I stopped doing interviews about two years ago.
Not because I became too grand for them. Because I finally named what was actually happening in them — and what I named was the interview trap.
How it works
A potential client asks for an exploratory chat. Reasonable enough. You arrive genuinely interested in their situation. They describe their problem — teams pulling in different directions, change initiatives stalling, communication breaking down in ways nobody can quite explain. You listen well. You ask good questions. You start to see the pattern. And then — because you are a professional who cares about the work — you begin to share what you are seeing.
An hour later they thank you warmly and say they will be in touch.
Sometimes they are. More often, the insight you offered was enough to get them through the next quarter — and the engagement never materialises.
That is consulting therapy. The leader gets a temporary fix. You get a polite email that goes nowhere. And the real problem — whatever was actually driving the dysfunction — remains unnamed.
The deeper problem
The interview dynamic misaligns the relationship before it has even begun. An interview implies an applicant and an employer — someone trying to win a role rather than someone being engaged to solve a problem.
In reality, the conversation that needs to happen is not "do I like this person?" It is "what is actually causing this dysfunction — and is this the right person to help us address it?"
Those are completely different conversations. And they require a completely different frame.
There is also what I call the black ball problem. After four rounds of interviews across the whole leadership team — each one a polite exploration, each one an opportunity to give away more free thinking — one person exercises a veto and the engagement disappears. You have spent weeks in the interview trap and have nothing to show for it except a slightly better understanding of their problems.
What I do instead
I now propose one of two things when a leader reaches out.
The first is a Working Session. Rather than talking about the problem, we spend sixty minutes actually working on it. The leader sees how I navigate complexity in real time. I see how the organisation actually thinks and communicates. Both of us learn something useful — and both of us have skin in the game from the start.
The second is a Diagnostic Conversation. This is a focused exchange designed to locate where leadership or operational friction is limiting performance. Not a vague exploration of symptoms. A structured conversation that begins to identify the root cause — the gap between what the organisation declares it values and what is actually driving behaviour.
That conversation has a purpose. It has a direction. And it treats the leader's time — and mine — as something worth respecting.
Why this matters for leaders
Leaders in high-pressure organisations don't need another exploratory chat. They need reduced friction, clearer decisions, and a more coherent leadership team.
The first conversation should signal what the working relationship will feel like — structured, honest, outcome-focused. Not an audition. An engagement.
If your organisation is experiencing transformation fatigue, leadership misalignment, or the persistent sense that something is off but nobody can quite name it — the answer is not another meeting.
It is a diagnostic conversation.