Positive Indicators

• Delegates responsibility, clarifies expectations and gives staff autonomy in important areas of their work.
• Encourages others to set challenging goals.
• Holds others accountable for achieving results related to their area of responsibility.
• Genuinely values all staff members’ input and expertise.
• Shows appreciation and rewards achievement and effort.
• Involves others when making decisions that affect them.

Negative Indicators

• Keeps responsibilities to self.
• Gives assignments without independence.
• Provides insufficient direction.
• Discourages initiative.
• Takes on too much personally/becomes personally overloaded.
• Consults only when necessary.
• Fails to stretch people.
• Makes self indispensable.

Sample Questions

Describe a time when you successfully empowered someone to carry out a task.

• How did you enable them to carry out the work?
• How did you follow this instruction up?
• What would you do differently next time?

Tell me about how you have set goals for a team member in the past.

• How did you communicate them?
• How challenging were the goals?
• What involvement did the team member have?
• How did you monitor them?

Describe a specific example of when you have involved others when making decisions.

• How did you go about making decisions in that group situation?
• What did you do that was particularly effective?
• What were the advantages of this approach?
• What did not work so well?
• How did you ensure that you made the best use of people’s contributions?

Give me an example of when you have solicited the contributions of others in your team.

• What was the specific situation?
• What reasons did you have for soliciting the contributions?
• What feedback have you had on the way you consult with others?
• In what situations are you less likely to consult widely with others?

Thinking of a specific example, how do you typically go about delegating tasks to others?

• What did you do that was particularly effective in your approach to delegating?
• What would you do differently if you had the chance?
• How do you think you could improve your delegating approach?

How do you typically reward team members for their efforts?

• Give me a specific example of when it has been particularly important to reward a team member.
• Why was this important?
• What did you do that was effective?
• How did you deal with the possible consequences?
• When are you less able to reward the efforts of others?

Describe a time when, in hindsight, you could see that you provided more detailed direction on an assignment than was necessary for the person involved.

• What kind of direction did you provide?
• How did this affect the person?
• What would you do differently next time?
• What do you consider when deciding whether to give a person detailed direction versus independence with an assignment?

Thinking of a specific example, how do you normally go about providing others with the power and authority to accomplish a task?

• What feedback have you had on how successful you were in your empowering?
• When have you been least effective at empowering others in the past?

What sort of accountability did you expect from