Wouldn’t it be great if you could walk into an interview and determine if your future boss was going to be amazing or toxic just by looking at him or her? -There is body language you should be paying attention to, but we’ll get into that later. While you can’t wave a magic wand or look into your crystal ball to help you size up your potential new boss in an interview, here are the six questions you shouldn’t leave the interview without asking.
Does your team celebrate your wins together?
The answer your potential future boss gives here will tell you about the culture on the team, and give you insight into his or her values. If there is a long pause, followed by a half-baked, vague answer, he or she was likely trying to come up with an answer that sounds like the team has chemistry or enjoys being together, but might not prioritize rewarding group efforts. Conversely, if celebrating team wins is important to your future boss, he or she will likely be able to launch into a story immediately about the last time lunch was brought in because the monthly or quarterly goal was met.
Tell me about your review process.
A long pause or a stammer when answering this question might tell you that a formalized review process does not exist, or your future boss might rather go to the dentist than go through evaluating his or her staff. A good follow up question if you’re not impressed with the answer you’re getting might be, “how are goals set and achieved with your team?”
How long have you worked with your current team?
It might not seem like it means a lot, but if your future boss can go through his or her team members one by one and give you a pretty good estimate of when they joined the team, it likely means that your future boss was really involved in the process to select team members and has invested in each one of them. If you get a vague or generic answer, you don’t want to follow up by explaining that you’ve taken to stalking the team on LinkedIn and could give fairly accurate start dates for your new potential colleagues.
If your team had to describe your management style, how would they describe it?
This one can feel uncomfortable to ask. You can soften it a little by asking if their leadership style has ever been compared to someone on television. If your future boss laughs at the question, it shows that he or she likely has a fairly good sense of humor, and you should be able to see a little bit of their personality here. Hopefully your future boss won’t tell you that he or she is often compared to Oscar the Grouch, but if that’s their answer, and they’re not joking, you might have all the information you need.
Do you have a mentor? Or is there someone you’ve molded your leadership style after?
Leaders that have mentors often value career mobility, success, and helping others. It’s not a guarantee that if your future boss has a mentor that he or she will prioritize investing in you, setting goals with you and helping you to your first promotion in the company. However, you can nearly guarantee that if he or she has a mentor they’re thinking about their own career, are likely not just on “auto pilot,” and are a HiPO (High Potential employee). Working for, or being close to a HiPO can mean you will be seen as someone to watch, and could also mean good things for your time at the company. This HiPO likely has high expectations for themselves and their team, and knowing and understanding that might help you evaluate if your values and expectations will likely align with theirs.
How do you give feedback?
If you get the same answer here as you did when you asked about reviews, vague and pause filled, it would be fair for you to be concerned. This is the person you’re going to rely on to gauge your performance and will have influence on how quickly you receive raises and more responsibility. However, if you get a great answer here you might chalk up the answer to the review question as not being aligned with the corporate review process. Your future boss is probably going to be really great at giving and receiving feedback if you get an answer like this one, “We’re a very project based team. We sit down as a group, divide up tasks, work collaboratively to solve problems that come up, and when the project is over, we sit down and do a post mortem. That’s where we give gold stars and understand where we can improve as a team next time.”
There is sadly no checklist you can use that guarantees if you ask these questions and get the “right” answers, you’ll have a great boss. But body language will tell you a lot. If your future boss sits with his or her arms crossed for most of the interview or has trouble looking you in the eye, take note of that. He or she could be just as nervous as you are, or it could mean they’re worried about hiring someone for this role because of its high turnover rate.
While these questions aren’t a surefire recipe for ensuring your potential future boss isn’t Oscar the Grouch, they will indicate to your potential future boss that you’re serious about this opportunity and you’re conducting your own assessment on how good of a fit he or she might be for you.