Q&A With Dan Fisher, Ph.D. Getting Candidates To Tell the Truth

How can you tell when a job candidate is not telling the truth? Unfortunately, there's no easy answer. Many people are "masters of deception" in the workplace, creating illusions that appear to be real -- until they are caught. Daniel R. Fisher, a member of the WJM Associates faculty, is a licensed New York State psychologist who received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has provided personality and leadership assessment to senior executives at many of the country's top corporations. His pre-hire assessments provide critical insights into how individual applicants are likely to perform in specific positions and cultures.

Businesses are placing great emphasis today on honesty, ethics and personal integrity. How easy or difficult is it to accurately assess the trustworthiness of candidates for executive positions?

It's a challenge, to be sure. Individuals may consciously try to deceive or impress in a manner different from how they understand they really are, or they may actually believe they are one way when, in fact, they're quite different. Someone who is actually quite unethical and/or ineffective in leading others may describe himself as a very ethical and very effective leader.

Is that self-denial?

Yes, insofar as individuals may have extremely poor self-awareness or understanding of how they really are. This may be due to specific psychological defense mechanisms shielding them from a more realistic understanding of themselves, or it could be from other general limitations in their self-awareness. People tend to overestimate how trustworthy they themselves are rather than underestimate. We are prone to rationalizing why we don't follow through on promises or violate justifiable rules.

What techniques can hiring managers and others use to gauge trustworthiness in candidates?

Besides getting solid, candid feedback from the candidate's previous employers, the best way is to ask candidates to provide specific historical data and to go back and check and see if it's actually true. If they're lying to you in the interview, which is not uncommon, that's an indication of someone who doesn't have a problem about not telling the truth at work who would engage in similar types of behavior.

How useful are assessment tools at predicting trustworthiness?

They are not bad, but highly intelligent candidates who are savvy about testing might know how to respond to self-report test questions in such a manner that they impress as more trustworthy than they actually are. The 16PF questionnaire, which is a commonly employed assessment tool, identifies a number of personality traits, including "rule-consciousness" and its opposite, "expediency." It gives an indication of people 's tendencies to adhere to or stray from stated values and morals, and can help identify individuals who would follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law.

So one way to identify trustworthiness is to see if people tend to be more rule-conscious than expedient?

That's one factor, but you could have people who overlook certain bureaucratic rules in order to get things done, but are extremely ethical and would be unlikely to violate their values and traditional social mores. They would be willing to sidestep some processes and push things through, because that's the only way things will get done in a dysfunctional bureaucratic system, but they would restrain themselves from violating more serious ethical codes and mores.

How the environment elicits behavior is also very important. If corporate culture reinforces ethical behavior, it's more likely to elicit trustworthiness.

What can interviewers do to get a sense of how trustworthy executive candidates might be?

I like to ask candidates about their own personal honesty and trustworthiness. Particularly on a pre-hire assessment, people are not going to tell you that they are dishonest, but it's important to get them to first tell you how much they value honesty. Then talk to them about other people, and how honest they think others are. Oftentimes, individuals who are highly vigilant and suspicious may be dishonest themselves. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but it's a flag to look at further.

You could ask candidates about attribution for dishonesty. If people tend to rationalize why others are dishonest, they themselves may be a little more inclined to forgive themselves for being dishonest. You also could explore how severely punished they think someone should be for not being truthful and trustworthy. If candidates are particularly lenient, that's another potential flag of someone who is less likely to be trustworthy.

Finally, it's useful to try to get candidates to explain their personal understanding of honesty and trustworthiness. You're looking for a sophisticated understanding. You're looking to see if they are able to appreciate situational contexts and at the same time maintain moral reasoning that is not fast and loose.

The manager who gives subordinates feedback without creating developmental action plans to help them improve their job performance, competencies or behaviors is like a physician who diagnoses a medical problem without prescribing a remedy or treatment.

In either case, nothing is likely to change.

You cannot expect people to modify their behavior or improve their competencies without help, and a developmental plan provides just that -- a structured approach to personal change.

Developmental plans also serve another function: they hold employees accountable. How can you measure improvement if you don't have a written plan that spells out what an individual is supposed to do? A good developmental plan should allow both supervisor and subordinate to easily monitor progress.

The process of creating a developmental plan poses three basic questions:

1. What do you know about the individual?

2. What do you know about the organization and where it is going?

3. How can you relate the individual to the organization so that both can attain their goals?

From the moment you begin creating the developmental plan with the individual, it should be a positive experience. The underlying question should not be "How can we fix you?" but rather "How can we help you realize more of your potential and attain more of your career goals?" Here are the basic steps involved in creating the plan.

