How to Find the Best Leaders and Turn Them into Your Business’s Competitive Edge

19 November 2025

How to Find the Best Leaders and Turn Them into Your Business’s Competitive Edge

The single most reliable way to grow and sustain a healthy business is to put excellent leadership at the heart of it. Leaders shape strategy, protect culture and amplify performance; when you invest in finding and developing the right people, the rest of the organisation tends to follow. Too many owners treat leadership as something that happens around the edges — a job to be filled once the “real work” is done.

The smarter move is to make leadership hiring and development a deliberate, data-informed priority. Below are practical approaches for finding the best leaders, assessing fit, and building a leadership pipeline that keeps your organisation resilient and engaged.

Leaders Define Your Business Culture

Leaders are not just role-holders; they are culture-makers. Every interaction a client, candidate or colleague has with a senior manager sends a signal about what your business values and how it behaves. That is why hiring and promoting for cultural fit matters as much as technical skills.

To be intentional about culture, start by describing the behaviours you want leaders to model. Use plain-language statements rather than vague adjectives. Examples that work well in practice include:

• “Leads by asking questions first and making recommendations second.”

• “Takes ownership for customer outcomes and escalates issues early.”

• “Develops direct reports through regular one-to-ones with clear development goals.”

Translate those behaviours into the person specification you use in the hiring process and the performance conversations you hold afterwards. When leaders consistently demonstrate the same behaviours, you get a self-reinforcing culture that both attracts talent and reduces costly turnover.

Data-driven recruitment is the way forward

Recruitment decisions that rely solely on CVs and gut feel are a risk. Data-driven recruitment complements judgement with objective evidence: metrics on sourcing channels, structured assessment results, competency scores and predictive indicators of performance.

Start by defining the measurable outcomes you expect from the role (for example: increase recurring revenue by X%, reduce churn by Y points, improve NPS by Z). Use those outcomes to shape competencies and design structured interview guides, work samples or case exercises that directly map to the job.

Useful steps to make a recruitment process more data-led:

1. Define success metrics for the role and the behaviours that produce them.
2. Use structured interviews and consistent scoring rubrics for all candidates.
3. Include a practical exercise or work sample that mirrors a key aspect of the role.
4. Track hiring funnel metrics (time-to-hire, source conversion, assessment scores) and review them quarterly to identify bias or weak stages.

These practices reduce the risk of hiring someone who looks good on paper but cannot deliver results or embody your culture.

Use external partners for specialised leadership roles

For highly specialised or senior roles — roles where a bad hire would be costly — an experienced executive search firm can add real value. Good retained search firms combine deep sector knowledge, passive candidate networks and robust assessment methodologies.

When choosing an external partner, evaluate them on:

• Track record in your sector and evidence of successful placements.

• Assessment approach: do they use competency frameworks, psychometrics or work-sample validation?

• How they assess cultural fit and onboarding support after offer acceptance.

External partners are not a replacement for your involvement. The best outcomes come when hiring managers remain closely involved in defining the role, assessing cultural fit and designing onboarding.

Identify leadership potential, not just past performance

A common hiring trap is to favour people whose CVs only show past successes in similar roles. While experience matters, potential — the capacity to learn, adapt and lead others — is equally important, particularly in fast-changing sectors.

Signs of leadership potential include:

• Evidence of learning: a pattern of taking on stretch assignments and filling gaps in capability.

• Coaching orientation: people who develop others rather than merely delegate.

• Cognitive flexibility: ability to reframe problems and switch approaches when evidence changes.

Assessment methods that reveal potential include situational judgement tests, structured assessment centres and short “day in the life” simulations that mimic real leadership dilemmas.

Build a flexible leadership team that can overcome adversity

Resilient leadership teams are intentionally diverse in thought, experience and style. They combine people who can stabilise the business in a crisis with those who provoke growth and innovation. To build that balance:

• Map current leadership strengths and gaps against future business scenarios.

• Use succession planning as an active tool (not a tick-box exercise). Identify at least two ready-now and two developable successors for every critical leadership role.

• Rotate leaders through different functions or strategic projects to broaden their exposure and reduce single-point dependencies.

Succession planning is not just about replacing the CEO. It’s about creating shared knowledge, clear handovers and development pathways so the business can continue to perform when people move on or the market shifts.

Develop leaders deliberately — onboarding, coaching and measurement

Finding leaders is only the start. The way you onboard and develop them determines whether they thrive. Effective leadership development is a mixture of structured learning, on-the-job stretch and sustained coaching.

Key elements of a practical development programme:

• Onboarding plan that includes culture immersion, stakeholder mapping and early performance wins.

• A 6–12 month success plan co-created by the leader and their manager, with clear milestones.

• Access to external coaching or mentoring for the first year.

• Quarterly 360-degree feedback and a compact development plan based on it.

Measure the impact of development activity using the business metrics the leader is accountable for, plus engagement and retention of their direct reports. This keeps development firmly tied to outcomes.

Retain the leaders you choose

Recruitment is costly; retention is the smarter long-term investment. High-performing leaders stay when they feel trusted, stretched and fairly rewarded. Practical retention levers include:

• Clear career paths and visible investment in development.

• Transparent pay and bonus structures linked to team outcomes.

• Regular strategic dialogue with owners or the board, so leaders feel part of the organisation’s direction.

Recognition matters. Small, timely gestures that acknowledge team success and individual leadership can reduce turnover and sustain discretionary effort.

Practical checklist for next 90 days

• Update at least two leader role descriptions to include behavioural indicators and success metrics.

• Run structured interviews for the next senior hire; require a work sample or assessment centre exercise.

• Create succession maps for three critical roles and identify development actions for two successors.

• Set up a 6–12 month onboarding and coaching plan for new leaders, with quarterly success reviews.

Making these discrete changes in ninety days creates immediate improvement in hire quality and leader readiness.

Final thoughts

Great leadership does not happen by accident. It requires careful role design, objective assessment, deliberate development and active retention. Make leaders the people you invest in first, and the returns will be visible across morale, customer experience and commercial performance. When leadership is a strategic capability rather than an afterthought, your business gains the agility and culture it needs to succeed through change.

Header image by: jaydeep at Pixabay

References

• CIPD: Leadership in the workplace factsheet — https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/factsheets/leadership-factsheet

• CIPD: Succession planning factsheet — https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/factsheets/succession-planning-factsheet

• Indeed (UK): Data-driven recruitment 101 — https://uk.indeed.com/hire/c/info/data-driven-recruitment-tips

Leadership Resources

For more leadership resources look at our great-value guides. These include some excellent tools to help your personal development plan. The best-value approach is to buy our Leadership bundle, available from the store.

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• Leadership Essentials
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• Making Change Personal

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