Even if you base your hiring on solid evidence of past successes, you're never going to know for sure whether the person is going to be able to achieve the same sorts of successes within your organization, with its own unique culture, structure, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, etc.
It's made all the more difficult by the fact that you have to be able to distinguish between true leaders and those who have ascended the corporate ladder through Batesian mimicry (basically by superficially resembling true leaders). So it's really tricky to tell one from the other under the constrained environment of an job interview.
Management and leadership are different skills and fundamentally different endeavors. They both involve influencing the direction of people, but from different angles.
Need both in a healthy team.
‘Hire leaders’ appeals to teams that lack direction.
‘Hire managers’ appeals to teams without discipline.
It's so hard to do well that most organizations shouldn't do it. I have never seen a good manager hired from the market. Through referrals/network: yes, from within: yes, but never from a posting "come be a manager here". I'm not sure if the interview funnel is hard to build, or if the posting attracts the wrong sorts of people, or maybe another reason entirely.
The common theme in both of the successful methods is that the candidate's leadership ability has already been observed. And if they already work for you, then they have a value adding position they can revert to if they turn out not to be a great leader.
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The final sentence: "Hire leaders, not managers."
Left unsaid: This is incredibly hard to do well.
Even if you base your hiring on solid evidence of past successes, you're never going to know for sure whether the person is going to be able to achieve the same sorts of successes within your organization, with its own unique culture, structure, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, etc.
It's made all the more difficult by the fact that you have to be able to distinguish between true leaders and those who have ascended the corporate ladder through Batesian mimicry (basically by superficially resembling true leaders). So it's really tricky to tell one from the other under the constrained environment of an job interview.
Previous employer bought this line and was drowning in an excess of leadership. Turns out you do actually need good managers.
Management and leadership are different skills and fundamentally different endeavors. They both involve influencing the direction of people, but from different angles.
Need both in a healthy team.
‘Hire leaders’ appeals to teams that lack direction. ‘Hire managers’ appeals to teams without discipline.
It's so hard to do well that most organizations shouldn't do it. I have never seen a good manager hired from the market. Through referrals/network: yes, from within: yes, but never from a posting "come be a manager here". I'm not sure if the interview funnel is hard to build, or if the posting attracts the wrong sorts of people, or maybe another reason entirely.
The common theme in both of the successful methods is that the candidate's leadership ability has already been observed. And if they already work for you, then they have a value adding position they can revert to if they turn out not to be a great leader.