Effective leaders know how to strengthen their teams and lead their organizations to peak performance. This means that hiring a large number of executives can help a company achieve sustainable success. Rather than just looking for one strong leader for a management-level role, look for a strong leader for open positions at all levels of your organization. Why? Being a solid leader offers more than just leadership and management skills.
Natural leaders are proactive and integrate more quickly into new work environments and quickly build relationships with co-workers, making project collaboration more manageable and effective. Leaders drive innovation, whatever the title. In this way, they encourage and inspire others to do the same too. Potential Employees can hone skills through leadership development, enhancing organizational performance by increasing effectiveness and efficiency. When recruiting for leadership roles, recruiters can look at these skills to identify real leaders among their candidates.
- Communication skills: A recent employee survey found that poor management communication is one of the main reasons for decreased productivity. It is one thing for managers to know what to do. It is very different for them to communicate this priority to each member of their team – they are all responsible for other tasks. Good communication skills are another characteristic of great leaders. The best managers can put their teams on the same page to work toward the same goal rather than seven different interpretations of that goal. Managers must be able to communicate verbally. The best can communicate effectively through the written word.
- Decision-making skills: Leaders are not afraid to make mistakes when looking for more innovative solutions. Asking for examples of difficult workplace decisions or decisions they have made can help you understand how they view decision-making. To make your business more efficient, look for candidates who understand that money is still on their table and aren’t afraid to act fast when they need it. Strong leaders can make difficult decisions quickly after taking care and assessing all their skills.
- Confidence: To keep teams supported, leaders need to feel confident that their decisions are the right ones. Once difficult decisions are made, managers need to convince their teams to move forward – even employees who will make different choices if they respond. Trustworthy candidates are more likely to inspire all of their employees – even those who disagree with them.
- Focus and determination: Great leaders are committed to their profession, team, and customers. They acknowledge that what makes a product or service excellent is the consistent commitment to excellence. A leader who is not committed to a company should not lead it. Lack of engagement with customers and reluctance to listen to complaints and suggestions lead to decreased customer service and higher standards for innovation and satisfaction. Every leader must cultivate the triad of awareness – inner focus, focus on others, and external focus. Focusing inward and focusing on others helps leaders boost emotional intelligence. When you focus outside, you can increase your ability to strategize, innovate, and manage the organization.
- Optimism: The leader is the person you want him to be. They are often engaged and have dynamic personalities that attract people and motivate others to become more like them. As long as nervousness is a part of the interview, this shouldn’t deter natural leaders from continually showing their personality.
- Vision: Times change, and companies can’t always be successful with the same strategies. In this way, leaders must plan effectively and ensure their business grows no matter what the future holds. Employers can reveal these leadership skills by searching through application materials and asking questions about the candidate’s vision. For example, a true leader is likely to have evidence of improving a previous company’s prospects through proactive changes in technology or engineering. Also, executives can confidently answer business policy questions by providing at least a basic plan that will steer the company positively – provided they have perhaps the most critical skill: communication.
- Emphasis on being a cultural fit: There is an increasing emphasis on recruiting candidates who represent “cultural forms” or “cultural complements.” Every company has unique values and practices. “Cultural fit” doesn’t mean that future leaders have to be a perfect fit. That is, they must complement your company culture. Even though new leaders may already be aligned with your company’s values, they may carry other matters that can provide new insights. Hiring leaders who bring with them different experiences and perspectives promotes cultural diversity and is sometimes referred to as “cultural complement.” Both cultural fit and complementarity are essential for executive hiring and successfully integrating new leaders to ensure that you make the most of what they bring to the team and the organization.
A well-designed executive hiring strategy includes best hiring practices, such as: assessing relevant experience and cultural aptitude to determine whether the candidate has the skills and character to become a leader. Look for candidates who have demonstrated that they can hold multiple positions at once. Great managers have experience successfully tackling numerous projects from concept to completion.
Author Bio: Liliana Chitnis is a former HR professional who now works as a content marketing executive at Naman, an organization that offers end-to-end HR solutions to help companies build a strong human capital base. She strongly believes in the power of consistent training in the workplace. Liliana writes about various topics related to human resources and shares trends, techniques, and tips with her readers. She loves to read and practice yoga regularly, and occasionally binge on Netflix
