It continues to bemuse me why employers focus their attention primarily on the personality of individuals when seeking to appoint leaders/ senior managers. I’m seeing increasing evidence that:

  • Skill set relevancy 
  • Experience relevancy
  • Depth of experience 

….feature as lower-order criteria in the minds of employers/ recruiters when selecting such people.

I believe this orientation has much to do with the politically correct (PC) environment which has pretty much flooded through most western world countries; where legislators seem to be transfixed on the pursuit on equality in terms of both input into the functioning of organisations and income. Have a look at the horticulture industry for example, which has seen the introduction of GRASP – an initiative of European origin that seeks to grant improved rights to employees despite employees having no financial stakeholding in the business.

I caution employers who are appointing senior managers based on personality for the most part; in that in my experience I have found that personality can be a veneer, covering what later is discovered as being a relatively shallow leader skill set and experience base.

Whilst I understand the endeavour of employers/ recruiters to appoint people to leadership positions who they feel will “get along”  (not ruffle feathers) and positively influence stakeholders, unfortunately many appointees who are appointed on the basis that they’re seen as being “nice people” tend to reflect a populist leadership style – wanting to keep their constituents “happy” rather make decisions/ take action which are in the best interests of the greater organisation. 

Populist leaders tend to operate at a political level; whereas pragmatic leaders who focus on making the right practical decisions/ taking the right practical actions tend to have little regard for political play and are more concerned about moving the organisation forward in a direction that best serves the interests of the organisation.

In my experience, pragmatic leaders will always out-perform populist leaders in evolving the interests and enabling the achievements of an organisation. They may not display the glowing personality of a populist leader, but they more than make up for that in their depth of character and experience, capabilities and ability to perform in the best interests of the stakeholders who they serve.