The only three true job interview questions are:

1.  Can you do the job?
2.  Will you love the job?
3.  Can we tolerate working with you?

That’s it.  Those three.  Think back, every question you’ve ever posed to others or had asked of you in a job interview is a subset of a deeper in-depth follow-up to one of these three key questions.  Each question potentially may be asked using different words, but every question, however it is phrased, is just a variation on one of these topics: Strengths, Motivation, and Fit.

Can You Do the Job? – Strengths

Executive Search firm Heidrick & Struggles CEO, Kevin Kelly explained to me that it’s not just about the technical skills, but also about leadership and interpersonal strengths.  Technical skills help you climb the ladder.  As you get there, managing up, down and across become more important.

You can’t tell by looking at a piece of paper what some of the strengths and weaknesses really are…We ask for specific examples of not only what’s been successful but what they’ve done that hasn’t gone well or a task they they’ve, quite frankly, failed at and how they learned from that experience and what they’d do different in a new scenario.

Not only is it important to look at the technical skill set they have…but also the strengths on what I call the EQ side of the equation in terms of getting along and dealing or interacting with people.

Will You Love the Job? -Motivation

Cornerstone International Group CEO, Bill Guy emphasizes the changing nature of motivation,

…younger employees do not wish to get paid merely for working hard—just the reverse: they will work hard because they enjoy their environment and the challenges associated with their work…. Executiveswho embrace this new management style are attracting and retaining better employees.

Can We Tolerate Working With You? – Fit

Continuing on with our conversation, Heidrick’s Kelly went on to explain the importance of cultural fit:

A lot of it is cultural fit and whether they are going to fit well into the organization…  The perception is that when (senior leaders) come into the firm, a totally new environment, they know everything.  And they could do little things such as send emails in a voicemail culture that tend to negatively snowball over time.  Feedback or onboarding is critical.  If you don’t get that feedback, you will get turnover later on.

He made the same point earlier in an interview with Smart Business, referencing Heidrick’s internal study of 20,000 searches.

40 percent of senior executives leave organizations or are fired or pushed out within 18 months. It’s not because they’re dumb; it’s because a lot of times culturally they may not fit in with the organization or it’s not clearly articulated to them as they joined.

Preparing for Interviews

If you’re the one doing the interviewing, get clear on what strengths, motivational and fit insights you’re looking for before you go into your interviews.

If you’re the one being interviewed, prepare by thinking through examples that illustrate your strengths, what motivates you about the organization and role you’re interviewing for, and the fit between your own preferences and the organization’s Behaviors, Relationships, Attitudes, Values, and Environment (BRAVE).  But remember that interviews are exercises in solution selling.  They are not about you.

Think of the interview process as a chance for you to show your ability to solve the organization and interviewer’s problem. That’s why you need to highlight strengths in the areas most important to the interviewers, talk about how you would be motivated by the role’s challenges, and discuss why you would be a BRAVE fit with the organization’s culture.

There are several components of this including positioning yourself for a leadership role, selling before you buy, mapping and avoiding the most common land mines, uncovering hidden risks in the organization, role, and fit, and choosing the right approach for your transition type.

A young woman I know is a star. In her early thirties, she had an M.B.A. and was already running a small division of a successful fashion company. She had that rare combination of design sense and business savvy that makes a virtuoso fashion executive.

The owner of her company noticed. And when the company’s president left, the owner tapped my friend for the job.

She had her doubts. In the job, she would be more disconnected from the design work she loved and she would be focused far more on finances and doing deals. More than anything, she would have to manage the owner who was temperamental. That wasn’t really her forte or interest.

On the other hand, what an opportunity! And honor! It would look amazing on her résumé, the money was great, and to be president at this young age? How could she turn it down?

So she took the job.

The first few months were grueling, but she expected that. What she didn’t expect is that it wouldn’t get better. She mastered the finances – and even enjoyed that part – but the politics of her relationship with the owner were sapping her energy. Things began to slip through the cracks. The designs began to sell less well. And the owner was becoming increasingly tense and erratic.

Within a few years, she left the job and the company.

If you think about it, the entire outcome was predictable.

