How to Pick and Lead the Leader

If you are a business owner, Chair or director, seeking to appoint a leader to the business, what do you look for?

And once you have chosen that leader, what are your role and responsibilities?

In mature organisations, a leader may last 10 years. But many appointments only last 3-5 years and some may crash and burn in a year.

There are many reasons for a leader to have their term cut short, not the least of which is poor selection in the first place. When you back the wrong horse.

So how do you get the right fit of leader for your business? 

Here are my tips for picking:

1. Business life cycle. Define where you are. Startup? On the growth curve? Approaching the peak? Plateaued? In decline? If you are happy with your position, you need someone who can keep that going, for now. If you need to be something more, your ideal candidate will have demonstrated his effectiveness elsewhere. Mostly it will be the latter—you have reached a crisis and you need someone to lead your business out of it.
2. Personal knowledge of a candidate is likely to be much more reliable than a profile lodged on social media, through a written application or even in a formal interview. Having put the word out that you are searching (publicly and privately), add to your long list those who you actually know or are known to someone whose judgement you trust and respect. You search is for an authentic, trustworthy, likeable, inspirational leader with strong values.
3. Values? They are what matter most—what is important in life. Thoughts create beliefs from which we develop values which drive behaviours—the outcome of which is trust. You will need to have defined your values, so that you can find a leader who shares them. By concentrating on indicative behaviours, you will need to have a deep conversation with your leading candidates and to seek verification from her referees. She will be emotionally intelligent.
4. Technical fit. Your candidate will have highly developed knowledge in at least one field relevant to your business—he will be recognised as an expert in this and likely to be admired by the people who he will lead. He will know your industry intimately and have highly developed ideas about how to capitalise on where it is headed, including an intimate knowledge of customers’ needs and suppliers’ capabilities. He will be financially literate.

Here are my tips for leading your appointed leader:

5.    Boundaries. You will inform her of your appetite for risk and your expected rate of return for the shareholders whose interests you protect. You will ensure that the leader works within the law. You will ask the leader to set the standard, set or reset the structure, set the strategy, engage the customer and engage the staff—as the leading priorities these will be the subject of her regular reporting and your regular feedback.

6.    Measures. The financial performance of the business is of course the leading logical measure that will concern you. As well as the growth and development of the business’ workforce. But emotional measures, such as staff 360-degree survey, plus customer satisfaction ratings and supplier feedbacks will provide the data for your own satisfaction about his performance. You will also be sufficiently connected with the ecosystem of the business to know how things are going anecdotally.

7.    Distance. Get out of her way and allow the leader to influence, decide, lead, support and create. Within the defined structures, this is a highly individual undertaking that requires autonomy to develop mastery and to feed the purpose. It needs to be a highly inspiring environment for the leader to be herself, inspiring. Be ready at all times to support and nurture the leader because this is also a lonely and often thankless role.

As a selector, do you also wish to be the leader? Hopefully you have the empathy and skill to make a good choice. For both your sakes.

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