Hiring a Team Leader: The skills to look out for
Topic: HR Consulting for Startups
Hiring a first-class team leader has a lot of benefits, both for employees and for the company. The distinguishing qualities of leaders are many, but how can you make sure that the team leader you hired is really a caring person rather than a good salesperson during the interview phase?
Why should you hire a leader?
For employees, there are several benefits of having a good leader:
- The feeling of safety and transparency;
- Believing in the cause and in the vision of the company or project;
- Empowerment and engagement;
- Higher learnings and knowledge sharing.
From a company perspective, good leadership will result in
- Lower employee turnover: people will stay longer because of the nurturing environment
- Stable working relationships and more open communication flow
- More innovation due to involving more employees in idea creation
And as an overall effect, you’ll see a relevant increase in productivity and efficiency because of the higher amount of knowledge sharing, internal learning and mutual trust.
What should you take care of, when hiring a leader?
Many recruiters ask different behavioral questions, but in these cases, it is quite common that the candidate has prepared an answer already upfront. It is easier to assess leader traits during case studies, group projects, or assessment centers. While working in a group, on something the candidates will do on a daily basis, the leader tends to differentiate himself/herself because of their ability to take initiative, sell himself/herself tastefully without resulting in arrogance, taking and giving valuable feedback, not being overconfident while also being able to listen to others.
The red flags are when a candidate is prone to conflict, had problems in a previous team, doesn’t accept others’ opinions, or becomes very dominant in reacting to situations.
In the tech sphere, it’s considerably hard to spot leaders. Typically, developers are more focussed on numbers and on hard skills, are less empathetic, and maintaining good relationships is not of high importance for them. Even if it won’t necessarily be easy, the CTO is the leader of the tech department and hence he/she needs to learn how to lead the team, be there for them and ease the communication gap between the tech department and the rest of the company.
Can someone learn to be a good leader?
After hiring your team lead, you should focus on helping the leader to further develop these characteristics. Amongst many, empathy, knowing how to work with people and treat them well, the ability to get people on board, motivating and influencing others are the keys to success. Some traits might be harder to develop than others, but there are plenty of courses and books about working and leading a team, realizing verbal and non-verbal communication, and so on.
We need more leaders in business. More people, who are able to give a big vision to believe in, and a reason to come to work every day. Those who feel responsible for their job and they don’t value just numbers but also personal development.
Milica Spiric, HR Consultant