We all have a sweet spot where everything seems to flow; where we feel happy, competent, in sync with everything around us, uniquely talented, and predictably successful. It feels like magic, but it’s not: It’s the intersection of our strengths, weaknesses, passions, and differences.

My friend, in taking the job, veered from her sweet spot.

The scenario is not uncommon. Of more than 10,000 people who have taken a productivity quiz on my website, a full 72% admit to doing work they neither excel at nor enjoy.

That’s a mistake. We should plan our work and our lives so that we operate in that intersection. Outside it? Chances are we’ll fail. We might succeed at first, but it won’t be sustainable.

So why do we ever leave our sweet spot? Sometimes, it’s because we want to learn. One of the reasons my friend took the position was to get experience running her own business.

But there’s another temptation at play: ego. A new job sounds impressive and the external rewards and recognition are significant, so we think we should take it, even when we might know in our gut it’s not the right fit.

A few years ago, I was asked to sit on the board of a non-profit. I was honored and I accepted. After a few meetings though, my enthusiasm started to wane. I liked the organization and I liked the people on the board, but I didn’t care enough to devote real time to it. It wasn’t something I was passionate enough about and it required that I be a strong fundraiser, definitely a weakness of mine. In other words, it failed two out of four of my sweet spot criteria.

Here’s the crazy thing: A year later, they asked me to be president of the board, and I accepted again. I lasted a year.

So, why did I accept? I’m embarrassed to say that, mostly, I liked the idea of being president of the board, even though the role took me out of my sweet spot.

At first glance, you might think the dilemma of seduction could be solved by being clear about what you want versus what other people what from you. That would be a fairly easy distinction to sort out.

But it’s more complicated than that. In fact, the dilemma is entirely within us: It’s between what we want and what we think we should want, which is hard to distinguish.

Still, in the midst of that complexity, there’s a simple way to assess an opportunity. Next time you’re given an “offer you can’t refuse,” ask yourself if it will place you squarely in your sweet spot. If it won’t, you know what to do.

As for my friend? She eventually started her own company. She works on the designs herself, which she loves, and is very close to the marketing, promotions and finances. And politics? Very little.

The company is successful, of course. She’s in her sweet spot.

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

[Via WSJ]

Business schools and universities of the UK are considered among the best in the world for their quality of education and their ability to help their students secure good careers. With the recent trend of moving to the UK for higher studies growing ever so fast, I thought it would be nice to share some authentic UK business school rankings for 2011 after we did a post on top 5 business schools in Pakistan.

The Guardian recently released its university rankings for 2011. However, I differ with their rankings slightly and have rearranged the list to rank the business schools based on the criteria of “Job after 6 months” from the top 20 business schools as for me this is the most important consideration in these tough economic times when you want to know if the money is worth spending.

List of top 10 business schools in the UK

The following list (Guardian’s rankings) features only the top 10 business schools in the UK. However, the detailed list can be found here.

This was the fourth day of our five days together, and we were swirling in chaos. There were almost thirty of us in a small room as part of Ann Bradney’s leadership workshop I wrote about last week.

Sara* was on the floor, cradling the arm and leg she had broken several months earlier, feeling broken herself, crying as she thought about her son who died five years ago. A few feet away from her, Angelo stood with his hands on his chest, also crying, immersed in his experience of alienation from his mother. Across the room, Zoe was huddled with her sister, Chloe, as they felt the pain of losing their own mother and confronted their fear of losing each other.

As I looked around the room, I saw two or three other people scattered about, each struggling with deep emotions of loss, fear, anger, and sadness. The noise was disorienting. People were crying, laughing, shouting, hugging, and comforting each other, all at the same time. It was completely out of control.

Just like life itself.

We were a microcosm of the world and of every organization I’ve ever known. Not just the pain, though that certainly exists wherever we’re brave enough to look, but the multiplicity of activity. The variety of individuals and groups, each occupied, engulfed even, by their own concerns, needs, and desires.

To top it off, we had only one established leader, Ann, to manage the mayhem. It was an impossible job. She couldn’t be in seven places at once. She couldn’t support each of the people who needed her. She had set herself up to fail.

