Selecting Leaders

Happy Friday,

Would I have hired myself to be a leader? Would you have hired you? I wonder.

The best leaders are often humble, not self-promoters, good listeners, not loud talkers, and as focused on helping others as themselves. Maybe good leaders fly a bit under the radar. Maybe their leadership skills aren't fully revealed until they actually lead. Maybe the best leaders in your organization are right under your nose.

Selecting leaders is tough, but it gets more complicated and ultimately compromised when everyone is conditioned to believe a leadership position is the ultimate reward for things like their longevity, age, friendship, technical competence, or loyalty.

When an administrative leadership position defines success, an organization must constantly cannibalize its most valuable talent to deliver on it, i.e. moving people from doing what they're best at, to doing something they're probably not best at.

Given all its challenges, the art and the science, here are a few tips to improve the selection and success of your future leaders.

1. Downplay leadership titles. All recognition of leaders and titles (including the existence of that flawed "organization chart" with the CEO on top) is ultimately counterproductive to the organization. - see cannibalization. Instead, save all recognition and praise for those on career paths that do the things that strengthen the organization, like subject matter excellence, industry recognition, project management excellence, innovation, insightfulness, repeat business, and service to clients and the public.

2. Make actual leadership characteristics, which are known and documented, a bigger factor when selecting new leaders. It sounds silly to even say that, but...

3. Set the bar by having written leadership expectations, not just management expectations.

4. Hire and promote leaders based on attitude and enthusiasm. Everything else can be taught.

5. Foster a culture of good leadership by having your best leader(s) informally coach their peers. They’ll know how.

6. Create a simple low-key feedback loop from staff about every leader’s effectiveness.

7. Swiftly remove leaders who can't effectively connect with, lead and motivate their team. When poor leaders are tolerated for more than a year, it’s a dereliction of one's duty to the staff and stakeholders, plain and simple. I could water that down and sound more sympathetic, which I am, but that wouldn’t make it any less true. Poor leadership hurts people.

8. Make selection of good leaders a factor in every leader’s bonus. Develop more good leaders for the leadership pipeline = bigger bonus. Incentives aligned with success.

That's it. Hopefully, there's a nugget or two there that helps.

I’ve got room in my schedule to dedicate to one additional Board or advisory role. If interested, let's chat.

And with that, have a great weekend!

Dave

Feedback and blowback, hit dave@goodnewsfriday.com

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Written by me, not ChatGPT, with speed assist and blunder avoidance by Grammarly.