Every time you appoint a new leader, you’re sending a message, intentionally or not. It’s a signal about where you’re heading, what you value, and the kind of business you’re building.
Yet too often, leadership hiring gets treated like a functional exercise: define the role, scan the market, pick someone with the right experience, and move on. Box ticked.
That approach falls short. If you care about performance, culture, and your reputation as a leader, you need to see each appointment for what it really is: one of your most powerful levers. Get it right, and you accelerate everything you’re trying to achieve. Get it wrong, and you spend the next year firefighting issues you could have avoided.
Leadership appointments aren’t an operational task. They are strategic acts that define your success and leave a lasting imprint on your business.
The Performance Multiplier
When a business is growing or transforming, the performance gap between a great appointment and an average one is enormous.
A great leader doesn’t just run their function, division or market well. They create clarity. They stretch what’s possible. And they make you better too. They challenge you to sharpen priorities and make bolder decisions.
Sometimes, making the right appointment means taking a step back and asking bigger questions: Has this function outgrown how we’ve always defined it? Has the market moved on? What new skills, expertise, or ways of working are now critical to stay competitive?
It’s not just about replacing a leader, it’s about renewing capability. Refreshing the collective expertise your business relies on. Bringing in leadership that reflects where the market is heading, not where it was five years ago.
On the flip side, the wrong appointment quietly drains momentum. Sometimes real progress is sacrificed to promoting someone internally because they’re familiar, you want to develop people, and they are ready or push for career progression. You lose time patching over gaps or missing out on realising the potential of your team and business. Even when you try to be patient, you can feel it: the energy dips, decisions slow, and confidence erodes.
The most effective leaders don’t appoint to fill gaps. They hire to create a step change in capability they didn’t have, credibility they couldn’t buy, performance that lifts the whole organisation.
If your next appointment doesn’t feel like it will materially raise the bar, pause. Why settle for incremental when you can aim for transformational?
The Culture Blueprint
Here’s something we don’t say enough: every leadership hire is a living, breathing example of what your culture really is.
People watch who gets appointed. They notice how that person shows up, how they treat colleagues, what they prioritise. Over time, those behaviours spread and they inspire a dynamic culture.
If you bring in someone who’s generous with their knowledge, decisive in ambiguity, and genuinely invested in developing others. They set the tone and challenge others to operate the same way.
This is why “culture fit” can’t be a superficial afterthought at the end of a process. You have to start with clarity about the culture you’re committed to creating and what that looks like in practice.
One of the biggest mistakes I see is hiring for credentials and assuming culture will take care of itself. It rarely does. The leader is the culture.
The Reputation Marker
Here’s the truth: your appointments don’t just say something about the business. They say something about you. The talent you attract and what you do with it defines your reputation.
Hire thoughtfully, and you become known as the kind of leader who builds great teams. People will want to work with you. Investors will trust you to deliver. Partners will see you as credible.
The uncomfortable part is that failed hires raise real questions about your judgement.
The upside is, that you get to control this narrative. Every appointment is an opportunity to show the market who you are and where you’re going next.
From Transactional to Transformational
So how do you move beyond the transactional, box-ticking approach that so many companies default to?
You start by reframing what a senior hire should achieve:
Get clear on what the business actually needs next. Not what the old job description said. Not what your competitors are doing. What is the next chapter of growth or transformation demanding?
Define what you want this hire to bring culturally. Be precise. How do they show up in tough moments? What do they role model? What will they influence beyond their function?
Be brave and prioritise evidence of capability, not just a glossy CV. The leader who looks “safe” on paper is often the riskiest in reality because they’re set in old ways of working.
Don’t expect even the best hires to figure everything out alone. The first six months are critical. Make sure you’re equipping them to build trust, navigate the culture, and deliver early wins.
Use each appointment to communicate your ambition to your team, your board, and the market. Be explicit about why you made the choice and what it signals.
If you approach hiring this way, it becomes a strategic capability, not an administrative process. You start to build a leadership team that feels intentional, and a culture that others can feel the moment they walk in the door.
The Compounding Effect
Here’s what’s most exciting: when you get this right repeatedly, the impact compounds.
A single great hire lifts performance. A series of great hires creates a flywheel:
This is how companies break out of mediocrity or decline and create something enduring. It’s also how leaders build legacies.
On the other hand, when you compromise and you appoint “good enough” instead of “right” you see the opposite effect. Momentum slows. People disengage. Your credibility takes a hit.
It’s never just a hire. It’s always a signal.
Final Thoughts
In a world moving as fast as ours, you can’t afford to be passive about leadership hiring. Every appointment you make is an opportunity to accelerate progress, strengthen culture, and enhance your reputation.
So next time you sit down to consider a shortlist, ask yourself: What is this appointment really saying about where we’re going?
And if the answer doesn’t excite you, be bold enough to raise your sights.
Because over time, the story of your business and the story of your leadership will be told through the people you chose to bring with you.
Find allies who will help you raise your sights and make every appointment count.
Choose wisely.