In job interviews, many candidates are savvy about giving answers they think the interviewer wants to hear, but meaningful answers can't be found in a cookie-cutter script. The author presents eight essential questions hiring managers should ask prospective hires and provides multiple alternative ways of phrasing them to get to the heart of what they need to know about interviewees to make better hiring decisions.

The author has conducted in-depth interviews with hundreds of CEOs and other executives for the New York Times feature "Corner Office" and his leadership series on LinkedIn, and he has coached hundreds of high-potentials. In this article he shares the lessons that emerged about the mental shifts needed to make a successful transition to a senior leadership position. The process involves identifying and communicating your core values and learning how to approach tough decisions. It requires setting the bar for your team's performance and learning to compartmentalize so that you can find the right pace for yourself. And it requires expanding your self-awareness and paying attention to the stories you tell yourself about your experiences-your successes and failures, your bad times and good ones-when you contemplate the arc of your career and life.

Senior leaders, particularly CEOs, confront a central paradox in their work: They generally have access to more lines of communication than anybody else, but the information that flows to them is suspect and compromised. Warning signals are tamped down. Key facts are omitted. Data sets are given a positive spin. All of it isolates leaders in a dangerous information bubble. But they can escape that bubble, the authors argue, by working actively to create a more expansive "listening ecosystem." They first have to learn how to listen actively themselves, without distraction or judgment, purely for comprehension; then they have to create systems and processes all around them that elevate listening to a constant state of hypervigilance. This sort of sustained attention to listening allows leaders to pick up on early signs of both danger and opportunity--and that, in turn, allows them to do their jobs and serve their organizations better. The authors conclude this piece by sharing advice--gleaned from interviews and personal experience--about how leaders can learn to listen better.