1: David Bradley has a unique skill.
A skill that allowed him to start two successful consulting firms and then buy and revive The Atlantic magazine.
The skill? “He’s fantastic at seeing and choosing the right people,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person.
“Job interviews are notoriously unreliable,” David observes, “in part because many people aren’t good at seeing others, and in part because job applicants often lie during them.”
How does David Bradley combat these challenges?
When interviewing a candidate, he’s very focused on two things.
First, he is looking for what he calls “extreme talent.”
Which he defines narrowly: “He doesn’t want someone who says they love teaching in general; he wants to hear someone identify the specific teaching task they excel at,” writes David.
As in: “I love writing out a lesson plan. Or I love working with remedial students. Or I love one-on-one tutoring.”
“People love to do the thing they are wired to do,” he says. “A person can go a long way with a narrow skill set.”
2: What is the second thing he looks for?
A “spirit of generosity.” David wants to know: Will this person be kind to other people?
He has a specific strategy he uses to discern a person’s character. Which he calls the “take me back” technique.
He’ll ask: “Take me back to when you were born.”
His objective is to have people talk about their personal lives, how they treat others, and what they are doing to make the world a better place.
“People answer better with narrative. When they are in the thread of a narrative, they get comfortable and will speak more fully,” David Bradley observes.
Most job interviews focus entirely on someone’s professional life. Which is why the conversations can be superficial and lack depth.
One specific area David Bradley focuses on is the candidate’s high school experience.
“The only thing you can be certain about every person,” David reflects, “is that nobody escapes high school. Whatever our high school fears were, they are still there.”
By asking about this period in someone’s life, David touches on that person’s vulnerabilities. Which allows him to see the whole person: “Did the person feel like an outcast in high school? Did they empathize with the poor and the unpopular?”
3: David Bradley’s secret weapon? He asks questions. He is “comfortable asking other people questions about themselves, at meetings or over a meal,” David Brooks writes.
Well, doesn’t everyone do that?
Actually, no, David observes. We all start out that way: “The average child asks about forty thousand questions between the ages of two and five,” he writes.
But then something changes as we grow up. David Brooks estimates “that about 30 percent of the people I interact with are natural question askers,” he notes. We’re “at lunch or on a Zoom call, and they turn their curiosity on us with a series of questions.
“People in the other 70 percent can be charming people; they’re just not questioners,” he writes. “They spend their conversational time presenting themselves.
“Sometimes I’ll be walking out of a party and realize: ‘That whole time nobody asked me a single question.'”
Why is this?
David believes it’s because “asking good questions can be a weirdly vulnerable activity,” he writes. We’re “admitting that we don’t know. An insecure, self-protective world is a world with fewer questions.”
More tomorrow!
______________________
Reflection: Which category am I? The 30 percent who ask questions? Or the 70 percent who do not?
Action: Discuss with a family member, friend, or colleague.
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