Which, it eventually dawned on me, was her plan all along.

Ann didn’t just let the chaos happen by accident. She welcomed it. Because the perfect ingredient to draw out leadership is exactly the one most of us, including leaders, fight so hard to avoid: overwhelm.

Leaders like to be in control. I know that’s true for me. I want things to turn out right and I feel — often mistakenly — that if I have control over them, they will.

But here’s the thing: the more control I have over something, the less room there is for other people to step into their own leadership. If Ann didn’t need the help, many of us would have sat back watching, happy to let her lead.

When I took a bird’s eye view of the room, I saw that there were only six, maybe seven, people who needed help at that moment. The rest of us, close to twenty, were in a physical, psychological, and emotional place where we could offer help.

But it’s hard to offer help, to step into your own leadership. It requires tremendous courage. You have to risk being wrong, overstepping your bounds, and standing alone.

Which is why we needed a nudge.

So Ann created a situation that she couldn’t possibly handle by herself, and people stepped up. One participant, Janice, went over to Zoe and Chloe, the two sisters, and spoke softly to them. Another participant, Holly, sat next to Sara, who was mourning the loss of her son and held her. And I went over to Angelo, who looked up at me for a moment and then fell into my arms crying.

It’s not that Janice, Holly, and I were the leaders in the workshop. The day before, it was me who was crying, and Angelo who did the comforting. But on this day, in this moment, we were in a position to reach out.

Designing chaos into a process is the antithesis of what most leaders do. Usually, we try to focus on one thing at a time. One objective, one concept, one conversation, one task.

But in real life, in real organizations, nothing happens one thing at a time. And no one can be on top of it all. At one point, one of the participants accused Ann of allowing too much bedlam. Ann’s response was swift and emphatic:

“No. People want to make the leader the one who sees and knows everything. I am just a human being. I can’t see everything. I can’t know everything. I make mistakes. When you make me more than human, you can bring me down while refusing to take responsibility or any risk. Step into your leadership now.”

But wait a second. It sounds great but what if everyone in an organization stepped into their own leadership? What if everyone followed his own impulse? Wouldn’t that lead to anarchy?

Maybe. It depends on the strength of their organization’s container. How clear is the mission of the organization? The vision? The values? The culture? If we know what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, what’s important to us, and how we operate, then there will be trust, focused action, and abundant, unified leadership. If not, there will be anarchy.

But if the container isn’t strong, there will be anarchy anyway. Because, no matter how much leaders would like to, they just can’t control everything. And trying to control the uncontrollable just makes things worse. People check out. They feel no ownership. They work the minimum. And things fall through the cracks.

Here’s the hard part: leading without controlling. Stepping into your own leadership while leaving space for others to step into theirs as well.

If you find yourself still wanting to control it all, try saying “yes” to everything until you’re overwhelmed and can’t possibly deliver. So overwhelmed that, like Ann, you will fail to be on top of it all.

If that happens, then, like Ann, you will grow leaders around you. Your failure will prevent others from making you more than human. It will encourage them to take responsibility and risks. To step into their own leadership.

And if, on a particular day, you feel good, grounded, and strong, with a little extra energy, then look around for someone else who is overwhelmed and reach out to help. Take the risk to lead.
*Names have been changed

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

(Via HBR)

I started my career as an entrepreneur at twenty-four years old, right out of college. I ultimately built and sold a $250 million global scrap metal company, an experience I wrote about in my book Starting from Scrap.

After my book came out, I visited several U.S. business schools and met with MBA students to talk about my experiences launching a company in emerging markets. Many of the students who came to hear me speak were aspiring entrepreneurs in the process of getting MBAs. Many of them asked similar questions: “You didn’t get an MBA, nor did many other successful entrepreneurs, so if I want to start my own company, is business school a worthwhile experience? Is it worth paying all this tuition — or will my degree just be a resume-builder?”

I once had a conversation about this topic with Dr. John Yang, the dean of the Beijing International MBA program at Beijing University. Here’s what he had to say: “In my opinion, entrepreneurship is a matter of the heart, and education is a matter of the brain. It is difficult to teach a heart.”

