If you can take any comfort from the perennial worry of how to find, attract and select the best candidates, it's that you are not alone. The majority of UK organisations have concerns about their ability to fill critical leadership roles, with only 14 per cent confident about their `available talent pipelines`.

This is one of the lamentable findings contained in recent research by Right Management, resulting in a report, Talent Management: Accelerating Business Performance, based on a survey of more than 2,200 HR professionals.

Nothing they admire

This horrific level of result is echoed in separate research by the UK’s Investors in People – on the Framework Governance Group of which I sit – that suggests 12 per cent of employees can find `nothing they admire` about their managers.

The survey of more than 1,000 UK employees also found that managers not giving due recognition is the most disliked trait, with 19 per cent citing this as the biggest problem. Being approachable at 36 per cent is the quality employees most appreciate from their managers, with strong organisational skills, cited by 34 per cent, seen as the next most important.

This made me wonder about what sort of impression organisations are giving potential candidates during the recruitment process, particularly now that tools such as Glassdoor are freely available where employees can talk openly about their employment experience and warn or encourage others. If these findings are correct then no wonder then that too many organisations continue to face talent shortages, skills mismatches and weak leadership pipelines that threaten the success of their business.

As you’d expect, FDIN and, in particular, my fellow columnist and Advisory Panel Partner, Andy Wilkins, is taking a keen interest in this and related issues and will be conducting his own research into what makes a great innovation team leader. You can help him do so and you’ll find more information on this and how to take part at the end of the article.

It starts with recruitment

But it’s already clear that fixing these problems has to start with the right approach to recruitment. Make no mistake the right hiring decisions are a way of investing in good relationships between managers and staff. Naturally this is vitally important to an organisation’s success and a key attribute in continuing to win the candidates that they want – ensuring they succeed once hired and that they don’t feel motivated to leave.

Exploring soft candidate attributes during the recruitment process is just as important as eliciting technical skills. The IIP survey revealed that 24 per cent of those who get on with their boss felt it made them work harder, and23 per cent said it would make them stay at the company longer. Of those who said they didn’t have a good relationship with their manager, 43 per cent said they considered looking for a new job as a result, and 36 per cent feel less motivated to do a good job for the company.

Boss versus leader

For me much success in this respect is based in understanding the difference between the behaviours of ‘boss’ and ‘leader’ some of which the Right and IIP reports reveal. It’s essential that positive behaviour is replicated throughout the interview process to ensure its success and seamless `onboarding` and that the same rules apply for the interviewer and interviewed – after all they may be being interviewed for leadership positions or will ascend to them in future. For me a boss commands; a leader asks. A boss drives employees; a leader coaches them. A boss depends on unquestioning authority; a leader generates goodwill. A boss inspires fear, whereas a leader generates enthusiasm. A boss looks for where to place blame and a leader sorts out the problem. A boss might know how something is done, but a leader takes the time to show others how to do it. A boss uses people; a leader develops people. A boss puts themselves first; a leader puts the team first. A boss takes credit and a leader gives credit. You get the idea, I hope.

Emotional intelligence

Why is it, then, that many company and departmental heads are clearly failing to be able to break out of this increasingly ridiculous and counter-productive posturing ‘boss’ behaviour and associated confrontational, or even bullying, interviewing techniques indicative of a general management approach? The answer, I think, is that way too many lack emotional intelligence.

You may have never heard the term, though I think you will increasingly as companies implement recruitment and management initiatives to develop leaders as they struggle to maintain competitive edge in the digitally-enabled global economy. The five components of emotional intelligence, as defined by its originator Daniel Goleman, are: empathy, self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation and social skills.

Excellent versus average

In pioneering research Goleman compared those who excelled in senior roles with those who were merely average. He found that close to 90 percent of the difference in their profiles was due to emotional intelligence, rather than cognitive ability to build on the traditional requirements for success. These are: raw talent, a strong work ethic and driving ambition.

Before the HR department descends on you as part of a talent recruitment initiative or your people start to vote with their feet and force the issue, start to get an idea of the level of your own emotional intelligence. You might start by asking yourself whether you like people:

• Do you ask lots of questions after you’ve been introduced to someone for the first time before talking about yourself?
• Do you know a lot about your colleagues or employees? Not just their jobs but their backgrounds and lives?
• Could you demonstrate that as an interviewee or interviewer?

If so, you are showing empathy. Highly empathetic people build strong relationships over time – another key indicator of high emotional intelligence – and a fundamental component of great NPD teams.

Self-awareness and self-regulation

To use Goleman’s term, ‘self-regulation’ – that ability to withstand distractions and concentrate on the most important task at hand – is also one of the great foundations of emotional intelligence and it’s something you should be looking for or demonstrating in the interview situation.

In a noisy and uber-connected world, it’s difficult to develop self-awareness and strong relationships if you are mentally ‘all over the place’. In business, the devil is always in the detail. Being able to sense how others are feeling, particularly from their facial expressions and body language and acting upon these signals, is important. If you have high emotional intelligence you’ll find your intuition about people and business is rarely wrong.

It’s likely also that people have high emotional intelligence if they are inherently self-motivated. Understand if candidates were ambitious and hard-working even as a child, getting on with stuff and taking responsibility for the sheer pleasure of it. If so, it means they were probably on the right track early on. How they deal with mistakes and setbacks says a lot about who they are too.

Individuals with high emotional intelligence know that if there’s one thing they must do in life, it’s to keep going. This includes ‘doing the right thing’ no matter what. This can also be regarded as ‘authenticity’, now also a crucial aspect of corporate identity and behaviours as well as brands.

So, there you have it. If you don’t want to be one of those executives in which your team finds nothing to admire or want to be more sure about your people pipeline going forward growing looking for emotional intelligence in your candidates, yourself and your organisation could be the best thing you’ll do all year.

Finding out what people want from innovation team leaders

Andy Wilkins and Dr Amanda Brown of the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice, Cass Business School/City University, and Perspectiv LLP want to find out specifically what people want from their innovation team leaders by surveying the FDIN community.

Working with the support and endorsement of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, authors of the best-selling books ‘The Leadership Challenge’ and ‘Credibility’, the findings from this research could be used to identify gaps and aid professional development plans. The data could also be used by organisations or companies to develop training plans to specifically meet the needs of their members or employees.

You can complete the survey and find out more about the work and how it can benefit you and your organisation here

Written by FDIN advisory panel Partner, Jonathan Simnett of Big Stick

FDIN Jobs is the career development portal for The Food & Drink Innovation Network - the UK's community for successful innovation professionals.

To see more articles like this - visit us here.