Using Behavioral Assessments to Measure a Candidate’s Fit for a Role

Early in my career, I realized how effective behavioral assessments were. I was 22 and fresh out of graduate school when I was asked to assess an internal candidate who was a senior vice president. I had to look over her profile and provide feedback.

I remember thinking as I read her profile, “This is just about the scariest profile you could hand to a 22-year-old.”

In my assessment, I noticed she was volatile, she was probably intimidating, she didn’t listen well to others, and she didn’t accept feedback too well —all great things for a 22-year-old to have to share with somebody.

I learned two really critical things that day. One was how scarily accurate these assessment tools could be. Within the first 10 minutes of sitting down with her, I saw all these things. She was condescending, she cut me off, she raised her voice, she slammed the table. She disagreed with everything in her profile.

The second thing I learned was the power of in-the-moment feedback. I stopped her and said,

“Can I share some observations with you?”

I gave her examples of the things I saw from her at that moment, and how it affected me. It turned the session around.

She cried; she was vulnerable. We had a very open conversation, and while she was not the winning candidate, we worked on these things, and she went on to have a very successful career.

I told this story during our recent webinar with Hunt Scanlon because it typified why we use behavioral assessments: They are crucial in assembling a winning and complete executive leadership team because it's such a critical component to understanding somebody in total.

Why Leaders Fail

Not every ELT works. Harvard Business Review published a three-year study where researchers looked at more than 20,000 leaders placed into a new role in a new organization. They looked at how successful these leaders were over an 18-month period and found only about 20 percent were “successful.” Over half were “not successful.” They dug into why and found only 11 percent that failed was because of technical capabilities.

They dug deeper and found that the top three things getting in people’s ways were: not working well with others, poorly dealing with and reacting to stressful situations, and not being open to feedback.

Behavioral assessments identify how a person will act when under stress, among many other stylistic aspects. We call negative aspects “derailers.” We all have them, but they manifest in unique ways.

We need to understand a leader’s derailers because private equity is a stressful industry. When these derailers come out, how self-aware is the leader? Do they know this could get in their way? How do they self-monitor? How do they mitigate the risks?

Assessing Cultural Fit

These assessments also help us understand how a leader’s style will fit with a company culture.

For example, I once got a call from a client who needed help. The CFO was “going off the rails,” according to the CEO. The client wanted me to coach the CFO and get him back on track. I researched him and was extremely impressed with his background and experience. But in conducting interviews within the ELT, I learned they found him extremely abrasive, difficult to work with and not collaborative.

When I interviewed the CFO, I discovered he was not coachable. He had a lot of insight into his style, but he did not really see a reason to change. He felt he’d been successful to date with the way he had done things. However, it was different in this organization; his style was just not going to work with this highly relationship-driven team.

This is I think a really beautiful example of the difference between the what of leadership and the how of leadership. When we think about behavioral assessments, it’s getting at the how of leadership.

We’ll discuss the “What versus How” dynamic further in a future blog posting.

Gathering the Right Data

Behavioral assessments are nothing more than data, but it’s important to get as much data as possible on an ELT candidate to make sure we’re finding the candidate who will fit best.

We get this data from a variety of methods, but two common examples stem from interviews. We use the behavioral assessments to create very targeted interview questions that we give to our clients. Examples:

• How would you rate yourself on your ability to prioritize? Do you ever find you have taken too much on your team’s plate?
• What is your process for checking in with your team about their bandwidth and stress levels?
• Give an example of how you socialize your decision-making process with others?
• How do you mentor your team on your thought process? How do you bring them along for the journey?
• What is one example of a time you had to make a difficult decision on behalf of the organization?

Testing the Fit Hypothesis

We also do something different at Bespoke; backchannel referencing, or what we call “Deep Validation”. The behavioral assessments help us paint a picture of a candidate and their style. Now it’s time to talk to people who know the candidate and see if the assessment matches the person. I’ve done a lot of assessments where I wished I could talk to somebody to test my hypothesis and backchanneling is a key tool for doing so.

Testing the hypothesis is important because assessments are not silver bullets. As an example, I recall a profile that showed the candidate was not assertive, didn’t speak up or push back, and this was necessary for success in the role. When we talked to multiple people that had managed her, they said she actually pushes back very well. It made the client and us very comfortable that this wasn't a risk. They hired her and she's been very successful.

That’s the chief takeaway if you are considering using behavioral assessments in your next search. They let you focus on what’s important: How a leader will handle the job when it’s stressful, and how a leader will mesh with the other ELT members.

Every ELT is different, and these assessments improve the chances the private equity firm will assemble a team that will succeed.