Features

A 360° view on leadership

October 14th, 2021

A 360° view on leadership

The way leadership works is complicated and people struggle to have confidence in their decisions. But there are patterns, trends, and fundamental ways in which successful leaders operate. We can assess these patterns by looking at businesses in the aggregate and by tracking leadership trends over time, across businesses, and across sectors.

For example, we recently worked with a financial services business who, after acquiring another business, found themselves with two c-level operators in the same role.  They therefore had to make a judgment call on who to keep. We deployed our Leadership Dynamics product to look at both individuals across a range of factors: from functional competency and value creation experience through to their domain track record and behavioural complementarity with the team.

Leadership Dynamics helped us assess the impact each individual is having – and would continue to have – on all aspects of the business. Moreover, the product was able to discard both candidate’s trivial habits and preferences and instead identify what is actually important for the role. This deep work via a data-enabled platform provides our clients with value over and above the normal search process.

Leadership Dynamics: comparing experience to priorities

It’s instructive because leadership groups tend to have a narrow frame of reference. If I’m a COO or a CEO within a business, and I’ve only worked with, for example, a CTO once or twice previously in my career, how do I know what good looks like? How do I know that I’m comparing and contrasting individuals on the right terms?

Founders don't go into business to build leadership teams. Rather, its something they have to deal with as a consequence, and no one naturally has the answer because we all carry prejudices with us from our early career experience.

That’s why Leadership Dynamics’ high degree of accuracy and specificity is welcomed by our clients. It gives them the support to make a decision with confidence. The product demystifies leadership and strips out the noise that doesn't matter.

 

Samuel Robberts
Director, Head of Leadership Dynamics
sr@draxexecutive.com

Share this article
© Copyright 2023