The Science of Leading

This episode breaks down the interview questions that reveal whether a manager can actually lead under pressure, from handling underperformance and conflict to delegating effectively and motivating different personalities.

It also shows how structured interviews and clear rubrics help organizations judge judgment, accountability, and results instead of getting dazzled by charisma.

This episode breaks down why vague “fit” judgments often mask familiarity, bias, and charisma, and why they can outweigh real evidence. It also lays out a better interview system built on behavioral, technical, and values-based questions, plus standardized scorecards and follow-up.

Claire Monroe and Edwin Carrington break down why most interviews reward confidence, charisma, and bias instead of real hiring signal. They explain how structured interviews, standardized questions, and clear rubrics improve fairness, comparability, and predictive validity.

The conversation also explores the three core hiring attributes—role-related knowledge, problem solving, and leadership—and how behavioral and hypothetical questions can uncover better evidence of future performance.

A flexible 9/80 schedule can boost retention and improve work-life balance, but only when leaders focus on outcomes, fairness, and clear coverage rules. This episode also breaks down the operational and compliance details that make or break a rollout, from overtime and handoffs to pilot goals and employee feedback.

This episode unpacks why polished interviews so often miss the mark and how unstructured hiring can reward charm over actual job behavior. It also explores how structured interviews, clear scoring, and careful use of AI can improve fairness and prediction without scaling bias.

Claire Monroe and Edwin Carrington unpack how personality assessments can improve hiring when they’re used as decision support—not as a shortcut or verdict. They explore the Big Five, the dangers of “culture fit” and type labels, and a practical workflow for combining assessments with structured interviews and work samples.

This episode breaks down Google’s Project Aristotle and the surprising finding that team performance depends less on star talent than on how people interact. It explores psychological safety, why silence can hide problems, and the practical habits leaders can use to build stronger, more effective teams.

Most leaders have tried a personality test at some point. But when it comes to real decisions—who to hire, how to coach, why a team keeps clashing—those colorful types and labels don’t give you enough to actually change anything.

In this episode of The Science of Leading, Claire Monroe and Edwin Carrington unpack the OAD Survey: an adjective-based, workplace-focused assessment that separates who someone is from how they feel they must behave at work. Instead of one static profile, OAD gives you two matched lenses—baseline traits and perceived job behaviors—so you can see where a role is creating healthy stretch, unsustainable pressure, or outright conflict.

Claire and Edwin explore how leaders and HR teams can use this data to sharpen hiring decisions, design better roles, and run more honest leadership and team conversations. They walk through practical workflows for selection, coaching, and team diagnostics, and show how aggregated OAD patterns can reveal deeper organizational issues like role overload, unclear decision rights, or misaligned incentives.

If you’re ready to move beyond gut feel and generic personality labels, this episode will show you how to turn structured behavioral signal into everyday decisions. And if you want to try it on your own roles and teams, you can test OAD for free at OAD.ai.