Job posts asking for leadership and communication skills are often misguided as the posters neither know what they’re looking for nor how to assess it. It can even create more harm than good.
Few things irk me in a job description as much as this line: “Strong leadership skills.” Equally bad is, “Strong communication skills.” These lines not only do not help you hire but actually send a negative signal. To be fair, I was guilty of this myself years ago, when I was young and naive in hiring. The good news is there’s an easy fix.
Let’s first understand what’s wrong with it. We’ll start with communication. What does “strong communication skills” even mean? Do you mean you want an employee who can deliver a world class TED talk? That’s a communication skill, and certainly a useful one, but probably not what you need in a director of accounting. How about being able to deliver an impromptu speech? That’s also nice, but unlikely to really be important for a software engineer. So not all communication skills matter for all roles.
What about being able to write concise emails? That seems relevant. If your company is email heavy, then yes, this is probably really key. If your office culture is less “chatty” by email, maybe not so much. Suppose you’re looking for a senior member of the R&D team; then perhaps the communication skill that would help most is being able to explain deeply technical issues to non-technical people. If you have a lot of cross-functional teams then this might apply to other roles, too.
The point is there’s no one “communication skill.” It’s an umbrella term for many different techniques only some of which may matter for a role. As a hiring manager, you need to understand which skills you need and how to assess it. Let me be more explicit. First, what specifically are the skills you want, those public speaking ones, concise emails, etc. Be explicit about what you’re looking for. Ideally this is expressed in the job description, but even if it’s not, then include it in your internal notes so everyone is on the same page. Otherwise, two different people may be looking for two different things. Second, consider how you’ll assess it. If you want a strong public speaker, you can’t just judge someone in an interview and guess if she’s good on stage. Maybe ask her to do a 5-minute presentation as part of the process, or share a video clip, or maybe just seeing a track record of public speaking is sufficient.
The same applies to leadership. There’s no one, holistic leadership skill (see Leadership is Not Atomic). Rather, leadership is a combination of multiple skills, the combination of which may be more applicable in some situations than in others. (The STARS model—start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success—is a simple starting point if you’re not sure what you may be looking for.) Leading a turnaround is a different skill than leading accelerated growth or leading through innovation. A leader who is good at one type of leadership may not be good at another. A particular company may be facing any of those challenges, as well as things like a PR crisis, siloed communications internally, dysfunctional corporate culture, or a myriad of other problems.
And this is to say nothing of cultural fit which is especially key for a leader since he may set the tone. Some companies may need a hard-charging leader, but not all. Steve Jobs pushed Apple’s innovation and growth, but his style of management would have not aligned to palliative care facility.
Consider that all psychologists may have the same general training but if you’re having addiction problems, then a marriage counselor may not be the best fit. Likewise, a manager of a baseball team doesn’t say “I need a good baseball player.” Even when they look for a specific role like a pitcher the manager will decide if they need a starter, specialist (for left-handed batters), mid-relief pitcher, or closer. They can all pitch, but each does best at a certain type of pitching situation. The same is true for leaders.
If you’re a hiring manager, start by asking yourself what type of leader, communicator, or other persona you need. If that’s hard, ask yourself what type you don’t need. Equally important is to communicate it with your team so that you don’t have different parts of your hiring team looking for different types of communicators. That’s not to say you can’t be looking for someone who communicates well in more than one way, you just want everyone on the hiring team clear on what type of communication (or leadership or other skill) matters and what does not. Then come up with questions or other means of assessing that skill. (See the article How Companies Can Use AI to Make Their Interview Process More Effective for how you can use AI for such a purpose.)
I’m glad companies want skills like leadership and communication in their employees. We often find companies also want strong networkers, good negotiators, team players, cultural fits, ethical people, and more. (The chapters in The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You were selected specifically because of survey results when companies ask what non-technical skills they look for.) But these are not binary qualities, or even ones that can be measured along a single axis. When hiring you need to put thought into what specifically you need with respect to a skill, and how to assess it. This creates a better fit and ROI for both the candidate and the company. Keep asking for strong leaders but then expand on that so both the hiring team and candidates know what you really want.
It’s critical to learn about corporate culture before you accept a job offer but it can be awkward to raise such questions. Learn what to ask and how to ask it to avoid landing yourself in a bad situation.
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