Mastering Leadership Hiring | Victor Bullara

Hiring the right leaders is critical to the success of your business. In this episode, Ashish is joined by Victor Bullara to talk about leadership hiring in organizations.

We speak about:

1. How effective are organizations at hiring leaders? Organizations are not very effective at hiring leaders, with only 12% reporting a strong leadership bench. Additionally, many external hires of CEOs fail within 18 months. This highlights significant shortcomings in both internal development and external hiring practices.
2. Where should organizations source leaders from? Traditionally, companies hire leaders from direct competitors or adjacent industries. However, there is a growing trend towards hiring from parallel industries, looking at skills rather than just industry experience. This is due to lack of diversity that arises when you are hiring leaders from direct competitors and the need for innovators.
3. What key qualities should organizations look for while hiring leaders today? The most critical qualities to evaluate during leadership hiring today include adaptability and resilience, emotional intelligence and cultural sensitivity, and being a strategic thinker. These are more important now than they were five years ago.

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Meet the Speaker!

Key Takeaways on How to do Leadership Hiring Effectively?

Cultural integration is bigger than technical integration. – Victor Bullara, Executive Coach

• Leadership Bench Strength is Declining: The data from DDI reveals that only 12% of organizations consider their leadership bench strong, indicating a serious need to improve internal leadership development. Organizations with strong leadership benches are 10 times more likely to have employees rate their quality as very good or excellent.
• Rethink Hiring Sources: The traditional approach of hiring from direct competitors has led to a lack of diversity. Ashish suggests that we should consider parallel industries and focus on skills and expertise rather than just experience when hiring leaders.
• Focus on Key Competencies: The qualities you focus on make all the difference to who ends up joining your team. Prioritize adaptability and resilience, emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity, and strategic thinking as essential qualities in leaders.
• Build vs. Buy Requires a Solid Foundation: If organizations choose to build leaders internally, they must do it effectively, with objective assessments and committed development plans. A weak foundation has caused the leadership bench to worsen over time and that further raises the costs, because leadership hiring is more expensive than leadership development.
• Behavioral Interviewing is Key: Using behavioral interviewing techniques, such as the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result), helps assess candidates’ competencies. The goal is to understand a candidates’ behaviors, the actions they take, and their results. The interviewer should listen intently and engage with the candidate, keeping the interview positive.
• Executive Transition is Critical: Organizations must have a solid executive transition and onboarding process to prevent new leaders from imposing their previous company’s culture. This process should focus on assimilation over about six months.
• Cultural Integration Matters: Cultural integration is as important as technical integration. When integrating acquired companies or new leaders, address cultural aspects to avoid conflicts and project setbacks

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