So what if you’re in the middle of recruiting and are struggling to figure out how a candidate would fit in with a team and manage people? It’s tricky to determine this from a CV, but “there are subtle things that people talk about in interviews that help you to see whether people care about others and their teams,” says Ramshaw.

“I love to hear when people talk about how results were achieved – motivation and engagement, as well as what they achieved.”

“I once worked somewhere where everyone was appraised based on both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’,” says Bolton, “which was brilliant. If someone received maximum credit for ‘what’ but a very low score for the ‘how’, they wouldn’t be in line for a promotion. Both were equally as important.”

“Some of the better people I have hired that have displayed good leadership qualities speak about their team achievements in their CV, like increasing staff engagement or building a high-performing team, adds Ramshaw. “Those that have tended to be weaker on the softer skills, talk predominantly about ‘tasks’.”

Bolton recalls an interview situation where she was really rooting for a candidate to demonstrate their empathy, but they ultimately fell short: “A few months ago I was interviewing someone for a management role and asked them how they would deal with a situation where someone in their team had started to be off sick a lot, working from home more and generally engaging a lot less.

“I was hoping that they would answer in a way that would show me they understood these to be clear signs of someone being unhappy in their role and that their approach would be to talk to that individual and try to understand what was happening and how they could support them.

“Instead they answered that they would tell them it wasn’t good enough and put them on some sort of performance-improvement programme. Red flag.

“Simply asking ‘How do you lead and motivate your team?’ will tell you a lot. Someone with a deep level of empathy will give an answer that talks about understanding individual needs and learning styles, whereas someone who perhaps lacks these skills will likely answer with something far more straightforward and ‘by the book’, failing to recognise or appreciate that everyone is driven by different things and that you need to find a common denominator but also flex according to each individual.”

Why so-called soft skills are the most essential for any manager