“What makes your workplace stand out?” It’s a common question from job candidates, and chances are good that you respond with “the people.”
When searching for a new job, nonprofit professionals will often assess an organization’s culture, values, and people in addition to the role and its responsibilities. That’s because colleagues have a huge impact on whether we enjoy our work and can collaborate with those around us. Co-workers also affect how well we deal with the stress of having too much to do and too little time to do it.
Employees in a supportive work environment can bounce back quickly from difficult moments, writes Jamil Zaki in “Making Empathy Central to Your Company Culture” in the Harvard Business Review. “Empathic workplaces tend to enjoy stronger collaboration, less stress, and greater morale.”
“Empathy is contagious,” writes Zaki, “people ‘catch’ each other’s care and altruism.”
How can we foster empathy at our organizations? When hiring, search for candidates who have high emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is defined by the Institute for Health and Human Potential as the ability to “recognize, understand and manage our own emotions” and “recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others.” In other words, emotional intelligence is an awareness of how emotions can drive our behavior and affect those around us. Many of the competencies top-performing professionals possess involve emotional intelligence, states a report the institute produced.
Hiring managers can foster an empathetic — and ultimately more high-performing — work environment by considering candidates’ emotional intelligence when making hiring decisions.
How to Identify People With Emotional Intelligence
In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman lays out five key traits one must possess to be emotionally intelligent: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill.
To help understand each characteristic and assess a candidate’s emotional intelligence in a job interview, here are brief definitions of each trait and questions that can reveal a person’s facility with each.
Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand one’s own emotions and their effect on others. It’s often displayed through self-confidence and realistic self-assessment.
- What are your top three strengths?
- What are your top three weaknesses?
- How would your friends or co-workers describe you (positive and not so positive attributes)?
- Tell me about your biggest failure related to [skill].
These questions aim to uncover whether an interviewee understands his emotions, motivations, and values and his strengths and limitations. Seek candidates who are comfortable offering frank commentary and willing to take responsibility for their actions. Self-aware candidates possess self-confidence that comes from understanding their talents and being able to evaluate difficult situations objectively.
Self-regulation is the ability to control one’s emotions and impulses, to suspend judgment and think before acting. Hallmarks of this trait are trustworthiness, integrity, comfort with ambiguity, and openness to change.
- Can you tell me about a time when you felt that a manager or co-worker wronged you and what you did about it?
- Can you give me an example of when you disagreed with a co-worker’s idea or decision and what you did about it?
- Tell me about a day when everything went wrong. How did you handle it?
Listen for clues about how the interviewee handles negative emotions and whether she can cope when things don’t go as planned. For example, did the interviewee move past negative emotions toward conflict resolution? Did she identify and manage emotions and seem to handle the situation objectively?
Motivation is a passion for work for reasons that go beyond monetary compensation or status. It’s a person’s propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence. Motivation is manifested in a drive to achieve, optimism, and commitment to an organization.
- Can you tell me about a time when you took initiative at work?
- How do you approach a task you’ve never done before?
- How did you use any extra time you had available at your last job?
- Everyone has good and bad days at work. Think back to a really good day you had and tell me why it was a good day.
Highly emotionally intelligent candidates tend to be transparent and realistic about their strengths and limitations. Look for candidates who aren’t afraid to ask for help and are driven to better themselves by collaborating with others.
Empathy is the ability to understand other people’s emotions and adjust one’s interaction with others according to their emotional reaction. Empathy includes sensitivity to different cultures, an ability to help others hone their skills, and skill at retaining top performers.
- What do you do when someone comes to you with a problem?
- How can you tell whether your co-worker is feeling supported?
- If you were in my position, what skills do you think would be the most important to the role you’ve just applied for?
- Describe a time when you had to deliver difficult news. How did you go about it?
These questions will help you understand if an interviewee can understand, reason with, and properly balance people with conflicting perspectives. Emotionally intelligent candidates can listen carefully to a problem, ask insightful questions, and make a thoughtful recommendation on how to address the issue.
Social skill is the ability to build and manage relationships. People who can lead others into change, be persuasive, and efficiently build and lead teams demonstrate this trait.
- Tell me about a time you had a difficult working relationship with a colleague. What was the challenge, how did you address the situation, and what did you learn from the experience?
- If you’ve previously reported to multiple supervisors at the same time, how did you get to know each person’s preferences and juggle conflicting problems?
- How would you simplify a complex issue to explain it to a client, donor, or colleague?
These questions seek to understand how the interviewee interacts with others, specifically how the interviewee resolves conflicts while still maintaining working relationships. Is the candidate good at handling other people’s emotions? Can the candidate read social cues to inform decisions? When faced with communication challenges, can the candidate adjust his communication style to meet the needs of the audience?
By asking the right questions and listening closely to the responses, you can hire emotionally intelligent people and create an empathetic workplace.
Kris McFeely is director of executive search at Campbell & Company, a consulting firm that works exclusively with nonprofits.
