In a business world that moves fast, the data to measure almost everything is right at our fingertips. Regardless of what industry or professional function you work in, you undoubtedly could rattle off a list of metrics or KPI’s by which your performance is measured, if asked. Whether it is units sold, deals won, increased revenue, customer satisfaction scores, performance surveys, net promoter scores, margin, ROI, EBITDA, conversion rates, cycle times, customer retention rates, or a litany of other metrics, it is safe to say that we have never worked in an age where there were more ways to measure performance and outcomes. Performance measurement is a critically important capability that drives all businesses which are only becoming more relevant and compelling with the advent of AI and automation technologies that give us more of a predictive capability than ever before.
With all of this data, it is easy to over-index on crunching the numbers. Though it might be argued by some, I still believe that “human capital,” people like you and me, is STILL the greatest asset that any business has and will be for the foreseeable future. Business is still built on ideas, and the best ideas are still generated by people. This reality is only magnified by the growing leadership gap we are experiencing not just here in the United States, but globally. The post-pandemic world has left us pining for strong leaders to stand in the gaps and performance metrics across many companies reflect this truth each day. Seasoned leaders are retiring or exiting the workforce at a higher rate than almost ever before, and there are fewer and fewer millennials and gen Z employees interested in leadership roles.
Several shocking leadership statistics were shared in a Forbes article published earlier this year that showed the results of a 2024 workforce engagement and leadership study. It was stated that over a third of employees would never be interested in becoming a manager and almost 40% don’t even want to be promoted. This is a considerable shift from the workplace cultural norms created by baby boomers and Gen X’ers, where dozens of people competed for each coveted promotion opportunity. Most HR teams today have their hands tied to basic employee engagement, motivation, and retention programs. This leaves many executive succession plans with holes and question marks.
This drives home the critical importance of finding, developing, and retaining the best leaders you possibly can. Over the last 20 years, I have had the opportunity to recruit, develop, and hire hundreds of leaders, from first-line managers to CEOs, across all major business functions and industries around the globe. There are many measurable indicators of success I can point to that can be uncovered in a resume or an interview, but there are so many important intangibles to watch out for. As I have watched dozens of leaders succeed or fail over the years, I have intentionally noted what leads to a person’s success or failure. Just like virtually everything else in life, there are predictable patterns of behavior within leaders that directly connect to business outcomes. Two critical traits I look for in leaders and executives are 1 – leadership approach and 2 – authenticity.
If I asked a collection of your peers, colleagues, direct reports, and bosses about your leadership style, what would they say? I have found that a person will ultimately lead from a place of inspiration or intimidation.
Years ago, my oldest son was moving up from competing at the middle school level to the high school level in basketball, as a freshman. That year, a new coach was brought in, a retired drill sergeant, a successful AAU coach at the regional/national level, and a “proven winner” who would elevate our team to new heights. Naturally, my son, his teammates, and all the parents were excited to see what improvement lay ahead. Those first few weeks of practice were brutal. The new coach was focused on quickly driving out bad habits and replacing them with new ones while pushing the conditioning at a pace these young men had not seen before. One thing that many people noticed and commented about was that the new coach never let a mistake slide and was quick to berate his players for the tiniest of mistakes. On the other side of the coin, it seemed exceedingly rare that coach acknowledged when a player did something well. The coach was known to have a booming voice and an intimidating presence, and he would use colorful language to get his point across. I was waiting for the day when chairs would start to fly, a la Bobby Knight.
While I realize this probably sounds familiar to many and underscores the truth that much of our character is developed by “tough love,” it left the players in a constant position of inadequacy. They weren’t fast enough, precise enough, and weren’t executing the plays right. Even the best players on the team had their confidence shaken and would go to great lengths to fly under the radar so coach would focus on other teammates. We also noticed that this led to strained relationships and in-fighting amongst the teammates, where there had not been issues before. While there were mixed opinions on this coach, it ultimately ended up as a failed experiment over the next few seasons, resulting in a lackluster record, several great young men leaving the program, the coach being fired and replaced, and a bit of a mess for the new coach to clean up.
