08/08/2022

What Execs Should Look for in Future Leaders

The pandemic changed the traditional means of identifying leadership timber

What makes somebody a leader?

That isn’t always an easy question to answer, and there are some pitfalls to the process of figuring it out—as leadership consultant Shane Feldman told me last week, knowing that somebody has 10 years of experience can speak more to where they were in the past, not the present. Plus, there are skill sets unique to the pandemic era that are worth paying attention to, as well. 

In an article last week for CEOWORLD magazine, leadership consultant Dr. Kimberly Janson suggests that leaders need to get out of the habit of using past performance as a metric for leadership potential. Indeed, somebody’s success in a particular area of expertise doesn’t present an obvious picture of leadership potential. “The problem with selecting people who have deep functional expertise is that it often doesn’t translate into great leadership,” Janson wrote. Good performance is eye-catching, “but not in itself worthy of promotion to a leadership role.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.