Look toward the future. Ask the employee what he or she values most in a job and career. Go over the company's mission and values, and determine if the individual and the company fit together. Determine where the employee is in his or her career, and where he or she would like to go. Finally, review the competencies and skills that the company, department or team will most need going forward.

Evaluate the present and determine the gaps. Review the goals, standards and expectations of the person's current job. Look at the feedback you have given the employee, as well as any feedback from the individual's peers or subordinates. Then identify and discuss any gaps in the employee's job performance, competencies and behaviors.

Set goals. Establish realistic developmental goals in the context of the current job and future career goals. Set priorities by determining the performance, competency and behavior gaps most critical to the person's mastery of the current job. Finally, set priorities for the employee's future development by identifying those gaps most critical to attaining longer-range career goals.

Develop the plan. Identify action steps and timetables for expected improvement and assign priorities for each. Do the same for longer-range career goals. Identify the resources required for each action step, and then determine methods and timetables for following up and monitoring progress.

No one said that creating developmental action plans is easy. In fact, they require a lot of work, by both manager and employee. But if you develop them well, and use them to measure progress, the investment of time should pay for itself many times over.
 

Communication is the fuel of power, and communicating well is at the core of leadership.

Think about it. Every great leader, whether of a nation or a corporation, has had not only great vision, but also the ability to communicate it.

Men and women have their own styles of communicating. Women tend to personalize communications more than men. Put two women together, and in half an hour they will know a lot about each other. Put two men together, and you may have half an hour of uncomfortable silence punctuated by a rundown of last night's sports score.

Men also talk more than women in meetings and conferences. In fact, one reason why men's ideas are accepted more readily and more often than women's ideas is precisely because men talk more. Women don't speak enough in corporations, and they are not heard enough when they do speak.

How can women in management overcome the obstacles that block the path to effective communication? They can start by becoming better listeners, which, in turn, will enable them to be heard when they speak and be viewed as knowledgeable -- as having the information that generates power.

Listening is a powerful skill -- and one that is too often in short supply. Did you know that there even is an organization called the International Listening Association (http://www.listen.org) that promotes the study, development, and teaching of listening and the practice of effective listening skills and techniques? And that March is International Listening Awareness Month?

Here are five steps toward becoming a better listener.

Focus. Start by screening out all distractions, the physical and psychological noise that has nothing to do with the person who is talking. Pay attention to the speaker's manner, body language, and tone of voice, whether it is casual or forced, committed or indifferent, posed or genuine. Go behind the speech to hear what's driving the speaker. Then listen to every word he or she says.

Interpret. As you listen to the words, hear the meaning. What's really being said? Define what you're listening to in your own terms. The nonverbal cues you pick up are as important as the words. What do they tell you? How do they enrich the meaning? In short, what is the message -- and what is its significance to you?

Evaluate. Appraise what you hear. Calculate its worth. Is it true? Likely? Probable? Something that should be acted upon, or just stored away for future use? Evaluate the speaker as well. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the presentation?

Validate. When it's your turn to speak, corroborate that you hear what's being said. Do it by simply giving back to the speaker his or her own words -- without the evaluation that is quietly proceeding apace in your mind. "I hear your concern about introducing the new product at this time of year." If your speaker wants you to say more, repeat your concern using different words. Let the speaker keep going. He or she might just come up with a solution.

Respond with rapport. You can end your feedback with a simple affirmation that you get the message. Or you can respond -- again by declaring your willingness to listen. Encourage the speaker to reveal more by showing that you are curious and interested. Ask questions that help you understand this person and his or her emotional needs. It is leaders, after all, who help people solve problems by listening and asking questions.

WJM Associates is pleased to announce two executive appointments.

Kip Trum, senior vice president of WJM Associates since 2000, has been promoted to the additional position of general manager of our New York office. Kip will manage the delivery of our human resources services, including executive coaching, assessment and recruitment, organizational effectiveness, and corporate governance consulting. He also will continue to provide executive coaching services to clients.

Kip has worked with clients in a variety of industries, including publishing, entertainment, diversified manufacturing and financial services. He is a graduate of Fordham University and a member of the Society for Human Resource Management.

Cynthia Auman has joined WJM Associates as a vice president. Previously, she served as a senior consultant at our firm. Cynthia lends a particular perspective on building brand and corporate equity through executive talent, having served as a managing partner of an international branding consultancy and as an executive of several other marketing communications agencies.

Cynthia is a graduate of Colby College and also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. She sits on the board of New York's 34th Street Partnership, one of the country's leading business improvement districts.

"We have benefited from the growing demand for valued-added executive and organizational consulting services, as corporations seek to develop tomorrow's leaders," says William J. Morin, chairman and chief executive officer of WJM Associates. "Kip's promotion and Cynthia's addition to our management team will enable us to continue to develop and deliver services that clients are seeking."