binghamton

The way AboutPeople finds those characteristics is by looking for “Mental Filters.” That’s the pedestrian way of referring to a specific area of psychology called “Meta Programs.” These Meta Programs are the sixty individual switches inside a person’s mind that determine how he or she filters for and uses information. Each Meta Program can be visualized as a continuum. Specific behaviors are determined (driven) by specific Meta Programs. AboutPeople refers to those driving Meta Programs as a person’s “Mental Filter configuration in a given context.”

Let's take a look at the qualities we identified above and what we might look for in an interview.

Vision. The ability to see into the future is held exclusively by people who fall on the intuitive side of the Sensor/Intuitive continuum. They talk about ideas, concepts, possibilities.

Confidence. True confidence is actually a measure of where the person’s standards for good and appropriate are set. If you can recognize where those standards are established, you will know if the person is confident or needs support and encouragement from others.

Energy. The key to this mental filter is in the initiation, and the key to recognizing it is in listening for action verbs. People initiate activity, think and speak in active verbs. Those who don’t speak about doing, jumping in, getting involved or other activities will more than likely be passive. Good leaders are not passive.

Creativity. You’ve heard the expression, “out of the box.” That refers to someone who is able to succeed in new or untested water. The Meta Program for this is called “Options.” And, it refers to someone who needs to find a new or different way to do something.

Goal-driven. People who focus on and are driven to accomplish goals will tend to achieve more goals. This Meta Program is called “Toward,” because that’s the direction they move in.

People-focused. If you compared a typical engineer and a typical HR professional, you would find that the engineer focuses on things, and the HR person focuses on people. The simple rule is, people who focus on things find it difficult to motivate other people. And, you can’t be an effective leader if you can’t motivate people.

If you want to find out more about how AboutPeople can help you attract, interview for, and select leaders, contact Pam Holloway at pam@aboutpeople.com 509.465.5599.