4 Ways to Find Your Next Generation of Leaders

Today’s guest blogger is Brendan Cruickshank. You can learn all about him in his byline at the end of this post. Here are his thoughts on finding that next generation of leaders.

When you hear the word “leader,” what image pops into your head? A President? A General? Maybe a CEO of a large company? Sure, these are all leaders. But what about scientists, marketers, secretaries, and even custodians? Doesn’t leadership exist in these jobs too?

Most of us tend to associate leadership with some sort of senior executive position. But in most organizations, leadership is required at all levels. At the engineering level, a leader might be the individual who assumes the lead role in the development effort for a new product. For a sales clerk, leadership can be going the extra mile in making sure the customer experience is improved and maximized. Among a group of designers, leadership could be demonstrated by a worker who puts in long hours for two weeks straight to make sure the next prototype is flawless. Leadership is needed everywhere in a truly successful organization and leadership skills are critical in every role imaginable.

An organization that recognizes the need for leadership at all levels will reflect this philosophy in its hiring practices. The challenge is to find leaders not just at the top echelons of management, but at mid-level and even lower-level rungs of the organizational ladder. What exactly is the best way to go about finding those leaders?

How do we recognize them and identify them? Here are four things you should consider as you look for that next generation of leaders:

Look for evidence of previous leadership: If you want to hire more leaders, it stands to reason that the candidate you want is one who has shown she has already taken a leadership role. This doesn’t necessarily mean having a title. There are many ways of showing leadership without being called a manager or supervisor. In many cases, an individual who consistently takes the initiative to do more than required is leadership material. So is someone who has had a significant impact in making things happen. For that matter, there is no greater indicator of a true leader than one who has also been a mentor. These are just some of the things to look for in a candidate’s resume. Whatever you choose to focus on, the goal is to find a pattern of behavior that gives you a good reason to believe that the candidate will become a leader in your organization.

Look for evidence of innovation: A good leader is a forward-thinker. There are many instances where effective leadership is also bold leadership. A good thing to do when hiring is to look for examples of visionary thinking in a candidate’s past achievements. But such examples are not always easy to find. An alternative is to question the candidate about the direction he feels the business function should be pointed and what he thinks is the best way forward. Questions like this serve a two-fold purpose: they allow you to not only judge the candidate’s vision, but also how effectively he is able to articulate it. Both of these things are evidence of leadership because a leader needs to convince others and obtain true buy-in of his concepts.

Don’t restrict your search to industry “experts”: There is certainly nothing wrong with hiring an expert, but restricting the search pool also may restrict your ability to find a leader. Instead, focus on candidates who are able to demonstrate an ability to solve problems. Find someone who may have created the same results you want even if those outcomes may have occurred in a completely different environment. There will always be time for a leader to learn about the widgets your company makes. The fact that he is not an expert on them when you hire him can often be more of a good thing than bad.

Build leaders from the bottom up: Change the culture of your organization. Instill within all your employees a sense of personal investment in the service or product your company produces. Plant the seeds for leadership growth within your corporate structure. Institute leadership training and development programs throughout the organization and make them widely available to employees at all levels. Share as much corporate information with employees as is practical. All of these things help elevate the degree of employee buy-in to the corporate effort. The more invested a company’s employees are in their organization, the more likely they will become to take on an issue or problem as their own. Leaders don’t always have to come from the outside; they can be developed internally.

Brendan Cruickshank (Vice President of Client Services) – Brendan is a veteran of the online job search and recruiting industry, having spent the past 8 years in senior client services roles with major sites like Juju.com and JobsInTheMoney.com. He is quoted regularly as an expert in employment and job trends in major media outlets like the Washington Post, US News & World Report, and Forbes and has spoken at recruiting industry events such as Onrec and Kennedy Information’s Corporate Recruiting Conference.