Picking Future Leaders: Art Still Trumps Science

Andrew Hill's "On Management" column in the August 7 (2012) issue of the FInancial Times was a great read for those interested in the concept of leadership succession--specifically, choosing the next leader of an enterprise (for us, it would be for an independent school).

Hill hones in on the notion of "learning agility," which "refers to the ability of executives to apply their experience in other situations and adapt when the environment changes." He calls learning agility "one of those faddish expressions beloved of academics and consultants."

For me, though, the interesting part of his article then begins. He states that there would seem to be nothing extraordinary about an executive having learning agility..."except that, depending on whose research you consult, only 10 to 15 percent of candidates possess these special attirubutes." He cites one example that we might well consider outlandish now, knowing full well what has befallen the company: "Disconcertingly, one of the eariier case studies I uncovered [...] identified senrio executives of Eastman Kodak as particularly agile learners." That is disconcerting, indeed.

The sad tale of these learning agility assessments, though, continues. Hill writes, "Undeterred [by the Eastman Kodak story], other big companies have adopted the idea as a reliable indicator of who has what it takes to be a future leader."

He shares that, "Assessments like the one I underwent, devised by recruitment consultancy Korn Ferry, are supposed to help them [the companies] choose. But can questionnaires, even deftly worded ones, really separate the next chief executive-but-one from the also-rans? The short answer is: no."

The flaws of such assessments, according to Hill (with whom I agree on this topic), are as follows:

1. Distortion. "Whereas [an Olympic athlete] must prove her suppleness in front of an audience of millions, [the leadership candidate] can self-assess his way to the podium by following the clues laid in the questions. I thought I might have the opposite problem: if I answered the questions honestly, my tendency towards self-deprecation would undermine my pitch for the top job."
2. Irrelevance. "Somewhere in most multiple-choice forms is a question that requires the subject to imagine what they would do in some unimaginable situation." He points out that the 'unimaginable situation' can prompt one to answer in such a way that one feels like a fraud, since the situation is truly unimaginable, i.e. it is not happening for real, right now.
3. Oversimplification. "It is hard to see how one-size-fits-all questions can possibly detect all the possible nuances of human response."

Hill adds that his fellow FT journalist, Lucy Kellaway (who also writes in the business life section of the paper), also took the test, and that she "worried more about other potential flaws. The questions are supposed to work out whether candidates react well to new situations, so it should be no surprise that some of the case studies in the test are unfamliar. But Lucy's point is that you cannot generalize about the way people respond to change: she might well wail if her desk were moved, but find a big management upheaval exciting."

He points out that he himself "wouldn't rely just on a psychometric test to decide whether to appoint or promote a candidate," adding that "most employers and recruiters wouldn't either." He emphasizes the face-to-face interview as a necessity, offering that crucial interview as "further proof that art still trumps science when picking future leaders." He concludes by offering what many of us believe, anyway: "That's another problem with questionnaires: they usually tell you exactly what you want to hear."

I find Hill's article incredibly timely for would-be independent school leaders. One of the major school leadership search firms is now requiring leadership candidates to take one of these assessments (click here to visit the site of the assessment firm and learn more about the assessment).

How do we feel about that?

Hill stops short of criticizing the use of these assessments, but I tend to think that independent school educators and leaders would want to delve a bit deeper here, given our usual distate for standardized assessments, which is precisely what the linked assessment (above) is. Hill's three points of distortion, oversimplification, and irrelevance align fairly well with how many of us feel about these assesments. What is more, so many of us (myself included) have taken any number of similar assessments for various workshops or courses that we've done in the past, whether the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or others. What is the point of taking yet one more?

Where are we, philosophically, on the use of such an assessment within the scope of a leadership search?

Do the potential advantages (?) outweigh the distortion, oversimplification, and irrelevance factors?