Selecting Leaders for Change
Business knowledge and experience are still the main criteria in the selection
of managers for leading positions in companies. To successfully handle uncertainty
and change requires leadership qualities that cannot be trained and developed
easily. More attention is needed in the early phase of the selection of business
leaders.
Selecting leaders for change
Mark Saxer, Senior Partner Eriksson & Associates
Business knowledge and job experience are
still the main criteria in the selection of managers for leading
positions in companies.
However in times of rapid change, business leadership demands additional and
special abilities. To successfully handle uncertainty and change it requires
vision, self-competence, learning agility and stress resistance from top managers.
These leadership qualities are part of the personality and cannot be trained
and developed easily. We therefore recommend to executives and human resources
managers to pay more attention to these critical change and renewal factors
early in their selection of business leaders.
They could well become the critical success factor in the company’s future.
Uncertainty reduces our
capacity to act
When we step out of the hotel in a strange city for the first time, in order
to get some fresh air and explore the local neighborhood, we usually do this
with some caution. Prior to leaving, we have asked
at the reception for a street map or some clear instructions.
Our sense of orientation is wide awake. In the streets we are
careful to observe where we have turned left and right and what signs and buildings
will guide us on our way back. Even knowing, that if we get lost , a taxi will
take us back to the hotel, we most likely follow our curiosity only as far
as our inner sense of security and well-being will permit us to go. This capacity
to act in new and uncertain conditions is for most people a lot smaller compared
to what we are used to do in more familiar surroundings.
Our initial reactions will be quite similar if we are confronted with a new
job, with restructurings or unexpected and uncertain business developments.
Despite the expectations that even in turbulent and stressful times, business
leaders and senior managers should show clear thinking and act with great confidence,
this is rarely the case. We experience leaders at times with considerable difficulties
in trying think straight and getting organized under conditions of pressure
and uncertainty. Abilities and skills normally used
without being aware of them become suddenly limited in their accessibility.
Routine tasks and decision processes take a lot more time than usual. In ambiguous
situations and uncertain times we have a tendency to fall back on our natural
human instincts.
We limit ourselves to those mental functions and activities, which give us
the greatest sense of inner and outer security.
Business skills - the primary
factor in leadership selection
Job related skills and knowledge are still the dominating criteria in evaluations
for managerial and professional positions. Even in the selection of people
for leadership functions is this mostly the case. Leaders must know their business.
On higher management levels, social competencies receive more and more attention
as abilities to communicate, to inspire or resolve conflicts become more critical
in relations to employees, customers and the community.
However, the ability to successfully master situations of higher complexity
in decision processes and uncertain market conditions is only to a minor part
a question of business acumen, intelligence
and social competence. Management of uncertainty and change is more closely
related to character and personality structure. It requires self-confidence
and inner balance, personal faith and trust in ones own abilities and the propensity
for self-reflection.
Other people recognize this capacity for self-awareness and self-management
as qualities of integrity and trust, tolerance toward others, the willingness
to take certain risks and to stand alone and resist stress.
In management development and leadership assessment
work we call this combination of self-awareness and self-management
the personal level of self-competence. This level of self-competence
is mostly pre-determined and part of early childhood development. Later on
in adult life it cannot be learned or trained easily anymore, similar to other
human characteristics, like energy and drive,
curiosity, creativity or intuition. Given the increasing pace of change and
levels of uncertainty in business and society, self-competence
and self-management capacities become important factors and
since they are difficult to develop higher attention should be placed on them
in management selection. Self-competence and its key dimensions have become
critical to us in the evaluation of leadership potential of men and women,
who have been entrusted with the
lead of larger groups of people and entire companies.
| Self-competence is
a term used by Eriksson & Associates to describe the joint capacity of a person for self- awareness and self-management. Like other basic personality dimensions, self-competence cannot be acquired or trained easily. It should be assessed early on in the selection and development process of leaders and executives greatly exposed to changing business conditions and renewal activities. |
Readiness to change – how
much is needed?
Ability to change and readiness to adapt are two essential leadership qualities
in our dynamic and volatile business conditions.
The spectrum of behavioral reactions people show in the face of change is broad.
And there is a difference between the willingness to adapt or resist and the innate ability of being able to cope with higher
levels of complexity, uncertainty and the resolving tension.
There are people with a high readiness to
move and adapt but only limited self-competence and others with
high tolerance for uncertainty, who for other reason resist change.
The personal motives for or against change annot be determined
without
in-depth analysis, yet it is quite advantageous for senior managers and HR
directors to have some idea on how flexible and adaptive their own workforce is. Based on their primary response patterns to change,
people can be roughly categorized in the following 3 groups: Change Activators,
Change Supporters and Change Inhibitors (see graph 1).
In the group of Change Activators we commonly find
a few people, who almost permanently look out for new ventures and
extraordinary challenges in order to sustain their own self-confidence and to proof their value to others. Many of these “thrill-seekers” are
fairly restless, pushy and ready to take high risks for themselves, but also for others and the company.
As challenge seekers and explorers they are often “lonely wolves”,
being able to excel and contribute a great amount in business, but with a limited
tolerance for others. They are both a great asset and potential risk for a
company. The larger and more moderate group of Change Activators can be called “Change
Agents”. They express
also a superior level of natural curiosity and openness to change, yet
in addition they are often creative and actively looking for new ways to get
ahead and to solve problems. In contrast to the lonely “thrill seekers” are
the “ change agents” more socially sensitive, prudent and interested
in moving the entire group or company forward.
