The Role of Experience in Predicting Leader Success

Intuitively, we know that leadership experience matters in picking good leaders. It provides a solid foundation to draw on when navigating demanding leadership situations and helps inform effective actions and decisions in those situations. While work experience has long been an area of focus for HR professionals in reviewing candidates for open leadership positions, there is surprisingly little known about its exact role in predicting job performance.

A Quick Research Summary

Previous research has failed to demonstrate a consistent relationship between a leader’s prior experience and his/her effectiveness. Early research suggested that the predictive validity of leader experience was positive but relatively low. However, later research suggested the relationship was more complex and dependent on the type of leadership experience being considered, not all types of experience being equally predictive of success. Generally, the more relevant past leadership experience is to the actual challenges confronting the current role opportunity, the stronger the relationship.

How you operationalize leadership experience matters. For many researchers and HR professionals, experience has simply been measured by the number of years in a role. Simple years of experience is not a particularly useful metric. Two individuals with equal years of tenure in a role may have drastically different histories in terms of the nature of tasks performed, challenges faced, or the diversity of experiences provided. So it seems clear that to understand the relationship between experience and job performance, we must measure experiences in a more granular task oriented manner than simply tenure.

To effectively consider experience in leader selection, you need a model of formative leadership experiences, norm referenced measures of experience, and a method of assigning relevance to each type of experience.

A Normative Model of Leadership Experience

OMNIview has developed a structured leadership experience model based on a rigorous content review of available public research on formative leadership experiences. The experience model consists of 82 specific leadership experiences that collapse into 15 core experience factors. This inventory has been administered to thousands of leaders to establish normative experience references at four levels of leadership:

  • Senior Executive
  • Business Unit Leader
  • Mid-level Leader
  • First Level Leader

Here are a couple of examples of the factors:

  • Providing Strategic Direction – Setting short term and long-term business goals; Forming strategic alliances and relationships; Creating business plans and strategies; Evaluating the feasibility of new business opportunities; Developing new directions for a business unit or operation
  • Turn Around & Fix-its – Overcoming major setbacks or disappointments in business results; Turning around a struggling business unit or operation; Turning around struggling projects; Implementing downsizing or workforce reduction efforts; Phasing out a major function or unit; Being assigned responsibility for fixing a business problem where others had failed.

Determining Relevance and Suitability

A normative model of leadership experience allows one to establish the percentile standing of a leader compared to other leaders at the same level of leadership. To evaluate the suitability of a leadership profile for a particular individual, we need to know the relevance of each experience factor to the demands and challenges facing the current role opportunity. The simplest way to achieve this is to classify the relevance of each experience factor to performing the role using a easy weighting scheme such as:

  • Critical
  • Very Important
  • Important
  • Not Assigned

As a reviewer, you would want to see high percentile standing on those experience factors considered critical, above average standing on very important factors, and acceptable standing on important factors. One would expect to find some gaps in the experience profile for any given individual. The criticality and magnitude of the deficits discovered would be the primary determinant of suitability.

The reviewer should also consider the probability of closing existing gaps after hire. Some additional factors to consider include:

  • Learning Agility
  • Motivation
  • Self-awareness
  • Opportunities to acquire the experience in the new role

Together, these pieces provide the basis for an effective evaluation of the suitability of an individual’s experience foundation to date.