I share his perspective. By definition, an entrepreneur is one who takes risk. It’s an attitude and an appetite, one which may be hardwired into one’s personality. Education can influence one’s attitude toward risk: for instance, understanding the principle of diversification or the long-term returns of equities versus bonds may make an investor more willing to create a “riskier” stock portfolio. But ultimately, can you teach someone to really enjoy taking risks? I don’t think you can.

When I think about the value of an MBA for aspiring entrepreneurs, I see a parallel with the military. Countries spend billions of dollars training soldiers so they’ll be ready for combat — they’re taught to fire rifles and operate in simulated high-pressure situations. But that training only goes so far. A Marine colonel once told me that he never knows how a soldier will respond — whether he’ll hide in his foxhole, run in the other direction, or stand and fight as he’s been trained #8212; until the bullets start flying. How someone reacts in times of great stress relies largely in instincts and the makeup of his or her personality — and training only takes you so far.

The same is true with entrepreneurship. Understanding strategy, finance and marketing can be very helpful. But it’s also important to possess self-confidence, a need for independence, energy and passion, curiosity, and an ability to communicate ideas. If you don’t have these natural assets, you’ll struggle as an entrepreneur.

I’m lucky, because those are personal attributes that I have. I don’t have an MBA, but I’ve picked up many of the business skills I needed during more than 15 years running a company. (My grandfather referred to me as having an MBA from the School of Hard Knocks, whose official colors are black and blue — an expensive education that makes Harvard Business School appear inexpensive by comparison). Many of the lessons I learned from those tough and painful experiences I might have learned in an MBA program — and if I’d learned them earlier, my company might have been even more successful.

If I’d understood the use and importance of financial and inventory controls, I could have prevented millions of dollars in fraud. Perhaps studying cases about companies that had grown too fast and lost control of both their finances and the quality of their products would have encouraged me to expand at a more sober pace. We wasted years trying to re-organize after over-expanding and perhaps missed countless opportunities in the process. I could have saved or made a lot more money had I taken some courses in business law or venture capital financing. (We ended up getting strong armed by our investors, and they got away with it due to our early-stage naiveté.) I also would have benefited if I’d known more about human resources and the need for well-designed compensation and incentive systems. These are just a few of the tools you can get in business school — and they’re all tools I wished I’d had.

So I believe MBA programs do give future entrepreneurs valuable tools to help them mitigate risk and increase the probabilities of success. But even with those tools, only you know whether or not you have the heart to execute on the opportunities we all recognize to launch a compelling new business. That is when the real bullets start flying.

About the Author

Stephen Greer is a senior advisor at Oaktree Capital and author of Starting from Scrap.

[Via HBR]

“Ugh!” I put my hands on my head and looked away from my computer at the ceiling. “I can’t do this! It’s just not coming out right!”

My wife, Eleanor, looked over sympathetically from the desk next to mine; she knew how hard I had been working. I was preparing for a TEDx talk I was scheduled to give in Flint, Michigan and although I was somewhere around version 25 of my speech, I was still dissatisfied.

I love the idea behind TED: you have 18 minutes to talk about an idea worth sharing. Lots of well-known people have given fascinating talks and I felt honored to be invited to offer mine. I also felt tremendous pressure to make it a great speech.

I had been asked to focus on “learning:” a good thing because I have lots to say, but a bad thing because I have lots to say. If I had eight hours to speak I could have done it off the cuff. But 18 minutes? Which one of my ideas is important enough, interesting enough, and matters to me enough to choose? And once I chose one, how should I present it so it’s engaging, funny, clever, clear and creative? All in 18 minutes?

On top of that, every TED speaker is video taped, with three cameras, and the talks are posted on the web. Which is wonderful if my talk goes well. But if it doesn’t? If it’s a disaster? There will be no escape.

I wanted it to be perfect. So I had cordoned off a significant amount of time over several weeks to write and practice my talk.

I should know better.

When I try to make something perfect, it’s almost a guarantee that I’ll over-think it. Which means I’ll spend too much time spinning with too little progress. Hence version 25.

