Finding the candidate with that matching frequency of a leader for that particular organisation is challenging.
KENNETH LEAN
Leaders and people are on top of every CEO’s mind, why? Because CEO’s are constantly seeking the ‘right’ people. Is there a dearth of people or the right process to find one? – a bit of both I presume. However, a compromise here is what leads to a future gap in the organisation. Many organisations believe that in making these compromises they have bridged the problem of that small gap in the variants of the need. Privately though, many CEOs admit that these are decisions they would like to undo. Hindsight is a great teacher isn’t it?
It is against this backdrop that searching for the right leader becomes the corner stone of any successful and balanced organisation. But where do we find them? Finding the candidate with that matching frequency of a leader for that particular organisation is challenging; even in the midst of thousands of professional portfolios floating on the internet. Some show off their skills, others highlight a few crescendo moments of their career in their years of experience, while most of them trumpet their knowledge on these social media platforms. If all of this is available in the public domain, and advanced technology based search engines are supposed to help solve problems – why this compromise? Thus crucially, searching for that ‘leader’ goes beyond what we see.
As an experienced leadership ‘search consultant’, I have discovered very few people who know the sought leader well. I have spent a lot of coffee, cocktails and connect time with leaders in the industry. I understand and learn circumstances of success, paths of failure, crescendo moments, inflection points, anxieties, fears and at times aspirations of a leader. However, even after a good amount of time spent over a couple of sessions, it sometimes feels that there is still something that goes missing. What goes missing I believe, is that ‘difference’ of hiring the right leader, or not. In other words compromising over negotiating - ‘settling’ instead of ‘foreseeing’. I believe so, because great people may not be the right leaders for the sought position - this is that ‘difference’.
In order to ‘foresee’ it is paramount that credible and strong scientific tools for forecasting success need to be utilised. Most decisively, patience, ability to question, to see with your nose and a genuine interest in people will make this perseverance of the sought leader interesting and meaningful. Personality, behaviour, values and motivation drivers are essential information in hiring the right person. In retrospect, I laugh not out of happiness, but out of despair when hiring professionals give us a job description so pristinely well worded, yet ill-defined. These job descriptions can lead to hiring the candidate with the right experience, qualification and knowledge, but may not possess the right behaviour and attitude.
The ability of the organisation to call out very clearly the difficult circumstances that the hired leader will have to navigate, will make the search process uncluttered. In parallel the importance of values in understanding the culture fitment of an individual also helps. The organisation’s stamina in being able to see the larger picture along with the clarity of the sought role in the long run, can be the differentiator in nurturing the culture of perseverance. In addition, the ability of the search consultant to be the spokesperson of the client organisation becomes a critical factor in market communication. Shamefully/unfortunately many search consultants take the route of enticing the candidate to a role. A few years back I was hiring for an organisation that were in financial difficulty and found it difficult to attract talent. We ensured that in our communication strategy we communicate only the truth. This made life easy for everybody as the focus of the discussions were on how the business situation of the client can be solved, and testing the ability of the candidate to live through the said situation. There were a lot many leaders who were ready to take up this challenge. There were no job descriptions that could have captured the essence of the situation other than, a one to one discussion between consultant and professional.
In the last stage of the selection process of hiring a COO in 2011, I discovered that the most eligible candidate was showing big behavioural gaps with respect to the culture of the organisation – it was a last minute discovery indeed. The final interview panel comprising of the global CEO and COO who were in India, were ready to make an offer in 24 hours; but, I had to pull all stops to ring the warning bell. Immediately, we had an ad-hoc meeting with the global CEO and his team which resulted in a meaningful discussion. We all agreed that this candidate had everything in terms of experience, skill and knowledge for the role, however something was missing – the CEO summed it up well, “All through my interactions with him I knew something was missing, but could not put my finger on it – you guys have clarified it for me.” This candidate lost his job with his then current employer for the very behaviour we identified. So true, that people popularly hire for competent professional intelligence and sack for the lack of emotional intelligence.
The cut-and-paste attitude of job description should go, simply because this is a common sense process. It is not an easy task to hire professionals with an expertise, experience and knowledge to align with that of the organisation’s values and growth strategy. The simple formula is to understand the person behind the professional. Jargons and job descriptions borrowed from other corporations will never help; yet, simplistically describing the future scenarios will be far rewarding. The ability to showcase worse-case scenarios scientifically will not only build the credibility of the hiring organisation but, will also drive away the fainthearted job seeker. Let the women and men be found, while the girls and boys play hide and seek.
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