The other end of this spectrum of change behaviors is taken by Change Inhibitors
, who are very likely to oppose any kind of adjustment or new ideas at first
sight. Behind their technical, financial or social arguments why change is
not welcome or will not function, we find quite frequently some deeper personal
insecurities and fears. Prominent among the fears of managers are loss of
status and influence but also the inability to adapt mentally and the
capacity to let go. Whilst the group of “stalers” among the inhibitors
can be persuaded to adapt, once their primary reasons for defense are known
and acknowledged, the “refusers” will generally cling to their
positions as long as possible.
The largest group, consisting of approximately
2/3 of the entire workforce in a sizeable company, is the group of “Change
Supporters”. Positioned somewhere in the middle of the behavioral
spectrum, their position is an expression of their ambivalence
toward change. Effective change management in any company will greatly depend
on the ability of senior executives and key leaders to persuade the change
supporters with a clear vision and a convincing
path forward.
To know where in the company the change activators
are, is a great asset for top management. Locating and mobilizing
them takes time and the ability to build trusting relationships.
Often only a small core group of committed und future oriented leaders
and employees is needed to convey trust and security to the large
group of latent change supporters.
Renewal factors – indicators
of flexibility in management and company.
At the personal level, capacity for change can be measured with tests and interactive
exercises, as part of the self-competence evaluation in leadership assessments.
To show management and change competency levels of an entire management team,
we are quite frequently depending on “360° Evaluations”. Using
this method, all important dimensions of leadership are on one side evaluated
by the leader himself or herself (=self-evaluation part)
and on the other side are they judged by the members of their
work-and reference group, which includes superiors, peers, employees and customers.
This comparison of self-perception and external perception of the same person
in a full 360° evaluation brings out the strength and weakness of leaders
very clearly. At the same time the results indicate where the “blind
spots” in a manager’s behavior patterns are. Blind spots are those
areas of our work and leader behavior the other members of a team see and know
more about than we do! Knowing the blind spots gives access to important areas
of personal change, development and growth.
The most important abilities for change can be grouped
together to a set of “Renewal Factors”. A total of 9 leadership dimensions
are clustered in the 3 factors of self-competence, personal learning agility and
perspective (see graph 2). Combined the Renewal factors
become an indicator of manage-ment’s own flexibility and visionary
capacity. They can also be seen as a safeguard and pre-cautionary mea-sure
of a company against too much self-confidence complacency.
Change strategies:
Begin first with who – then concentrate on what
The history of business enterprises is full of examples of companies, who have
missed the proper time for change and renewal. But there are also many and
some famous success stories of business leaders and entrepreneurs, who managed to keep their companies
at the very top of their fields of endeavor through severe periods of change.
For example, the leaders and top executives viewed and analyzed by Jim Collins
in one of his more recent books* expressed all the signs of superior management
abilities. Yet in addition, they had a great gift: They were permanently searching
for new and
interesting people, which shared their visions and compassion for greatness.
Those people were employed by the CEO’s, sometimes without a specific
position in mind, but guided by the strong belief: “If I am not smart
enough myself to anticipate the upcoming changes, then maybe they can do it
together. They will be flexible and open enough to react properly and timely”.
Most of these leaders followed 3 simple truths in leadership and adhered to
them with great consequence:
1. Look first for the right people
with right personality (Who), the company will then be in a much better position to handle unforeseen changes and adapt to new targets (what).
2. The right people don’t have to be convinced, motivated
and guided all the time. Once they have understood the guiding values and mission
of the company and are capable of identification with their tasks and responsibilities,
then they will be able to motivate themselves and others.
3. If one has the wrong leaders and members in the team, then
it
does not really matter what the targets are. They will never be capable of becoming a great team and a top company.
Collins implies that in times of economic and technological
changes, personnel selection and decisions on critical leadership
positions are as important - if not more important - as decisions
on strategy, organizational structure, processes and financial means.
The right people will jointly find ways to successfully change and
mould their company to fit future demands.
In their definition of “right people”,
those leading companies placed greater emphasis on certain character
traits and shared values of the leaders than on business knowledge,
practical skills and experience. Most skills were seen as
learnable and trainable, whereas character, values and other dimensions of
self-competence were prerequisites to get the jobs with those companies. In
this, top-management followed another rule of sound business making. They believed
no enterprise can on the long run increase business turnover more rapidly than
its capabilities to find and select the proper people to maintain quality and advance growth. The recommendation is:”If
in doubt, don’t
hire the wrong person - keep looking for the right one.”
Improving our
own ability to predict high-level leadership potential
In our discussions of the results of executive leadership assessments, development
plans for high potentials and team evaluations, after having covered the necessary
abilities, the conversation will turn quite often to questions of early predictors
and indicators of potential for higher management positions in the company.
Hardly any of our clients can choose from several candidates for succession
to top positions. It becomes important to find out which candidates have the capacity for more than just the next
functional level and should be invested in more extensively in education and
business exposure. If there are no valid candidates in-house, it is even more
important to select the “right people” from outside, as indicated
above.
Our own knowledge of critical human factors in dealing with change and an uncertain
future is growing case by case, as is our capacity
to measure and describe these “long-term predictors” effectively.
For this we rely in part on the research base and well established tools of
LOMINGER Inc. and on other sources. But looking ahead for new dimensions and
insights around leadership is also a part of our own sense of professionalism
and interest in sharing them
with our customers and partners.
* Jim Collins, Good to Great.
Why some companies make the leap and others don’t.
Harper-Collins, New York 2001 |
> Selecting
Leaders for Change
