Companies Fail to Hire Good Leaders 82% of the Time
Good hiring is one of the most important roles you have as a leader. Good leaders put together high-performance teams that win. Poor leaders get poor performance and, worse, drive good people away.
Hiring leaders is very different than hiring good teammates. Do you know the secret to hiring good leaders? Do you know what mistakes to avoid?
Despite the critical importance of good leadership, we’re really bad at it. According to a recent Gallup report, Why Great Managers are Rare, companies fail to hire good leaders 82% of the time.
Let’s look at the difference between good leadership and poor leadership on performance and cost, then look at how you can hire well and avoid failure.
Leadership Performance and Costs
If you hire the right leaders, you can put together a team of engaged teams that dramatically outperform others. Good leaders double the number of engaged employees and generate almost 50% higher profits than average leaders. Teams with engaged employees are 12% more productive, increase sales 20%, and generate almost 150% higher earnings per share.
Hiring good leaders and people can make you a rock star.
If you hire the wrong leaders, you’ll be stuck with poor performance for months while you handle the mismatch. Bad leadership means poor engagement, performance, and retention. Your attention will be focused on fixing problems rather than moving forward. Finally, you’ll be hit with a big cost (up to 2x the salary) replacing the leader and each person the leader drove off.
Obviously, hiring good leaders vs poor leaders has a huge impact on your team’s performance and your career.
But we get it wrong 82% of the time. When we do get it right, it’s almost always by luck, not by design.
What can you do to hire good leaders, and turbocharge your teams and career?
Hiring for Leadership Skills vs Technical Skills
Often, when hiring a first level leadership position, we look at people on the team, see who is performing well, and then promote that person. For example, if we are hiring a supervisor for a group of technicians, we often promote the best performing technician.
But technical skills and leadership skills are two different things. High performance in technical skills does not mean high performance in leadership skills.
Take college football. When hiring a head football coach, it may seem obvious to hire from the next level down in coaching—offensive and defensive coordinators. But head coach and coordinator are very different positions with different skills sets.
The coordinator position involves technical skills of analyzing an opponent’s offense or defense, finding mismatches, and creating strategies that take advantage of those mismatches. Games are often won or lost based on coordinator’s technical skills.
In contrast, the head coach position requires leading a team of coaches and players, building a culture of excellence, developing relationships with school staff and alumni, coaching up coaches, and developing a multi-year vision for the future. People skills are critical.
When you think about it, hiring someone based on great technical skills for a position that requires leadership skills is an obvious mistake. Nevertheless, it is a mistake made regularly. When it does work out, it’s often by luck, not by design.
How can you hire the best leaders for a position?
The Key Leadership Characteristics
First, prioritize leadership skills over technical skills. A candidate only needs enough technical skills to have technical credibility with the team.
Leadership skills start with character. The foundation for all high trust, high performance relationships is the character of the leader.
Look for these leadership characteristics—ingrained qualities, aptitudes, and skills—in the candidates:
- Growth-oriented and coachable. They will be hungry, listen, and grow in the position
- Has wisdom—the knowledge that comes with experience
- Loves their people and grows them
- Gets results—especially under pressure
And yes, they need to have management skills like budgets, tasks, and timelines.
Be careful about resumes. Resumes are results, not character, oriented documents. Resumes can hide poor leaders if they have good, junior leaders compensating for their leadership weaknesses.
Hiring good leaders is one of the biggest things you can do to achieve success. Well-led, engaged teams dramatically outperform poorly led teams. With companies only hiring good leaders 18% of the time, there is enormous opportunity for success for those who can reliably hire good leaders.
Got a question? Want to learn more?
Email your questions to contact@petebowen.net
