Whether for Country or Company, Selecting the Best Leader Has Never Been Harder
- July 28, 2008
by Scott Spreier
from Hay Group
If you’re like most of the U.S. electorate, you’re probably tired of the endless debate over which Presidential candidate is best qualified. Tired and confused, because no matter how profound the pundit or how air-tight the argument, you still have doubts.
The truth is, nobody really knows. And it’s not because of the lack of good candidates or insightful experts. It’s because the role of America’s CEO is growing and changing too quickly for most mere mortals grasp. It’s a unique position. The requirements are vague: we can only guess what challenges our new leader will face in his first year or even month in office. And even if we were political psychics, the skills and experience needed face those issues are hard to come by.
The same may be said about the top job in your organization. Despite your best effort, it’s hard to predict what your company will be facing more that a couple of quarters down the road. Given the rapidly shifting economic, geopolitical and environmental dynamics, the sole certainty is that those leading today won’t necessary be the best choice tomorrow -- which may explain why two out of five new CEOs fail in first 18 months.
So what should you be looking for in your next leader? Two research projects that some of my colleagues and I have been working on at Hay Group’s McClelland Center for Innovation and Research may shed some light on the issue.
The first is a study of the changing role of the CEO, and the competencies – those skills and other attributes -- needed to be effective. For the past year, we have been analyzing data on a number of highly effective CEOS from a variety of organizations around the globe to see how their approach to the role sets them apart, and to identify and catalogue those unique competencies required in the top job. Although our research is not yet complete, several interesting points already have surfaced.
To no one’s surprise, the role has grown enormously complex. Today’s CEO must not only define and deliver on an increasing complex and shifting strategy, but must also play the part of figurehead, whose every action no matter how insignificant is analyzed and interpreted. Today’s CEO must present a commanding, compelling vision internally; be a plausible predictor of the future for The Street, and be compliant and conciliatory with regulatory agencies -- not to mention both managing and serving you and other board members.
The most successful CEOs, our research shows, understand this unique, nuanced tapestry of the role, and embrace the subtle, ever-shifting "choreography" necessary to lead effectively in such a landscape. They also bring with them competencies that in the past were often dismissed as unnecessary but which today are crucial -- attributes like intellectual curiosity, an openness to new concepts, collaboration, cultural savvy, even empathy.
Our second study, done in partnership with researchers from Harvard University, examined how this new "brand" of chief executives are increasingly turning to their top teams for help in managing the complexities of the organization.
As we noted in our recently published book on the subject, Senior Leadership Teams, What it Takes to Make them Great, many top executives have dropped the "Heroic CEO" approach and transformed their top executives from "supporting heroes" into true, interdependent teams. In essence, these CEOs have not only embraced the new complexities of their roles, but they’ve convinced their teams to do the same.
Finding individuals who get can their heads and hearts around the chaos and complexity of this brave new world of top leadership – be it of a company or a country – is difficult but not impossible. Ironically, it often requires considering the improbable: searching out those whom once we would have written off because they lacked the traditional leadership skills.
One of the best examples of such leaders was Abraham Lincoln. As described by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in her insightful book Team of Rivals, Lincoln was seen by many as lacking in traditional leadership timber. His experience was suspect; he wasn’t, as Leo Tolstoy observed, a "skilled statesman." There was little heroic about his style or image.
Yet he was able to accomplish the impossible by leveraging the very strengths that we’ve identified in today’s most effective CEOs: the ability to grasp what he needed to do – the uniqueness of role – and embrace it, and the ability to deliver on a difficult, and complex strategy by working though a hand-picked team of brilliant but often contrary members.
Given today’s challenges, such leadership is again needed, be it in the C-Suite or the Oval Office.
Scott Spreier is a senior consultant with Hay Group’s McClelland Center for Research and Innovation, specializing in leadership and talent management.
