Four Pivotal Insights on Hiring Leaders from the Ground Up

Posted by WorkSpace under Management
From http://blog.winningworkplaces.org 4447 days ago
Made Hot by: Sun Tzu Business Guide on January 16, 2011 4:15 pm

Brendan Cruickshank, a veteran of the online job search and recruiting industry, touches on employee leadership development.

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Comments

Written by sherisaid
4445 days ago

I like this article, and I suspect that Shawn has missed some of the points. A strong handshake and good eye contact are indicative of a confident personality, there are other, more subtle markers that come across as a general impression of confidence, but they are more difficult to define. For the applicant, developing a confident presence is crucial. For the hiring manager, differentiating between cocky and confident is necessary. Some people skip jobs because they are cocky and think they deserve better, because they don't care about the company or the position, or because the grass always appears to be greener elsewhere. Others are the Mary Poppins of business, and once they have righted the wrongs and put the business on right track, it's time to move to another business that needs guidance.

It is also possible for a leader to land in a position where their ideas are valued and growth is always possible. Those jobs are rare and valuable. It takes a gutsy corporate outlook and upper management that will get out of the way and allow leaders to move forward without impediment.

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Written by ivanwalsh
4445 days ago

Leadership is an inexact science in that what may work in one place may fail in another.

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Written by ShawnHessinger
4447 days ago

Mark,

The big problem with this list is that it creates the same kinds of over generalizations about leadership that it seeks to dispel. Things like eye contact or a good strong handshake are just too dependent upon personality and sometimes even cultural background, gender or other issues to be any kind of yardstick--not to mention almost impossible to judge in any kind of long distance online work environment where you may be hiring without even meeting the person face to face. And work history seems to be a paradox. We are both supposed to judge by a person's background/work history and yet at the same time we are NOT supposed to judge them that way. But perhaps the two biggest problems here are the fact that some leaders can't be hired but lead in certain circumstances once they have settled into a job or found their niche and that it is possible to pick the wrong kind of leader for your type of organization. A leader may, for example, have a vision for your organization that won't work given your business model or the character of your company and its customers. I'm not saying that it's impossible to hire leaders. I'm suggesting that leadership, just like success, is more a question of development at times than perhaps we realize. This, however, can also be good news because it means that leadership may not be as rare and hard to define as previously thought, but something that can be learned. Thanks for sharing the link!

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