Does this sound familiar? Have you ever seen this experiment play out in the workplace before? Ultimately, a person will either lead from a place of inspiration or intimidation. A truly effective leader is a person who makes the other people around them better and inspires people to want to become a more effective and efficient version of themselves. This does not mean that a good leader must wear rose-colored glasses and be a cheerleader in order to succeed.
On the contrary, an líder eficaz must develop a strong ability to hold people accountable and drive results. How you get to those results is critically important. To be truly effective, today’s business leaders must develop a mixed bag of skills that includes a healthy balance of holding people accountable and knowing how to connect with and motivate each team member individually. Being an inspiring leader who is not afraid to roll up their sleeves, “hop in the trenches,” and grind through challenges and problems as a team is what endears team members and drives performance. As you move higher up the leadership chain within an organization, this becomes even more difficult and requires leaders to learn the art of effective delegation while still leading by example and making the most of each interaction with the team. The leadership journey is a process and a culmination of the successes and failures that teams experience together, which are underpinned by the strong relationships a good leader invests in. I would also say that as leaders, we ultimately learn more from our failures than our successes. How can you drive stronger results through a bit more sincere inspiration? Is there a need to be more aware of and tone down the presence of intimidation (real or perceived)? Ultimately, all leaders will start to gravitate toward the inspiration or intimidation side of leadership. Where do you stand?
If we created a buzzword bingo sheet of stereotypical leadership traits, “authenticity” would most definitely be on it. We have been talking about “authentic leadership” in the hallways and boardrooms for decades now, and we still struggle to grasp what it really means. Unfortunately, many leaders and executives have confused sincere authenticity with situational authenticity, choosing to turn it on or off based on circumstances. This is not unusual, as people do this in almost every other facet of life. The problem is that it doesn’t work, and in the business world, the stakes are high.
In the classic film Saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller (played by Tom Hanks), was the great leader of the 2nd Ranger Army Battalion in WWII, tasked with going behind enemy German lines to retrieve the only surviving family member among four deployed brothers. In the movie, these soldiers grew to become incredibly close brothers who admired and respected Captain Miller. Even so, the good captain would intentionally separate who he was as a soldier from who he was as a civilian. There was so much mystery around his true identity that his company was wagering on his true identity and raised a large pool of money for whoever could guess it right. At an incredibly tense moment with guns drawn, Captain Miller chose to be authentic and vulnerable and share his identity with his company. He shared that he was a high school English teacher and a baseball coach in a small town in Pennsylvania, and for some reason, that blew the boys away. It was a poignant moment in the film when an injection of humanity pivoted the team away from the brink of destruction and galvanized them to see their mission through.
We are given powerful moments in our lives and our careers where we have the chance to galvanize the people around us. There is no better way to do that than by choosing to be vulnerable and authentic. A strong dose of common sense always goes best in these situations, but ultimately, we are all people and fallible at all levels within an organization. Don’t let these moments pass by. We are all human, all sons or daughters, moms or dads, sisters or brothers who love people and are deeply loved, no matter the circumstances. We have kids we are crazy about, dogs and cats that we love, sports teams we fanatically cheer on, hobbies we are deeply passionate about, and things we feel very strongly about. We all have success, and we all fail. It is the sharing of success with others and the learning to fail as a team and rise up again– that makes leaders great. A great leader will have the ability to see each team member as a whole person, exactly who and where they are, both online and offline, in the halls at work and on the weekends, and inspire them to be a meaningful part of the team. How would a bit more authenticity and vulnerability shake things up in your life? Whether in the office or with the family.
Record-setting quarters, strong year-end fiscal results, significant market growth and expansion, and personal legacies and fortunes will all be won or lost based on the quality of leaders you have in charge. Leaders who can engage and inspire teams and lead with authenticity and an occasional dose of vulnerability have been the types of leaders recorded in the annals of history and will continue to be the kinds of leaders written about for years to come.
If you need to hire strong leaders in 2025, we can help and would love to talk with you.
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