Russell was waiting for me in the conference room. Our discussion about interviewing had migrated to the soft stuff, the people side of things. “So, tell me,” he asked, “how can we interview for attitude?”
“Well, let’s think about attitude. How is an attitude related to a value?”
Russell thought for a minute. “Values have more staying power. Attitudes can shift sometimes, especially based on a person’s mood. You know, how some people can be fine, then all of a sudden cop an attitude over nothing?”
I nodded. “Even so, I use the same process for discovering attitudes that I do for discovering values. Remember, I cannot see a value nor can I see an attitude. I can only observe behavior. I only interview for behavior. Here is the process.
“How would a person with this attitude behave? If I can translate the attitude into a behavior, I can interview for it.
“For example, if I am looking for a person with a can-do attitude, I ask myself, how does a person with a can-do attitude behave?”
Russell piped up. “So, a person with a can-do attitude would go the extra mile.”
I smiled, “And my question will be, think of a time when you worked on a difficult project that required extra effort? Tell me about the project? What was it that required extra effort? When you discovered it would take extra effort, what did you do? Did you work alone or involve other people? What were the discussions like with others working on the project?”
When all is said and done, what I really care about is the behavior that springs from the attitude. -TF
When we are under stress, we tend to behave in a way that is more natural to us and that exposes our real us, we simply fail to keep any pretence, all superficial behavior we have had maintaining all the time just falls apart suddenly when we are confronted with a high stress situation. Therefore I agree with the selection of your question to be how he faced or behaved during a difficult situation. The real attitude will spring out right here as you said.