General Management

Competencies Required to be Successful in General Management

Competencies: Results Orientation, Strategic Orientation, Developing Others, Impact and Influence, Team Leadership, Customer focus, Business Acumen, Problem Solving.

Results Orientation

1. Give me examples of what goals you have had and what you did to exceed these goals.
2. How does your performance rate versus others and why?
3. In business it is important to be bottom-line oriented. What is your understanding of the bottom-line and what projects have you been involved with that had a bottom-line responsibility. What was your actual role in these projects.
4. How do you ensure that both yourself and people around you deliver results?
5. How do you ensure that you deliver results consistently?
6. How do you ensure that things get done on time?
7. How do you prioritize your workload in order to achieve results?
8. Give me examples on how you had to overcome resistance in order to achieve results.
9. In the teams you have managed what has the turnover been like – probe for concern for people, due process, ethics – in order to achieve results.
10. How do you build team spirit.

Strategic Orientation

1. How do you keep in touch with industry developments?
2. How does your broad knowledge of the industry relate to your peers and others and why?
3. What are the key issues facing the pharmaceutical and medical industry – now and in the future?
4. What are the key issues facing business in general – now and in the future?
5. In general terms what does strategy mean to you?
6. What process do you follow to formulate strategy?
7. Within your functional scope, how do you identify competitive advantages and what do you do to ensure competitive success. Give examples.
8. What is your balance between strategic thinking and day-to-day execution. How do you ensure that these are balanced?
9. How do you ensure that your particular strategy is aligned to the local business strategy and global strategy.
10.  How do you communicate strategic plans to others?

Developing Others

1. How do you ensure that your direct reports have challenging and stretching tasks and assignments – give specific examples.
2. How do you plan the development of your people?
3. How do you ensure that development plans are carried out?
4. How do you build capability within your teams?
5. Once your have assigned stretching work to others how do you control it?
6. How do you ensure that your people take their development seriously?
7. How do you allocate stretching assignments to your people?
8. Describe particular successes with people development.
9. Describe instances where you wanted to develop people and they didn’t develop the way you planned.
10.  Whose responsibility is it to develop people within your company?

Impact and Influence

1. Compared to others how do you relate to other people – why do you think this?
2. Specifically how to you relate to your peers, your direct reports, others in the company, senior management?
3. How would others describe you within the organization?
4. How do you build rapport with others?
5. How do you build constructive and effective relationships with others?
6. What networks do you access?
7. How do you manage conflict?
8. Give me examples where you had to influence situations – what did you do, what was the result?

Team Leadership

1. Give me examples where you had led teams.
2. How do you create a feeling of belonging in a team?
3. How do you celebrate a teams success – give specific examples.
4. How do you encourage communicate within a team?
5. How do you create a common team mindset?
6. How do you reward teams?
7. How do you build team trust?
8. How would you team members describe you?
9. Give me examples when your team has been under stress – what did you do?
10.  What is your idea of a dream team?

Customer focus

1. Describe your internal and external customers.
2. How do you ensure that you are meeting their needs and expectations?
3. How do you obtain first-hand customer information and use it to improve services – give examples.
4. How do you establish effective relationships with customers?
5. How would customers describe you and why?
6. How do you stay close to customers?
7. How do you deal with difficult customers – describe specific experiences.
8. How do you seek out new customers?
9. What is your process for dealing with customer criticisms, complaints – describe specific examples.

Business Acumen

1. Describe the fundamentals of how business’ work.
2. How do you stay in touch with broader business developments in the industry?
3. What business courses have been on?
4. What business books have you read?
5. What business books are you currently reading?
6. How would others describe your business knowledge?
7. What are the fundamental drivers for success in the local industry?

Problem Solving

1. What is your process for solving problems?
2. How do you ensure that this approach will result in an effective solution?
3. Give me specific examples of problems you needed to solve? What did you do and what was the outcome.
4. If you can’t solve a particular problem what do you do?
5. Give me examples when you have sort the help of others in problem solving.

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