How to Identify If a Candidate is Suitable for a Leadership Role

All businesses and organisations need to have a detailed and structured idea when hiring candidates with suitable roles. For instance, the most important role in a company is certainly the leadership role. A lot of candidates will have a great bit of technical knowledge, but are they capable of being leaders? How will you be able to hire someone with a great potential in leadership? To improve the company’s growth strategy, you must understand that hiring candidates with leadership qualities is critical.Why is it important to hire candidates with leadership potential in the near future?You can look at leaders as change agents. They act as the catalyst to grow your company faster. You should train your leaders such that they are capable of overcoming market challenges without breaking much sweat. In case your company does not boast of good leaders, then it is near to impossible to see it grow to the heights it was meant to reach when started.Finding leaders from inside your organisation could be the best thing to do. They will be well versed with the structure of the company, and will know everything about how things work inside out. The leader should have a fair idea of how the company runs, and must follow the work culture without fail. Knowing the organisation well is bound to leave the leader with a better sense of making decisions, and the leader can take better growth-related decisions.One of the golden rules for an organisation to be successful is by making timely decisions. Your business is bound to plummet if you do not have leaders with that decision making ability on time.So, how can you find such candidates from outside and from within your organisation?-  Do not focus on performance, concentrate on high potential.The performance of any employee defines the expertise and ability of his work. It is certainly something to keep in mind before selecting your leader. You also need to look behind performance however. Primarily, you must look into the employee’s desire to grow, skill, and overall capability. Let’s face it, all individuals are not cut out to be the best of leaders. They might be brilliant coders and highly important to the organisation, but leadership just does not come for them. They could be the best performers of the business, but they aren’t born leaders. This is why it is vital to focus more on potential than performance for churning out great leaders.-  Level of engagementIf your candidate for leadership shows interest towards the company’s goal and is not just behind money, then he is certainly leadership material. The person should be inclined towards seeing professional achievements across the bridge of company rise and growth. Find out if the individual is handing our suggestions to improve a certain system of the company. Do not look at this as arrogance, it shows how much the individual looks at improving on a system. This person is certainly bound to become a leader sometime or the other. -  Watcher or CatalystA lot of employees in the company do not include themselves instantly in certain procedures and projects. They do not just jump in immediately to give their views and get involved with the higher authorities. These people are called watchers, and those who involve themselves immediately are called catalysts. True leaders generally come out of the catalyst category. They ensure work gets done faster and in a more efficient manner. -  Holding themselves accountableLeaders generally hold themselves accountable whenever something goes wrong or in case of a failure. If you notice individuals shying away after making mistakes, then they are definitely not leadership material. Studies show that all major leaders in the industry have always accepted their mistakes and hold themselves accountable. Leaders are not afraid of accepting the fact that they were wrong.-   MultitaskingIf you believe you have a comprehensive list of candidates suitable for a leadership role in your firm, you could hand out a few extra tasks to confirm the same. Leaders are generally good at multi-tasking and getting a job done. If you assign 3 jobs to a potential leader, he/she should be able to figure out a way to get it done before the speculated time. Unless absolutely necessary, the candidate must not ask you for an extension. -  Emotional intelligencea)   Is the candidate a people person?b)   Does the candidate put others before himself/herself?c)   Is the individual a team player?d)   Does the leader take some time off to interact with other employees?e)   Does he meet deadlines and multi-task?If the answer to most of the above mentioned questions is a ‘yes’, then you have certainly found the best leader for your business. -   Remarkable Communication SkillsLeaders can put their word out to the others in the organisation. They are excellent speakers, and can motivate the others to achieve the unthinkable. They can effortlessly communicate with clients and the higher authority and convey what they have to. Leadership development is vital in today’s world. Once you identify a leader, a lot of tweaking must be done to ensure he has everything required to take up the leadership role. Seeking help from a good training company is vital to guarantee that your employees/candidates are ready to take up the prestigious role of leadership in your company.