From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Okay, we got integrity, customer care and individual initiative. The last value we want to interview for is our people. By that, I mean respect for others, support for others, collaboration and cooperation.

Response:
Same model as the past couple of days, interviewing for an attitude, a characteristic or soft skill.

1. Identify the behavior connected to the attitude or characteristic.
2. Identify a circumstance where we might see that behavior.
3. Develop questions about the behavior.

Your description identifies some behavioral things, like collaboration, cooperation and support. That’s a good start. Your team can likely come up with more related behaviors to the value you have in mind.

Connected behaviors

• Collaboration, or cooperation on a team
• Support for another teammate
• Respect for a manager, or respect for another team mate

Behavior – Collaboration or cooperation in a team.

• Tell me about a time when you worked on a project that required multiple steps and multiple people to solve a problem?
• What was the project?
• What was the problem?
• How many steps involved?
• How many people on the project team?
• What was your role on the project team?
• To solve the problem, how did the team have to work together?
• When the team worked well together, what happened?
• When the team did not work well together, what happened?
• When the team did not work well together, what was the impact on the project?
• How did the team know when it was working well together and not so well together?
• When the team did not work well together, what did it do to start working better together? What steps were taken? What was said?

Behavior – Supporting another teammate.

• Tell me about a time when you worked on a project where another team member was taking the lead, but some team members disagreed with the work method or sequence of work?
• What was the project?
• What was the purpose (goal, objective) of the project?
• How long was the project?
• How many on the project team?
• What was your role on the project team?
• What was the leader’s role on the project team?
• What was the disagreement about?
• What words were said?
• Which side of the disagreement were you on?
• How was the situation resolved?

Behavior – Respect for a manager, or respect for another team mate.

• Tell me about a time when you worked on a project where you disagreed with the manager about a work method or sequence of work?
• What was the project?
• What was the purpose of the project?
• How long was the project?
• How many people on the project team?
• What was your role on the project team?
• What was the disagreement about?
• How did you approach the disagreement?
• What words were said?
• How was the situation resolved?

You can interview for any attitude, characteristic or soft skill, as long as you can connect it to behaviors.