Q Consulting believes the these attributes will help identify individuals with the highest potential. Most individuals display these qualities, especially during an interview. Only those individuals who consistently display these qualities constitute the top 1% of leadership talent. They are able to succeed in a business landscape which is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.
1. Integrity
It is the hallmark of a person who demonstrates sound moral and ethical principles. Integrity is the foundation on which a talent builds relationships, trust, and effective interpersonal relationships.
2. Raw intelligence
Raw intelligence refers to a candidate’s faultless articulation of ideas and thoughts with great clarity. Talents with such qualities can have their presence immediately felt in a room of people and have people talking about them even after they have left.
3. Common sense
We test their breadth of behaviours and judgements based on different situations, scenarios, intended results, morals and value. In its essence, it’s all about keeping it simple.
4. Congruent behaviour
A fundamental behaviour we expect from our candidates is that they do what they say, 100% of the time. This sets them apart from those who don’t and they understand the importance of being professional, dependable and have moral obligations to the company and themselves.
5. Embedded initiative
When faced with a challenge, those that take the initiative to start working on them rather than wait for things to happen are the candidates we put forward.
Candidates that that have this trait embedded within them are natural leaders, innovative and are persistent in their pursuit of a solution. Often, they are not afraid of challenging the status quo and will come up with ideas that most will say are just too hard.
6. Humility
Having interviewed over thousands of candidates, the best candidates are the ones that put their teams at the core of how they explain their successes. All the best people never tell us how good their teams are, not how good they are as individuals.
The lack of humility is arguably one of the most common factors as to why we do not put forward seemingly suitable candidates. Humility also enables empathy, which is critical to the emotional engagement needed for strong entrepreneurship and innovative thinking.
7. Transparency
We put forward candidates that are transparent and upfront about any circumstances that may influence the acceptance of the role such as salary expectations and any upcoming time off.
All this will be in the best interest of all parties involved and sets everything off in the right direction, even if it may be a little uncomfortable at the start.
8. Curiosity
Businesses that want to grow, improve and avoid stagnancy need curious people. Curious people naturally want to learn how to do things better, which improves the company as a whole.
9. Open mindedness
Being open-minded means the talent will have a willingness to listen to other ideas and opinions and consider the possibility that they are wrong and their ideas can be improved upon. This is an important quality to have in your workplace.
10. Fail fast, learn fast
With everything moving at such as crazy pace, it has made problems even more complex, uncertain, ambiguous and volatile. Harvard Business Reviews refers to the this as VUCA.
On the flip side, multiple solutions can now be tested and tried at a much faster pace. This reduces the risk of going down the wrong direction that can cost the business time and money.
Often, the right solutions come with failing along the way and learning from those experiences.
Candidates that can deal with this ambiguity and have the right attitude to give things they have never tried before a good shot are in the top 1% of talent.