The Most Important Job of a Leader

What do you think is the most important job of a leader?

·     Is it to motivate the team to achieve departmental business objectives?

·     Engage employees to ensure they are highly productive?

·     Drive home business results?

While the above is essential, it’s not the most important job of a leader. Why?

Because a leader cannot accomplish any of this without the right people on his or her team.

Therefore, the most critical job of a leader is to hire the right people.

Think about it. When you make great hires, you no longer waste precious time playing referee between employees who don’t get along. Nor are you spending the majority of your energy trying to bring B players up to A status. You have an easier time hitting your targets because you have the right people in the right roles rowing together in the right direction.

Yet, hiring managers spend as little time as possible hiring people. Crazy, right?

Look, I get it. Hiring is a lot like dating. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet the right one. And who likes kissing frogs?

What if I told you there was a way to spend less time hiring, while at the same time improving the quality of your hiring decisions? Would you then be willing to shift your thinking and embrace your role as a hiring manager?

First, you need to approach the hiring process with a positive mindset. None of this, “I don’t have time to hire people,” or “Hiring is an HR function” stuff. There’s a reason why managers are called hiring managers. That’s because it’s their responsibility (again, not HR) to hire.

Or if you prefer, we can go back to the sixties where leaders had no say as to who was on their team. Managers were simply assigned employees. Yet, their performance was measured based on how well they managed these people.

No thanks! I’d rather be in charge of my destiny, and I’m sure you would prefer this as well.

Next, you have to get really good at assessing candidates. The better you are at this, the faster this process will go. Take an interviewing course, download my book, Selecting for Success, hire someone to coach you through this process.

Just do something!

Lastly, you need to turn your entire team into a recruiting machine. Imagine how much easier it will be to fill positions when you’ve got multiple people working with you on this initiative. Team members will be thrilled to go along with you on this journey. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be in the position of selecting their co-workers?

It’s been my experience that when leaders excel at hiring, they see their careers soar. Why? Because senior management has the confidence that these people are world-class leaders. They can assemble and manage high-performance teams, that are critical for continued business growth.

Enough talk. Now, let’s get hiring! 

? Matuson Consulting, 2019.

What do you think the most important job of a leader is? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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