The Good, the Bad, and the Funny
Thank you to Doc Campbell for all he does for the Leadership Freak community. To the best of my knowledge, he left his first comment on this young blog in March of 2010. He’s been adding value to others through his comments and generous support and encouragement ever since. Today, he’s adding value with a guest article and a series of three lively questions. I invite you to take a moment and integrate your experiences.
The Good, the Bad, and the Funny
As noted in the 9/1/10 Leadership Freak questions, people can benefit from failures or negative experiences. Certainly we seem to more vividly remember the negative events and they are rich opportunities for development and growth. How do we integrate positive and negative experiences to benefit future efforts?
Behavior-Based Questions
When interviewing prospective employees, there are a number of behavior-based questions. One sequence that we have used is: “Tell us something you are very proud of or a success you have had” (This is left open-ended to see if the interviewee identifies a personal or professional event. If personal comes up, the question may be repeated with professional experience.)
The follow up question is, “what did you learn from that experience?” This may identify what has been internalized, how the person may have perceived locus of control, etc.
The 3rd piece of the series is, “what are you doing now as a result of that experience?”
After a few other questions, the reverse of the earlier question is asked, “Tell us about a time where your interaction did not go well, that was a disappointment or negative.” Same two follow up questions need to be asked. They seem to often show blaming versus learning, owning a mistake or failure. Reframing or ensuring there is a professional experience detailed is important.
“Interview” Questions for the LF Community:
As a leader, what is your most positive outcome/experience that you are proud of?
What did you learn from it?
And what are you doing now as a result?
As a leader, what was your most negative experience that impacted you?
What did you learn from it?
And what are you doing now as a result?
As a leader, what is your funniest experience?
Any learnings?
Doing anything as a result?
I like to use similar questions, but worded slightly different.
1- What was your greatest success? Followed by what did you learn?
2- What was your greatest failure? Followed by what did you learn?
Dan, thanks for the blog. I look forward to reading it and gaining a nugget or two. Howie
Howie,
Thanks for jumping in with your questions. Thanks also for an encouraging word. I appreciate it.
Cheers,
Dan
Dear Dan,
The proudest moments and the most negative moments show your vision, goal and personality. They also reveal your strengths and weaknesses. These questions also reveals your personality and character as a whole.
My best moments are those when I get success what I try for. And the negative moments are those when I see people behave selfishly and do not help others in need. I enjoy all the moments with joy and happiness. Even in the case of unexpected outcome or circumstances I enjoy and look something positive in that. I never force too much of my expectation but make honest effort to achieve my goal. In general, when I see and meet people with honest and transparent behavior, I feel happy and when I see people blaming and creating conspiracy to achieve their goal, I do not feel good. I truly love the people who beat against odd circumstances and achieve what they want. However, I do not like people sitting idle and planning a lot of thing but doing nothing.
I strongly believe in efforts and actions and meeting promises in time. That is the key to success.
Great questions. I am taking a stab at answering. More “therapy by blog comment”:
As a leader, what is your most positive outcome/experience that you are proud of? It surprised me that my staff felt this way, but I worked with them over a period of months to craft a policy/procedures related to “custody” – when divorced parents each apply for Healthy Kids on behalf of their child, we have to sort out who to place the account under (harder than it sounds). The process felt like watching paint dry to me, and I struggled to incorporate many different opinions and turn it into something that would work. Much later (like a year or two) when that staff was asked what they were proud of, for many of them it was the custody procedure.
What did you learn from it? That if you involve people in a process from the ground up, they are very invested in it and proud to have been integrally involved.
And what are you doing now as a result? The main thing is trying to remember how crucial it is to involve people in new processes. Even if they don’t personally DO something as part of that process, if it is going to affect them, they should be aware of it.
As a leader, what was your most negative experience that impacted you? I allowed myself to frame one of my subordinates in a very negative light, based on the opinion of my Executive Director. I colored him with the negative brush from the get-go. He could do nothing right. Ultimately, he was fired from our organization. I think the individual did have some serious issues as an employee, BUT I think in retrospect I should have tried harder as his supervisor to see the positive as well as the negative. He must have felt/known he was a target for being dismissed long before it actually happened, and his behaviors as a result (coming in late, long lunches, generally snubbing the rules of the office) gave the complete wrong impression to coworkers who were expected to be on time and be productive.
What did you learn from it? That if your leadership has come to subjective conclusions about a staff member and is not making concrete efforts to resolve those, your organization may have a serious dysfunction.
And what are you doing now as a result? I make a conscious effort not to join in when “office opinions” of individuals are perpetuated. I’m not perfect on this, but I seriously try to be aware of it. Now that my peers are supervising people I used to supervise, I try to encourage them to be objective in dealing with these subordinates.
As a leader, what is your funniest experience? I am drawing a blank; a few of the stories aren’t LF community-appropriate. 🙂
Any learnings? I think I have referred to those above.
Doing anything as a result? I hope that all my experiences inform my writing. I love to write, and hope that by the written word I can help influence leaders and followers alike.
Since in my post, I didn’t respond to the questions, I will take advantage of that option now…
What is something you are proud of? Being part of a team that tackled a challenging, negative perspective and changing that culture…over the course of 2 years.
I learned we needed all of the champions, change cadre meetings, tools and process mapping to identify gaps, opportunities, resistance, entrenchment, false perceptions, and many 2 am and 3 am emergent presence events to help through the crises. Hard, hard work.
The reward was having a customer ask why other places aren’t doing what we are doing and that customer said she will never go anywhere else. As a result, the teams I serve do detailed perspectives of processes, contingency planning, celebration of successes, and try to maintain that constant learning mantra.
One negative experience, very early in my career, helped me to see systems, leadership and hierarchy for good and bad. While advocating for a customer service, I had a middle manager flat out say, ‘no, no, no.’ Even pointing out that it was not about the manager or me, but the customer did not get that person to budge. The customer lost out and that the manager and I missed that opportune moment to collaborate, which impacted future interactions as well.
I learned that I needed many more tools. I also learned getting in a negative emotional frame does not help negotiations either. As a result, I work toward building networks, keep building my collaboration skills, and check my emotions at the door.
Funniest experience…yesterday I was doing a very ‘happy dance’ because we had finished interviewing 32 people and hired someone excellent. It was witnessed by those I work with. Fine with me, if you aren’t fun, why do it?
Dear Doc firstly I would add to Dan’s comment that i have always enjoyed your engagement and perspective and humour in contributing to this community. thank you.
Worst experience – people not being trusted (including myself)
Learning – if people can’t trust you, get another job
Best experience – people being trusted, with an expectation to perform
Learning – if you are trusted, honour that trust and do perform your socks off. It is the most rewarding process around (a virtuous cycle).
Funniest experience – OK seriously heres the most embarrasing: I was at a client dinner one night, busy talking to someone across the table to my left,simultaneously I reached for the salad bowl at my right without looking fully, at the same time the wife of the boss from the client company who was sitting to my right, rose from her seat leaning forward as she did so. My hand ended up…well…inside the top of her dress (no further detail required). I nearly died.
what did i learn – never trust anyone!!!
Thanks Doc,
I think the most important part of any question about a person’s experience is “What did you learn from it?”
I constantly ask this if myself and others. Without internalising and thinking about what we’ve learned from the past there is no progress and we’re condemned to make the same mistakes over and over.
Dan, thanks for inviting Doc to post !
Cheers !
Eric
@ericjacques