IDENTIFYING FUTURE-FIT LEADERS
By: Sandra Davis, Ph.D. & Jim Laughlin, M.A.
The tech industry demands exceptional leaders – here’s how to distinguish between high performance and high potential.
W e heard recently from C-Suite leaders in many industry segments and tech companies, in particular, about a challenge. One of their greatest barriers to growth is a perceived or real lack of leadership talent. T echnology demands exceptional leaders like no other business sector. That is why investment into accurate and early career identification of leadership talent is at the top of every tech executive’s agenda. In fact, talent scarcity is the chief limiting factor in tech growth. The tech talent shortage landed as the industry’s top emerging risk in Gartner’s 2019 Emerging Risks Survey. In 2020, despite an increase in job applicants, it’s taking employers an average of 69 days to fill a tech role, which is 70% longer than the average 41 days needed to fill a non-tech role, according to iCIMS, a recruitment software company.
How many of these statements have you made or heard recently? We are placing people in supervisory or managerial roles without an understanding of their actual capacity for leadership. We are struggling to know who our best future leaders are due to geographically dispersed people and operations.
There are few viable internal candidates for important leadership openings.
We are not confident we can identify the skillsets our managers and leaders will need to thrive in this new world of work. We don’t have any real insight into the organizations’ leadership bench, especially at the lower levels.
28 | Identifying Future-Fit Leaders
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