I was recently talking to a client about the eternal question of whether to recruit from within or externally when it comes to new leadership positions.
There are so many advantages for recruiting from inside; the knowledge that you have of the candidate, the experience the candidates have of your organisation, saving the time and investment of an executive search process, to name just a few.
Equally, many of these advantages can turn out to be disadvantages, especially if you are attempting any kind of cultural change within your organisation. One double edged sword is that although you may have knowledge of internal candidates, if they haven’t had leadership experience, you are basing your knowledge on their technical expertise rather than their leadership potential. The danger here is obvious – you may be swapping one of your best sales people/computer engineers/purchasing professional etc. for a mediocre people manager. But what can you do to mitigate the risk?
This conversation took me back to my first leadership role, when I was working for FedEx. I hadn’t been with FedEx very long and had come from more traditional companies where the main leadership style was directive, so my assumption was that this was the preferred successful style. I had also seen that most people who were promoted into management positions got there by being technically good at their current roles. I hadn’t yet had a chance to understand that FedEx took a very different view on this. Although all this happened over 30 years ago, it seems incredible to me that I have yet to come across another company that handles things the way FedEx did all those years ago and I think that’s a great shame.
In order to become a manager at FedEx, and even to apply for people management roles, I had to first be evaluated for my aptitude for leadership. My manager recommended me for a Leadership Evaluation and Awareness Process (LEAP) which was a several months’ long process including peer evaluation, an education of what it is to be a leader and various panel interviews and assessments. You had to be committed to your leadership journey and fully engage in the process. It was an intense and challenging process but hugely rewarding, inspiring and developmental. I believe that those first steps on a leadership journey changed my whole career and led to what I do today.
What encouraged only those people who were fully committed to engage in this process was the fact that an alternative career path existed for technical roles, while those who weren’t so interested in participating could obtain the same benefits, salary grades and kudos by becoming a more senior technical expert. This is really the nub of the problem that exists in so many organisations; the reluctance to offer the same advantages to technical experts that they give to people managers.
I remember having an intense discussion with one of my clients not so long ago, trying to encourage them to at least consider seriously the dual career path option. They could absolutely see the advantages of this kind of plan for managing their talent, but couldn’t get senior management on board with offering the same benefits to their technical experts. I had carried out a series of interviews with managers and would-be managers in the sales department, and discovered that for many of the employees who came from outside the sales department, the main attraction was having a company car. This particular company were losing too many of their technical experts, who were very hard to replace, to becoming so-so people managers.
One of the things I had learnt from a previous company was that taking care of people who had a competence specific to that organisation was key as that competence couldn’t be easily replaced on the open market. Instead, they were losing these key technical players who were becoming people managers, whether that was really their ambition or not, and all for the sake of a car.
Of course this doesn’t happen in every case; often undiscovered leadership talent can emerge when people change jobs internally and it’s often a critical employer branding message that people can, and indeed are encouraged, to move around inside the organisation and take on new challenges. However, as I said in the beginning, it’s a risk which is rarely minimised. I meet so many participants on leadership development programmes that weren’t assessed, or even given any development, before becoming people managers. Too often I have to go back to basics with them and look at models and theories that they should have been introduced to a long time before. The good news is that so many of them have learnt from the good examples in their organisations as well as researching and discussing all the ways that they can become good leaders. I just feel that this could have been achieved quicker and more effectively by using a different model.
Back to the first question – internal or external recruitment? Both can be successful, depending on the outcome that is most important to you. Looking for cultural change and new ideas? Probably going to get this more easily externally. Need a good understanding of the company values and existing culture? Maybe look inside, but make sure you have some kind of mechanism for assessing leadership potential. If you’re in an industry that relies on technical experts that can’t be easily recruited from outside, make sure you take care of the ones that you already have.
Jacqui Craig, Director and Founder, Clear Connection UK Ltd
