The cost of hiring the wrong person is far too great and far too easy to do. Choosing a new leader for your organization is a high-stakes process with lots of moving pieces and stakeholders to manage. It’s one of the most important responsibilities leadership teams have, and it’s consistently ranked as one of the biggest challenges for CEOs.

Take a deep breath. Our approach, refined over decades, brings some humanity back to the process so you can breathe a little easier and come away with confidence in your decision.

How Does It Work?

Humans, in general, aren’t that great at assessing one another, so our process is specifically designed to help manage the biases we all bring to the process.

At its core, this process is a partnership that brings together your understanding of the role, the culture, and your company with our distinctive ability to dig beneath the surface of what you need and who the candidate really is.  We work with you, drawing out a clear perspective of how your company’s strategy, values, and culture translates into specific requirements. This process is as valuable for selecting the right leaders from outside your company as it is when considering promotional decisions for internal succession. We leverage our decades of experience working closely with leaders of organizations big and small on their most important selection decisions.

step 1 : Discovery

We work with you to answer questions like: What does the person in this role have to deliver? What is the culture of the team the candidate will join and how much stretch is there on the team’s ability to integrate new ways of working? What are the underlying values shared across the company?

step 2 : Design

We select a comprehensive assessment process that meets your needs. This often includes best in class leadership surveys, 360° feedback, gathering input from company leadership and key stakeholders, and of course, interviews with the candidates.

step 3 : Assess

The crux of our process is getting to know the candidate and developing an in-depth understanding of what makes them a successful professional. Our ability to really get to know your candidate has been honed from conversations with thousands of executives.  At the core of our interview is a career history that allows candidates to help us get to know them, including their proudest moments but their failures as well. Our interviews typically include a behavioral interview portion, a success and failure conditions analysis, a leadership work sample, and a values and beliefs exploration.

step 4 : Report + Debrief

Each candidate is compared against the specific role requirements and the harder to define qualities that make some people at your company successful while others with similar background and skills may not thrive. We work at your speed, ensuring that your hiring or promotion process meets the needs of your business. We walk you through our perspective and our recommendations. Our assessment process provides specific information on how to best onboard your candidate to the role.