Preparing for the job interview (2)

In a previous post, I discussed how to prepare for interview questions about your experience and competence, based on the achievements of which you are truly proud, using the structure of story.

In this post, I want to address the vision question. If you are going for any kind of a leadership role, it is very likely you will be asked about this. 

It may be phrased as the difference you will make, or the direction you will set, and so on. Essentially, it is asking about your contribution to the future of the organisation.

Again, it is easy to talk hypothetically, about what you intend to do; or to draw on the many (often excellent) textbooks on the elements of a good vision (personally, I like Collins' and Porras' formulation: see Harvard Business Review September - October 1996. Reprint No 96501).

However, I think it is most authentic, and therefore most powerful and most useful, to ground this as firmly in reality as the rest of your presentation.

To do that requires some reflection and analysis: and again we start with your proud achievements. The underlying assumptions are that these proud achievements demonstrate you at your best, and that you are proud of them precisely because they matter to you.

So you need to analyse them once more. To do that, ask the question: Why am I proud of these? That can help you to start to unearth, clarify, and find credible ways to describe two important things: what you value, and what you aspire to.

If you can clearly articulate your values and aspirations, firstly to yourself, then you can start to engage authentically with the question about the contribution you hope to make in a future role.

The next step is then to look at the role and its organisational context, and ask the three strategic questions:

• Where are they now?
• Where do they want to get to (and where do I want them to get to)?
• What are the actions that will lead them from the first to the second?

Based on your strengths, values and aspirations, you are now in a position to construct the  story for the future.

As before, it has three elements: a beginning (the status quo and the challenge), a middle (the journey foreseen, including the difficulties and your contribution in overcoming them) and the end (the desired future state).

You will need to keep it quite crisp, for the purposes of the interview, or you may lose people. For this type of story, it is often a good idea to start with the end: the desired future state, and then describe the journey.  If someone has asked you about your vision and you start with the here and now, that can feel a bit uninspiring. So paint a vivid picture of your aspiration for the organisation (or the bit of it for which you will be responsible), and then pose the rhetorical question: But how do we get there from here? Then answer that question by telling the rest of you story, ending a second time with the aspirational future.

Rhetorical questions, of course, are not the only type of rhetoric you may choose to use. I think it is well worth  considering the key messages you want to put across in an interview, and having a rhetorical formulation of each.  These can be embedded in your stories, or used as summaries at the end of them. 

I would not advise learning stories by heart; rather learn the framework of each story and rehearse it a few times: then the words will come relatively easily in the interview, and you will find turns of phrase that are expressive and work.  But it can be useful to learn the opening and closing lines, and any particular key points in a strong rhetorical form.  That ensures both clarity and impact; it can also reassure you at a time when you may experience some stress.

For more on rhetoric, see my previous post here.

Walking Meeting

I wrote about Walking Coaching a few posts ago - but it is worth putting on the record that walking meetings can be very productive too.

We had a partnership meeting on Monday: Jane is both my business partner (as an accountant she is a brilliant head of finance and admin) and my wife.

So we had a partnership meeting, setting the world (or at least the business) to rights as we walked over Pikewassa (complete with dog and two of the children, as it's half term - but they entertained themselves while we talked).

This is not (purely) self-indlugent: as with coaching, you have a different quality of conversation when walking in the great outdoors to the conversations you have sat over a desk or even a coffee table.

If you are looking to solve problems, be creative, share dreams and visions, and commune in a different way, then walking meetings are well worth a try.

Here's where we went:

Don't try this at home...

Father and Son Launch iPhone, HD Video Camera into Space

By Adam Rosen (4:00 am, Oct. 12, 2010)

Taking their iPhone Where No iDevice Has Gone Before, a father and son in Newburgh, NY recently took a weekend science project to new heights.  Luke and Max Geissbuhlerattached an HD Video Camera, iPhone and some styrofoam packing to a weather balloon, then launched their homemade satellite on a journey that lasted 72 minutes and climbed over 100,000 feet into the atmosphere!

The resulting footage is stunning, and has been described as some of the best amateur space footage ever.  The weather balloon burst after reaching about 19 miles high, then plummeted back to Earth by parachute and landed in a tree.  TheiPhone’s on-board GPS helped located the equipment once it landed, undamaged and only 30 miles away from the launch site!

From: http://www.cultofmac.com/father-and-son-launch-iphone-hd-video-camera-into-space

Go there to see the fantastic photos and video footage - and hands off my iphone!

Awayday

Great awayday with the newly-formed Learning and Teaching Academy at Northumbria University.

We spent the day starting their planing process; looking at why (and why not) plan, understanding what they actually do, what the University wants and expects them to do, what they aspire to do and to be (purpose, vision and values and all that kind of thing...), and how to develop as a team and how to take all those strands forward.

A really good, committed set of people, whom I am sure will develop into a strong team; they entered into the day with good spirit and good ideas, despite having learned immediately previously that they are to be the subject of an internal review a mere 6 months after being established (not as a result of anything they have done or failed to do - but that's life in large organisatoins!)

A vision delivered!

A while back I ran a team building event for an IT team. As a fun evening activity I got them to paint a picture representing their vision for the next few years. They weren't hugely impressed, but over a few beers painted a picture of USS Enterprise. (They said it was all they could paint, and was vaguely future and techie...)

Then they discovered that I had some post-it notes in speech-bubble shapes, and had great fun covering it with those, saying the kinds of things they'd like to be saying a few years hence.

We got together again recently, and I asked them to bring the picture. After some umming and erring, they remembered that it was languishing in someone's garage where it had been since the last event.

But to all our delight and astonishment, when we looked at the post-it comments, all but one of their aspirations had been delivered and the last one was work in progress. It was a great start to our team review.

And I am left wondering how important getting them to articulate those aspirations was, in terms of getting them to happen...