We are preparing to make our first outside leadership hire for a brand new department seat on our Accountability Chart, but my existing homegrown managers are highly skeptical. How do we define and validate the absolute requirements for this new seat before we start interviewing?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When you bring in your first major external leadership hire, the biggest risk is that your homegrown team will reject them like a bad organ transplant. To prevent this, you must define the requirements of the seat with absolute, objective clarity before you write a job description or review a single resume.

Start with your Accountability Chart. Do not look at the talent available in the market; look at what the business actually needs to scale. Define the five key roles that this seat must own. Once the roles are defined, use the GWC framework to establish the criteria. The candidate must get the seat, want the seat, and have the physical, mental, and emotional capacity to do the work.

Introduce your homegrown team to the process early by sharing the specific Accountability Chart seat and the core values requirements. Let them see that you are hiring for the needs of the business, not to diminish their roles. When the team understands the objective criteria and sees that the new hire possesses the exact GWC needed to solve their departmental bottlenecks, they will welcome the help rather than fighting the intrusion.