We are scaling our leadership team to prepare for an exit and need to hire a world-class Chief Operating Officer. How do we use objective hiring standards instead of personal bias to define this critical seat on our Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Hiring for a senior leadership role like an Integrator or Chief Operating Officer requires a highly disciplined, objective approach. You cannot rely on gut feeling or pleasant interview conversations. Start by defining the seat on your Accountability Chart with absolute clarity. Avoid generic job descriptions. Instead, use objective guidelines to build a clear profile. Gather input from multiple stakeholders within your organization, including a peer, the direct manager, and at least one direct report. This gives you a holistic view of what the business actually needs from this seat. Next, establish behavioral and cognitive job targets using Predictive Index Assessments. Define the exact behavioral drives required for success in the seat, such as high dominance for decision making or high conformity for process adherence. Map out the cognitive capability needed to handle the complexity of your scaling operations. During the interview process, evaluate candidates strictly against these job targets and the three GWC™ filters. Do they get the role? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity to do it? By grounding your search in hard psychometric data and multi-stakeholder feedback, you eliminate personal bias.