The quest for leadership management

Effective leadership management is the biggest challenge in the post-pandemic era, with new parameters to measure effective leadership. It’s important to learn about the current trends of managing executive-level talents to find the ideal candidates for leadership roles.

The year 2020 has been an eye-opener for business leaders all across the world. Especially for small and medium businesses (SMBs), the metrics of ideal leadership have changed drastically as the world around them witnessed an unprecedented shift.

The future of leadership offers new challenges to overcome and new skill sets to be acquired in order to keep up with the dynamic and technology-centric business environment while staying true to the company’s core values. Not only that, but it should also understand the changing needs of employees following the pandemic without compromising on productivity. 

All these factors make hiring executives for your business even more complicated. To give you a peek at what the future entails in terms of business leadership, this blog will highlight the importance of finding the right leadership and various aspects of aligning your prospective executive leader with the company’s objectives in the quest of leadership management.

Importance of finding the right leadership

Hiring someone at an executive level is the most crucial decision for any organization. Finding the ideal candidate who knows how to undertake transformative decisions for a company with hands-on experience in their respective field requires an in-depth evaluation of the prospective candidate.

According to a study conducted by Smart CEO, less-than-optimal leadership practices cost the typical organization an amount equal to as much as 7% of their total annual sales with5-10% productivity drag which can cost companies millions in the long run.

And the problems don’t end here. Having less-than-optimal leadership can affect the entire organization, stagnating overall business operations and growth. Employees lack a clear vision towards their goals under poor leadership, which in turn lowers the morale of the department. The lack of synergy among the departments also results in fragmented work among the departments with a lack of communication.

Poor leadership also results in a culture of mediocrity with higher staff turnover, which is the biggest threat to SMBs in the post-pandemic business environment.

Considering all the above factors, it’s obvious that hiring an executive leadership is a completely different ballgame compared to hiring an entry-level employee. Having a visionary leader with great communication skills, team spirit, and in-depth knowledge of their field can make a significant difference in your organization by streamlining business operations and boosting productivity.

Technical expertise and leadership experience

Business leaders with in-depth technical know-how and experience with heading technical functions play a crucial role, especially with real-time problem-solving in technology businesses. With the prominence of remote work, companies today are using technologies like cloud computing with remote working software and business analytics applications more than ever before.

Organizations today need leadership that can effectively leverage these technologies for business success. With a bird’s eye view on the business in its entirety including all functions, an ideal leader must be able to orchestrate and streamline processes across departments to ensure business outcomes are achieved with maximum efficiency.

Aligning leadership with company culture

Another crucial factor in choosing the right candidate for executive leadership is finding whether their values and work ethics match with your organization. Having a well-defined company culture helps you tremendously in screening the candidates to find your ideal executive leader.

You can learn about your candidate’s ideologies, style of working, and personal beliefs through strategic, pointed questions during interviews. His/her ability to engage with other employees and achieve predefined outcomes determines the effectiveness of their leadership. Organizations must clarify and emphasize on their company values early to potential hires to align their individual goals with the organizational goals.

Once the candidate gets on board as an executive, the first few weeks should be dedicated to making them acclimated to the company environment, going through company policies and ideologies, understanding the work culture, and introducing the team and other leaders for communicating the bigger picture more effectively.

Providing an extremely clear picture of the organization as a whole with its intricacies, following a well-established process for a candidate’s orientation, establishing a rapport among leadership teams, and setting metrics to evaluate performance are important factors to align leadership with company culture.

Diversity is the way to go

According to Glassdoor, more than 76% of job seekers and employees reported that a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers. Creating a diverse workplace environment while addressing issues like LGBTQ employment, social inequalities have become essential for organizations to create a work environment suitable for emerging job aspirants.

With that being said, nurturing the culture of diversity at the workplace begins with educating new and existing leadership on the changing paradigms of work culture. However, this doesn’t mean hiring diversity just to appease the upcoming talent, but to genuinely make an effort to create a diverse workspace to boost overall business productivity.

If your organization is taking a step towards hiring diversity, your ideal candidate for an executive leadership position should also share these values in their personal and professional life. Another factor to consider is the effective communication of a company’s core values and culture with the external world using effective PR strategies.

As we’re living in a world dominated by social media, any contradiction in messaging and actual business practices can significantly tarnish a company’s reputation in the long run. That’s why it’s important to communicate our updated company policies clearly among your leadership team and hire a responsible person that upholds these values.

We at Vantedge Search help you find the most suitable executive leadership with our global network of diverse multi-domain talent.

Feel free to reach out to us and we’ll be more than happy to help you find your ideal leadership candidate.