HR Soapbox Blog

(Published November 10, 2008) 

A Presidential election is essentially a nation-wide hiring decision. We narrow the pack of job candidates through the primary process; study their résumés with care; interview them (by proxy) via the media and the debates; and observe how they handle real-time crises and how they manage their multi-million-dollar campaigns as a test for "the real thing."

Well, after the longest hiring process in history, we've hired ourselves a new Chief Executive. My confession: Despite my sometimes over-the-top enthusiasm over this election, I was never overly worried about the eventual outcome, because I believed that both candidates actually had "the right stuff" to be our national CEO.

And what constitutes "the right stuff"? Personnel Decisions International, a global leadership consulting firm, came up with a list of leadership qualities that it felt successful business CEO candidates must possess. It invited Web users to weigh in on which of these characteristics were most important for "our Next National CEO" to possess. Here are the results, ranked from most to least important in the minds of the survey participants:

1. Insightful judgment
2. Visionary
3. Trustworthy
4. Gets things done
5. Inspires others
6. Good judge of people
7. Influences others
8. Courageous
9. Confident
10. Energetic

I believe both candidates possessed all of these qualities (albeit to varying degrees).

Other important qualities I believe should be considered when hiring a leader, whether of a nation or a company:

• the ability to learn on the job (and we're talking about a huge learning curve here!);
• the ability to multi-task (like, say, how one can successfully campaign and debate and work on passing a $700 billion bailout bill all at the same time);
• both the willingness and the capacity to listen to different points of view (both qualities that, I'm sorry, but I believe our last Chief Executive may have lacked); and
• the ability to communicate effectively with the public, with underlings, and with other leaders. ( Of note: Both President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden are former law professors, which, hopefully, means that they have the ability not only to understand complex ideas, but also have honed their ability to reformulate those ideas and communicate them in a way less knowledgeable people can understand.)

Of course, no leader is a miracle worker. In fact, Obama aides are currently going around trying to lower what they fear are unrealistically high expectations of what the President-elect will be able to accomplish in his first year or so in office.

But again, I'm not worried. My view: In 2000 and 2004, we hired a leader who offered us a sense of security. Now, we've hired a leader who offers us a sense of hope. Hope that the economy can and will turn around. Hope that we can bring our troops home sooner rather than later. And hope that the American dream is not dead and buried, after all.

Eileen Mager
Writer