Every new recruit who joins your business should be vetted for leadership potential.

Ask people who they lead and many will tell you they are not a leader. We come back to the age-old issue of the lack of definition of what a leader is. 

Ask the same people to tell you about a leader who led them well and one who led them badly, and they will be able to think of someone. I would estimate that 100% of those people will tell you about someone senior to them. Depending on the size of the company, the same people will not have spent any time with the leader they are talking about. 

It is time to make people realise that from day one that they can and should lead if the situation arises. Current views on research around leadership settle much more on the leader needing to be the archetypal team member ‘one of us’ – one who represents us, understands what we want, knows what it is like to be us, and has the strength of mind and resilience to stand up for us if push comes to shove. Current research also shows that really successful teams have ‘helpfulness’ at their core and that this trait outperforms intelligence.

This is where we can learn leadership lessons from the geese. Picture the flock mingling on the ground. Suddenly off they go, get into the ‘v’ formation and someone takes the lead. I wonder what criteria they have to meet to head up the team? 

Watch for long enough and the leader will drop back and another goose will take their place. The new leader takes up the role seamlessly and the old leader fits back in with the team knowing exactly what to do. The followers ‘honk’ in an effort to help the leader maintain pace. If one of the flock gets tired or is injured, two will land with it and remain with it until it recovers or dies. 

During recruitment more can be done to assess the potential of individuals to foster trust, build rapport, take responsibility and be accountable to move the team forwards. This role can be fulfilled by anyone in any position; the team is stronger, more effective and certainly more efficient if people are prepared to actively watch, listen and learn with a view to imitating the best practice. 

Companies don’t have ideas – people do. Helpfulness means that individuals don’t have to know everything, they just need to know people who are good at giving and getting help.

People are motivated by the bonds, trust and loyalty they develop together. Recruiters might do well to focus elements of their interviews on eliciting from the interviewee their core values and beliefs. Here is where they will discover the true self and the real person that they are about to add to the team. 

Penny Whitelock is managing director and founder of Improve Managers.

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