Motorola’s Individual Dignity Entitlement Program

Motorola has developed a broad-based approach to identify, resolve and elevate employee issues. In what is called the Individual Dignity Entitlement Program, employees are asked to answer the following questions every quarter and review them with their supervisors:

  1. Do you have a substantive, meaningful job that contributes to the success of Motorola?
  2. Do you know the on-the-job behaviors and have the knowledge base to be

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An Incentive Plan Checkup

If you answer no to any of the following questions, your company’s incentive plan may be in need of a tuneup or a complete overhaul.

  • Do line managers support the plan and use it to manage and guide employees?
  • Does everyone on the executive team understand and agree on what the plan is designed to accomplish?
  • Is the plan rewarding the right behaviors?
  • Do employees understand what the

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25 Questions for Candidate References

  1. How does this person compare to the best you’ve ever seen in the role?
  2. On a scale of 1 – 100, how would you rank this person?
  3. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest), how do you rate XYZ on [specific trait or ability]?
  4. Can you tell me about a project that would have failed without [candidate]?
  5. What haven’t I asked that, if you were

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36 “Fast Friends” Questions

The purpose of the “fast friends” exercise is to help create and sustain more meaningful relationships, which is beneficial to overall health, team effectiveness, and business success. The original exercise consists of three sets of 12 questions each. Participants work in pairs and get 15 minutes for each set (10 minutes for an abbreviated version), resulting in 45 minutes (or 30 … [ Read more ]

42 Interview Questions for Assessing a Management Candidate

Questions for Assessing Leadership Style

  1. What are 1-2 questions you always ask your team members in one-on-one meetings, and why?
  2. If I asked someone on your team about your leadership style, what would they say?
  3. Tell me about a time when you delved into significant detail and got your hands dirty.
  4. What accomplishments are you most proud of? What role did you play?
  5. What ritual or practice have

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HR Questions Relating to Employee Satisfaction and Attrition

  • Do we shelter toxic leaders?
  • Do we have the right people in the right places (especially managers)?
  • Is our work environment transactional or relational?
  • Are our benefits aligned with employee priorities?
  • Employees want career paths and development opportunities. Can we provide it?
  • How are we building a sense of community?

40 Favorite Interview Questions from Some of the Sharpest Folks We Know

Questions to help unpack pivotal transitions

  1. What do you want to do differently in your next role?
  2. Imagine yourself in three years. What do you hope will be different about you then compared to now?
  3. For the last few companies you’ve been at, take me through: (i) When you left, why did you leave? (ii) When you joined the next one, why did you choose it?

Questions … [ Read more ]

8 Mentoring Questions

To nail the delicate chemistry required for a successful mentoring match, eight questions have proven to be particularly telling, says Narcisse — four that mentors should ask, and four that mentees should ask:

For mentors

  1. Can I clearly be helpful to this potential mentee? Have they reached out with clear reasons or intentions for why they’d like my help? Are there specific needs they have

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Questions to Gauge Your Interview Process

Follow up with candidates — both those who got offers and those who didn’t — to get their feedback. You want all candidates who didn’t get the job to still have an incredibly positive impression of your company and your process. The world is small. Reputations are long. You want them to have wished they would have gotten the job — so much so that … [ Read more ]

5 Performance Review Preparation Questions

Writing and delivering performance reviews can be one of the most challenging tasks for any manager. Asking the following five questions can help.

  1. What are your goals for the discussion? Before you even begin drafting a review, consider your goals and objectives for the discussion, and evaluate how these goals may be congruent with, or opposed to, one another. For example, you may want

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Strengths-Based Questions

Employees

If you’re involved in activities that you’re already naturally inclined to do well, your attitude toward work is different and you contribute more to your workplace compared with someone who may have similar skills but less natural ability. Doing what you do best is essential to being a star performer at work. As an employee, you should ask yourself these questions:

  • Do I know what

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Turning around Problem Performance in Five Questions or Less

The following series of five yes-or-no questions can help you manage future performance in a new way. Your answers will steer you toward a turnaround conversation appropriate to the situation and the underperformer.

Once you become familiar with the questions, you’ll be able to assess which conversation is needed in a matter of minutes. You’ll be on your way to managing underperformance instead of living with … [ Read more ]

10 Questions About Executive Compensation That Every Company Should Know How to Answer

  1. What are the implications of our business strategy and our approach to value creation for our executive compensation system? What behaviors are we trying to motivate? Does the system support our strategy? Does it encourage our executives to act like owners?
  2. Is the overall pay package appropriately balanced? Between fixed pay and variable pay? Between short-term-variable and long-term-variable pay? For each level of the

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7 Questions to Ask for a Successful Compensation Strategy

Here are the things to think through when you are building a compensation strategy.

  1. What Is Your Compensation Philosophy? Start with your compensation philosophy. Identify the principles and practices your organization uses to make compensation decisions:
    • Do you generally make offers at the midpoint of the market rate for that role, or is it usually higher or lower? Why?
    • What are the important considerations for how

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Designing a Leadership Development Process (Questions to Ask)

Here are some crucial things to think about when designing a leadership development process:

  • Is it on-going or a one-time training event? Leadership development, just like personal development, is a process and cannot be accomplished in one sitting.
  • Have you identified what your leaders must know and be able to do in order to be effective? A list of targeted skills and/or abilities (those popular competencies)

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Reflective Recognition Questions

Reflective recognition gives you, the leader, a window into what matters most to another person while at the same time, helping employees get to present their own progress and accomplishments. What’s more? When employees stop and reflect on their own achievements, how they’ve tackled challenges, and how they’ve made progress, it is great for engagement, too. The first step is to empower your employees to … [ Read more ]

5 Questions Every Manager Needs to Ask Their Direct Reports

Before asking questions as a manager, it’s critical to know what motivates employees to stay with an organization and why. Gallup research shows 12 needs managers can meet to improve employee engagement, including:

  • Prioritizing employee development
  • Facilitating a sense of purpose
  • Caring about employees
  • Considering employee opinions
  • Focusing on employee strengths

These five measures map closely with research recently published by HBR on [ Read more ]

360-Review Questions for an Executive

  • What do her strongest allies say about her?
  • What are her strongest strengths?
  • What do her harshest critics say about her?
  • What are her development opportunities? Her weaknesses, blind spots, and obstacles?
  • When she is trying to influence you, how does she do it?
  • How do you describe her leadership style?
  • What environments bring out the worst in her?
  • Do you think she’s more external facing or more internal facing? Do you

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4 Employee Recruitment Questions to Ask

  1. Who is in our target market, and where will these ideal candidates find us?
  2. How is our culture reflected in our branding and job advertisements?
  3. What attracted our best candidates to us, and what do they want out of a career?
  4. How are we tracking where our best candidates come from and what they want?

5 Onboarding Questions

Here are the five questions every employee needs to have answered if they are to have an exceptional onboarding experience:

  1. “What do we believe in around here?”
    Naturally, there’s a lot of “nuts and bolts” material that must be communicated during an orientation. But all those little details are expressions of your organizational culture. How you explain your benefits, time off, and other policies — and

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