Seeing as how our firm provides a 6-month performance guarantee on all placements, we do our best to try and keep emotions out of our candidate selection process. We are constantly reminding ourselves to disengage our "gut instincts" and stick with the candidates' track records as the basis for our recommendations; no easy task, particularly when you're dealing with an incredibly charismatic candidate that is lean on experience.
When it comes to hiring (or anything else for that matter), I'm big on empirical evidence--I don't argue with the facts. Over the last several years, I have used Jim Collins' NY Times #1 best selling book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap..and Others Don't, (particularly the chapter on "Level 5 Leadership"), as a guide for our candidate selection process.
If you're not familiar with Good to Great, here's the 10,000 foot overview: Start with 1,435 good companies. Examine their performance over 40 years. Find the 11 companies that became great. Collins and his team examine not only the strategic decisions and actions these companies took but also the leaders who were at the helm during their pivotal transition years.
In regards to Level 5 Leadership, here are some of the Key Points (taken directly from page 39 of the book):
- Every good-to-great company had Level 5 leadership during the pivotal transition years.
- Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.
- Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence - more plow horse than show horse.
- One of the most damaging trends in recent history is the tendency (especially by board of directors) to select dazzling, celebrity leaders and de-select potential Level 5 leaders.
In "Unexpected Findings", Collins states, "Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with going from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, where the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often."
In summarizing his article The Curse of the Superstar CEO published by, of all places, The Harvard Business Review, Rakesh Khurana writes, "When companies look for new leaders, the one quality they seek above all others is charisma. The result, more often than not, is disappointment—or even disaster."
Comments