Hiring For Leadership Roles – Don't Confuse Performance With Potential
- Brainz Magazine
- Oct 16, 2023
- 5 min read
Written by: Dr. Helen Ofosu, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
In organizational psychology, one of the core beliefs is that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Applying this thinking, if we want a better future within our workplaces, we’ll need different and more effective styles of leadership.
Often in an organization, there may be deep unspoken problems: an unhealthy culture that is hurting people, poor engagement, and counterproductive workplace behaviors such as harassment, bullying, and various forms of discrimination (see Chapters 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10 of How to Be Resilient in Your Career: Facing up to Barriers at Work).
So, to bring us out of all that, it makes sense to consider a different type of leadership because the dominant forms of leadership have not prevented these problems.
Sometimes, this will mean being bold and placing people who think and act differently in leadership positions. In some cases, this might also mean providing some early support (e.g., coaching and mentoring) before they assume these leadership roles and then continuing this support as they step into these roles.
Defining and re-defining leadership potential
Given the problems many organizations face, I think it’s important to reconsider and broaden what effective leadership looks like. To me, transformational, servant, and crucible leadership are sensible styles of leadership to prioritize and incorporate if we want to see genuine and lasting change.
Transformational leaders create an environment compatible with growth and encourage people personally and professionally. These leaders don’t focus solely on their success and development – they want others to succeed too.
Servant leaders focus on developing leadership qualities in others in addition to reaching their own objectives, milestones, and deadlines. This leadership style requires people to demonstrate qualities like empathy, listening, stewardship, and commitment to others’ personal growth.
Crucible leaders lead through adversity, personal transformation, and resilience. These leaders have often faced significant personal or professional trials or hardships that have tested their perseverance, character, and adaptability.
On the other hand, autocratic and transactional styles of leadership may need to move to the back burner.
Autocratic leaders are focused on having a clear chain of command. Decisions are made by one person and then executed with almost no input from others. Most modern workplaces have at least some spirit of openness and collaboration among people doing the work, so it is hard to see how an autocratic style can be compatible with collaboration and genuine partnership.
Transactional leaders use rewards and punishment as ways of motivating their employees. Positive reinforcement in the form of rewards can encourage certain behaviours. However, transactional leaders can be too quick to hand out punishments when employees falter. Ongoing punishments seem quite inconsistent with psychological safety at work, and psychological safety is at the core of a humane and functional organizational climate.
Assessing potential
For many years, my job responsibilities included evaluating leadership potential. I found it fascinating but sometimes problematic since my employer’s definition of potential always felt too narrow.
So many spectacular yet unacknowledged and unrecognized leaders are working within organizations. These are people who could do so much. Yet, because of their identity as a Black, Indigenous, a person of color, member of the LGBTQ2S+ community, their disability status, religion, etc., they are discounted and overlooked, despite their abilities and potential.
Now, I confess I am an absolute “fan girl” of organizational psychologist Dr. Adam Grant. I look forward to reading his new book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Reaching Greater Things.
This quote from his new book speaks to my thinking about crucible leadership:
“The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached. It’s how far you’ve climbed to get there.”
I am excited to see what else Grant has to say about potential. In my experience, there are so many potential leaders who have proven their perseverance, integrity, decency, and ability while also succeeding against great odds.
Given the state of countless organizations and where our broader North American and Western society is writ large, it’s clear that some changes are warranted. Looking backward, it should be clear that certain leadership paradigms don’t match the current or emerging demands that we’re dealing with. In other words, if things were working, we’d be better off. If the popular leadership paradigms from the past 10 - 20 years were perfect, we probably would not see as much evidence of burnout, harassment, bullying, discrimination, and low employee engagement. Looking ahead, we should consider leadership models that include compassion, empathy, integrity, and emotional intelligence in addition to other traditional qualities.
Understanding the difference between great specialists and great leadership
Often, employees who are high performers as individual contributors (i.e., subject matter experts [SMEs] or “doers”) are tapped for leadership opportunities. There are several potential problems with this approach.
Expertise is Different from Leadership – the qualities that make people fantastic individual contributors don’t always align with effective leadership. Moreover, typical performance reviews are based on the subjective observations of a manager or supervisor – and these ratings can be incredibly biased. Plus, often, for the sake of financial incentives, high-performing individual contributors accept raises to join the management or leadership team. They realize that there’s no path forward for SMEs or thought leaders; their salaries plateau, whereas for a traditional leader there’s a set of steps up the corporate ladder.
Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Leadership Qualities – Another problem with this approach, noted in Harvard Business Review by Josh Bersin and organizational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, is that leadership requires “a broader range of character traits, including high levels of integrity and low levels of dark-side behaviors born out of negative attributes like narcissism or psychopathy.”
It’s never great to have high performers who also show these problematic behaviors. But when these people are promoted, the impact that they can have on others becomes even greater and more serious.
In my experience, few organizations do a great job of assessing soft skills like empathy or emotional intelligence, and even fewer attempt to measure the absence of narcissistic or psychopathic tendencies. When identifying people with leadership potential, selecting for the absence of the problematic traits can make an immense difference in outcomes and the organizational culture the leader creates. Anyone who has ever worked closely with a leader who demonstrates narcissistic qualities (e.g., arrogant, entitled, exploitative, etc.) or psychopathic qualities (e.g., egocentric, lacking empathy, and conscience) knows how difficult and unpleasant those interactions become.
One well-known fact among folks who conduct exit interviews is that people leave bad managers/leadership, not bad work roles/jobs.
Reconsidering the types of leadership that align with the challenges your organization is dealing with is a wise approach when considering who to develop and promote into a leadership role. Likewise, reflecting on the harm that can be caused by a leader with counterproductive interpersonal behaviors – and taking steps to avoid bringing those people into your organization – will pay dividends.
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Dr. Helen Ofosu, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr. Helen Ofosu has been practising Industrial / Organizational Psychology (also known as Work or Business Psychology) in the public and private sectors for almost 20 years. In addition to Career and Executive Coaching, her specialties include the assessment and development of leadership skills, and navigating the complex issues of workplace bullying, harassment, diversity and inclusion. Dr. Ofosu is one of the founding officers of the Section on Black Psychology, Canadian Psychological Association and she’s thrilled to have written a new book “How to be Resilient in Your Career: Facing Up to Barriers at Work” that was published by Routledge in February 2023.