On some level, over-thinking is part of the process of taking on bigger challenges. I remember my first paper as an undergraduate at Princeton. It was a small, ungraded, one-page reaction paper to a reading assignment in a religion class. I pulled an all-nighter.

But over-thinking is rarely helpful, increases stress, takes a tremendous amount of time, and never produces a better product.

I cleared my schedule for two weeks — not even writing my usual blog posts — so I could focus completely on the speech. A big mistake.

While it takes a lot of time to work on something creative, it can’t be accomplished all at once. Creativity needs to percolate over time. After a few focused hours in a day, my productivity declined rapidly.

So what happened to all those hours I had cordoned off to focus on the speech? I couldn’t possibly spend them all working on the speech. But, it turns out, I could spend a surprising amount of them stressing about the speech.

Why didn’t I spend my time on other important tasks? This doesn’t make rational sense, but I think, somehow, that would have been an acknowledgment that I wasn’t spending my time where I thought I should have been: working on the speech. So, instead of doing valuable work, I took long breaks, distracting myself with the internet and food. Crazy, but there you have it.

Others tried to support me by telling me not to worry. I’m a natural at it and I’ll be great. I give speeches all the time and I should just do what I always do: be myself.

But those thoughts just increased the pressure because they reminded me of the expectation that the speech be really, really great.

So what should we do when we’re under pressure to deliver on a big challenge?

For me, two things were most helpful.

1. I ran out of time. I had two weeks. Then one week. Then three days. That’s when my productivity kicked up. There’s a saying: if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. Another way to think about it: If you want to get something done, become a busy person. Don’t empty your schedule, fill it. The busier you are, the less time you have to get in your own way. I should have cordoned off a few hours each day and filled everything else with work I considered important.
2. I changed my expectations. One morning, a few days before the speech, I found a note on my computer, left by Eleanor. She told me the speech might not end up being that great. But in the big picture, it wouldn’t make a huge difference. Surely it would be good. And if not that, then at least OK. Which, ultimately, would be just fine. Once I read that, something shifted in me. I stopped trying so hard. I stopped trying to be funny, smart, clever, or creative. I stopped trying to talk about the three most important things. I stopped trying to make this my best talk ever. Instead, I set a goal I knew I could achieve: talk about one thing — not necessarily the thing, just something that was meaningful to me — and talk about it simply and passionately.

Life is a process and while one stellar moment — be it a success or a failure — can make a difference, it’s far more likely that the steady production of many adequate moments over a significant period of time will make a much bigger difference.

In my next blog post, I’m going to discuss my process for getting to the final version of my speech. The video is not posted on the web yet, but once it is, I’ll include a link so you can decide for yourself what you think.

It may not be great. But, hopefully, you’ll find it good enough.

About the Author

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults on leadership. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

(Via HBR)

Two things need to happen to create a success formula:

1.  YOU need to know your skills
2.  You need to link up with OTHERS with the skills to provide what you lack

No matter how excellent you are at what YOU do – it is the things that you don’t do/can’t do well enough that give your competitors an advantage which could threaten your future success.

Tough talk then?

Here’s a basic walk through some of the combination of skills a business owner needs (one way or another: own or outsourced):

• Leadership, strategy & planning
• Communications, people management & motivation
• Financial planning, forecasting, budgeting, cash flow, accounting & money management
• Customer service & customer care skills
• Hiring (and firing) & HR
• Research, legislation & legals
• Sales, marketing & PR
• Social media: creation & use of

It’s quite a list then and as a solopreneur or owner of a Small Business you are unlikely to be skilled in all of these areas!  To make a success at what you do and earn your living from, it is important to have a realistic understanding of your personal strengths.

Strengths are activities/tasks you are good at and enjoy.

Your weak spots are those activities/tasks you find a challenge and don’t enjoy.

This level of self awareness is vital for your future success and quite often your business is only as strong as the strongest aspect of your weak spots!

Your weak spots are simply lesser strengths, not negatives.

To be successful you need to play more to your strengths.

Food for thought?  If this hit a nerve it’s time you audited what your strengths are .. for starters.

[Via EBA]