Identifying Leaders 
Leadership qualities are in demand at all organisational levels. SHL recognises that identifying leaders and retaining them through leadership development programmes represent major business challenges for company management and HR professionals alike.
Identifying leaders for today's organisation
In today's environment it is increasingly recognised that each business situation requires a different blend of leadership skills and behaviours. In addition, there are core differences in the roles of managers and leaders. SHL's own research has highlighted that the view of management and leadership being the same is flawed, summarising that:
“Management is about keeping an existing system running, whereas leadership is about creating it, developing it or changing its direction.”
Unlike management, leadership is a high-risk activity. If a leader fails to provide the right direction, the results can be disastrous for the whole organisation. Individual assessment has a key role to play in identifying leaders with the competencies required to address an organisation's unique challenges.
If you are interested in the role of leadership and the importance of matching competencies and behaviours to organisational need, read SHL's white paper on the subject:
The SHL Corporate Leadership Whitepaper
Begin by understanding the business need
The diverse requirements of each leadership challenge can leave companies wondering where to start. The first step should be to identify and specify the particular competencies an organisation specifically needs to:
- Identify both existing and future skills gaps in the business
- Convert those gaps into meaningful job specifications
- Establish robust metrics against which applicants can be measured
- Cast the recruitment and internal promotion net as widely as possible
- Establish the training needs and personal development plans of internal candidates to prepare them to take on leadership roles in the future.
Once you have identified the competencies required in a leader, assessment and development tools can then be used to identify and nurture the internal or external candidates.
Using SHL assessment and development tools to identify leaders
SHL helped the energy company E.ON to strengthen leadership and improve customer service. Julie Harris, Head of HR for E.ON UK’s Retail business states:
“This has been a fantastic project for the business, achieving most importantly an understanding of what good leadership looks like and creating the kind of high performance culture we strive for. There is a clear understanding about how good leadership can drive high levels of motivation and great customer service.”
For more insight on how SHL helps identify leaders read the full case study
Assessment tools will look at candidates' potential for leadership, their fit against current or future competency requirements, their behaviour, and finally any required development needs. SHL provides a number of products and services to help identify your future leaders including:
- Occupational Personality Questionnaires to identify potential and help select candidates with the right competencies
- Advanced Managerial Tests to pinpoint the required numerical, inductive and verbal abilities in existing talent
- Executive Assessment Programs to uncover tomorrow's potential leaders
- Simulation Exercises to simulate real life workplace scenarios and uncover behaviour in different situations
- Scenarios to assess levels of judgement in candidates to improve performance in the future.
SHL Consultancy Services can help you identify and specify competencies and the metrics needed to measure results.
Contact us about the provision of SHL Consultancy Services
Retaining leadership talent
High performers have the skills and abilities to proactively move the organisation towards long-term objectives. Assessment tools serve not only to identify leaders but also to retain them and protect a company's investment in their training and career management.
SHL questionnaires, such as our Motivation Questionnaire, are designed to tease out opinion on job satisfaction, loyalty and remuneration and will produce feedback that can assist with:
- Tailoring training for employees with the potential to be future leaders
- Benchmarking remuneration to ensure it is set at a level that will attract and retain talent
- Identifying solutions to issues that affect job satisfaction.
It is important to remember that acknowledging and recognising potential leaders is an important part of retaining them. Making these candidates aware of leadership development plans lessens the chance of them looking elsewhere.
Contact our team to find out how SHL products and services can help your organisation identify and develop leaders
Read how SHL helped Coca Cola to identify their future leaders
