If I’d been a search consultant all my life, I wouldn’t comment on this. Now that I can watch these things from the sidelines, I see more sides to them. I can focus better on observing and reflecting.
Don’t imagine there’s no self-doubt in an appointment process.
The investor calls, struggling with a candidate who has already passed every interview: can he really do restructuring? Can he lead a team? How tough is he on execution? How sensitive with delicate issues? I’m wrestling with a clear view too. The investor notices, and we both talk about our own setbacks before coming back to the question.
We all know self-doubt is part of it. Everyone has it. It’s closely linked to self-reflection and is held up as a noble trait of modern leaders. Coaching seminars and leadership books praise it as the finest of qualities. Talk about it, and everyone wants it.
Odd, then, that nobody actually talks about it.
The candidate says: “Through the measures I introduced, I increased EBIT by 12 %”, or “cut costs by 8 % and reduced working capital by 35 %.”
To be fair, it isn’t entirely wrong to claim successes for yourself. But we all know they only happen as a team. Smart storytellers, CEOs included, say: “I helped increase EBIT by x %.”
What I always want to know, though, is:
- “What did you find hard?”
- “What kept you awake at night?”
- “What did you get wrong?”
It isn’t a search consultant’s magic formula; it’s simply about keeping the conversation balanced. I talk openly about what I’ve got wrong too. This summer, we got ourselves into a precarious situation in the mountains in a stupid, avoidable way. It didn’t have to happen, and I was furious with myself.
I have plenty of operational experience, so I’ve also had plenty go wrong. As someone who makes or shares decisions about people, I have no right to judge others lightly.
In the novel “Lei e lui” (She and He) by the Italian author Andrea De Carlo, there’s a passage I read when this post was already in my head. The father calls the place where the heroine keeps doubting her choices the “garden of doubts”, in line with his theory that the most interesting ideas grow out of doubt.
(Andrea De Carlo, Sie und Er, Diogenes 2012, p. 228)
