Week 24 Day 4: The Question That Reveals How Someone Treats People

Ask a candidate to describe their best and worst manager. The content of their answer matters less than the tone. A candidate who describes a bad manager with specificity and fairness -- 'she struggled with delegation and it created bottlenecks, but she cared deeply about the product' -- is showing you how they process interpersonal difficulty. A candidate who describes a bad manager with contempt -- 'he was incompetent and everyone knew it' -- is showing you how they will describe you when you make a mistake.

The question I use is: 'Tell me about someone you worked with who made you better at your job, and someone who made you worse. What specifically did each person do?' This question is more revealing than the standard 'best/worst manager' prompt because it asks for the mechanism, not just the assessment. Here is what the answers reveal. Generosity of interpretation: does the candidate extend good faith to difficult people, or do they interpret everyone through the lens of intention? The candidate who says 'my manager was disorganized and it created extra work, but I think she was overwhelmed, not careless' is showing generous interpretation. The candidate who says 'my manager did not care about anyone but himself' is showing hostile interpretation. Notice the pattern, because it will transfer to your team. Relational awareness: can the candidate articulate the specific behaviors that affected them, or only the emotional impact? 'She gave me feedback immediately after presentations, which helped me improve in real time' is behaviorally specific. 'She was a great mentor' is vague. Behavioral specificity predicts whether the candidate can give and receive useful feedback on your team. Self-awareness in relationships: does the candidate acknowledge their role in difficult relationships? 'He micromanaged me, and looking back, I think I contributed to that because I was not proactive about sharing updates' shows a level of relational self-awareness that is rare and invaluable. I have noticed a pattern: candidates who speak about former colleagues with nuance and fairness -- even the difficult ones -- are consistently the best teammates.

The relational question targets what psychologists call 'object relations' -- the internalized patterns of interpersonal engagement that individuals carry from relationship to relationship. Research by Westen (1991) demonstrates that these patterns are highly stable across contexts and predictive of future relationship behavior. The 'generous interpretation' dimension maps to what social psychologists call 'charitable attribution' (Gilbert and Malone, 1995) -- the tendency to consider situational explanations for others' behavior before assuming dispositional causes. Research on charitable attribution in work contexts (Bies, Tripp, and Kramer, 1997) found that employees who default to generous interpretation have 40% fewer interpersonal conflicts and rate higher on peer-assessed collaboration. The behavioral specificity criterion connects to Luthans and Peterson's (2003) research on 'emotional intelligence in the workplace,' which demonstrates that the ability to articulate the specific behaviors underlying interpersonal experiences is a stronger predictor of team effectiveness than the ability to identify emotions, because behavioral specificity enables actionable feedback. The self-awareness-in-relationships dimension draws on what Crocker and Canevello (2008) call 'compassionate goals versus self-image goals' in interpersonal interaction. Their research found that individuals oriented toward understanding (rather than defending) in relationships create more trust, receive more support, and experience less conflict.