You Don't Get to Interview Your Own Boss
“It is not only permissible to question leaders, it’s our responsibility.” -President Andrew Shepherd, as played by Michael Douglas, The American President
I was once sitting in a meeting with an HR manager talking about the interview process for a new management candidate. When I questioned the process we would be using, they replied to me, “You don’t get to interview your own boss.” And in general, they were correct. At most companies, we don’t get to interview the person who will be hired to be our next boss.
But why not? I’ll be honest and admit that in that meeting, I didn’t feel safe enough to ask that question. That in and of itself is something that I consider a big failure on my part as a leader. Even without asking, I believe there are two main reasons that can be given for not allowing people to interview their own boss.
The first is pretty simple, tradition. We don’t do it because it’s just never been done that way. That is of course a really bad reason to not do something. I personally believe that tradition is never a good enough reason to keep doing something, especially when there is a better way.
The second reason is a bit more nefarious. Some leaders have the mindset that their subordinates do not have the skill set to make the right decision or even worse, that they might purposely make a decision that is only self serving even if it was at the detriment to the company. As a quick aside — if that’s your opinion as a leader, then perhaps you should work on that or consider not being a leader. Empowering your team is so incredibly important to success and that is hard to do with the above mentioned mindset.
So if neither of those are valid reasons to not allow someone to interview a candidate that might be hired to be their next boss, then why not make that the norm? I can’t think of a single reason. But I also can’t force every company in America to get on board, so… we are at an impasse. Instead I’ll use the rest of this article to explain my experiences with my team and some ground rules I would have used if I had been hiring someone to become a manager of people.
Whenever I had an open position on my team, I would always do the following to fill it: I’d start by asking my team if they knew anyone who might be good for the position. That in and of itself saved me a ton of time and stress in having to find new employees. Recruiting is tough and if your team can help by recommending good people they know to fill roles, it can be a real lifesaver.
Once I had candidates for the position, I would interview them myself. My interview style focuses less on the person’s technical qualifications for the job and more on their personality fit for the team. In my opinion, it’s much easier to teach technical skills than to change someone’s core personality. From there, I would pick the top couple candidates and then have them meet with my team in a peer interview.
For the peer interviews, I allowed the team to talk to the candidates and see how they felt about their personalities and their competency for the job in general. Many companies now use peer interviews and that is a great step in the right direction. I believe the key to successful peer interviews are two simple things.
First, the boss should not be there. It should be a time where both the employees and the candidates can feel free to chat without supervision. Second, and this one is a little tougher, I would always tell my employees that if they had a legitimate reason that we shouldn’t hire the candidate then we wouldn’t. Even if I disagreed with them. I would always remind my team that they’d be working with the person more directly than I would, so their opinion should at least have the same weight as mine. I know that might be tough for some to swallow, but I firmly believe it is needed to build proper trust with your team.
Now back to the topic of interviewing your potential next boss… I’ve never been allowed to do that so I don’t have any direct experience — but I can tell you that in my last position, as my team was growing, I found myself making plans for the next layer of management between my team and myself. I like to be ahead of the game, so while it wasn’t something that would have happened immediately, I wanted to be prepared.
My plan, as you may have already surmised, was to follow the same interview style and allow my team to directly interview those who were applying for the position. It would have been interesting because most, if not all the candidates, would have been internal. Any awkwardness aside, I still feel like it would have been worthwhile to allow the employees the chance to have a voice in the outcome because once again, it would have had a greater impact on them than me.
Here’s why I believe this type of hiring is so crucial. Happy and successful workplaces start from the top down. And while I think it’s important for leaders to have the technical competencies to lead their team, it is even more important for the leaders to have the right personality to make the team strive for success.
As I have done in the past, I am going to end this article with a challenge. Be a driving force at your company for better interviewing practices. If you are a hiring leader, don’t just allow your team to hold peer interviews but also make sure that they have some sort of say in the process. And finally, if the leaders above you are looking to hire a new boss for you… ask to be part of the process. Be respectful and make a case for it. In the end I believe that you, your team, and even your company will be better for it.
-Jason