Before You Hire Their Boss, Ask the Team

I recently won a leadership search, and HR came to me with something I have never been given in twenty years of doing this.

Survey results from the finance team.

Not an engagement survey from last year. Not a summary of exit interviews. A short, purpose-built set of questions, sent to everyone in the team who would be working with the new leader, from the most senior person in the function down to the most junior.

They asked seven questions:

1. What do you most enjoy about working here, and what would you tell someone considering joining the finance team?
2. What are the biggest challenges you face in your own role and across the broader finance team?
3. What would you most like the incoming leader to improve, change or help the team achieve?
4. What qualities or working style would help a new leader get the best out of this team?
5. How would you describe the team’s culture and its working relationships with the wider business?
6. What should someone understand about working here that might not be obvious from the job description or interview process?
7. If you looked back twelve months after the new leader started, what would make you say they’d made a positive difference?

I bloody loved it.

The business was a high-growth retailer, and having read the answers, I could see why it was growing.

The people who know the job best are rarely asked

Here is how most leadership briefs come together. The CEO or CFO describes what they need. HR adds the structure, the salary band and the reporting lines. Someone dusts off the previous position description. Then the search firm, if it’s any good, asks a lot of questions and tries to work out what’s really going on.

Every one of those perspectives looks at the role from above.

The team looks at it from the other side. They know which month-end tasks fall over every month. They know which part of the business never sends its numbers on time, and which system everyone quietly works around in Excel. They know what the last leader did well, and what they never got around to fixing.

I ask versions of these questions on every search. But I’m usually asking the hiring manager to tell me what the team thinks, and that is a different thing to hearing it from the team directly. Good hiring managers get it mostly right. Even so, I’ve never met one who couldn’t learn something from reading what their own people wrote.

Question six is the one I’d frame

“What should someone understand about working here that might not be obvious from the job description or interview process?”

That is the question every serious candidate is trying to answer from the moment they take my first call. It’s what they’re really asking when they say “what’s the culture like?” or “why did the last person leave?” Usually the best they get is a polished version from the people doing the hiring.

When the answer comes from the team, it changes how I can represent the role. I can describe the real challenges with real confidence. The strongest candidates notice that, because a brief that is honest about the mess (and every role worth filling has some) is far more persuasive than one that sounds like a brochure.

It also helps the wrong candidates rule themselves out early. That saves everyone time, including the business.

Question seven is a scorecard waiting to happen

“If you looked back twelve months after the new leader started, what would make you say they’d made a positive difference?”

Most businesses define success for a new finance leader from the top down: close the books faster, lift the quality of board reporting, get the forecast under control. All sensible. But a leader can deliver every one of those and still lose half the team along the way.

Answers to question seven tend to be very practical. Fewer late nights at month end. Someone who will push back on the business on the team’s behalf. Clear priorities. A path for the two senior accountants who are ready for more.

Put those alongside what the executive team wants and you have a much fuller picture of what good looks like in year one. That feeds straight into how you interview, what you probe for in references, and what the successful candidate focuses on in their first ninety days.

Think about what it says to the team

This is the part that I think gets underrated.

A change of leader is one of the most unsettling things that can happen to a finance team. People start wondering whether they’ll get on with the new person, whether their own progression has just been put on hold, and whether the things they’ve been asking for will finally get fixed or quietly disappear again. It is also the moment recruiters start getting calls from your people.

Asking for their input sends a clear message. Their experience matters. Their opinions are worth hearing. They have a say in a decision that will directly shape their working lives.

Most of them will never sit on an interview panel. They’ve still contributed to the process, and they know it. And when the new leader arrives, they’re far more likely to give that person a fair go if they feel they helped define the role.

Do it properly, or don’t bother

This only works if it’s run with some care. A few things make the difference.

Make it anonymous, and make it HR’s job. People will not tell you the real challenges if they think their manager will read their name next to the answer. Have HR collect and collate it, and share themes, not attributable quotes.

Keep it short. Seven questions is about right. Ask any more and the answers get thinner.

Be clear about what it is. It is input into the brief, not a vote on the hire. The team isn’t choosing its own boss, and nobody should come away thinking they are.

Only ask if you’re prepared to listen. If the answers say the systems are the problem, and the brief still reads like a hunt for someone to work harder inside them, the team will notice. So will the candidates.

Close the loop. Tell the team what you heard and how it shaped the search. Then give the results to the new leader in week one. It’s the best induction document they’ll get, and it costs nothing to put together.

A small idea worth stealing

None of this is complicated. It’s a short survey, a week of HR’s time, and the humility to accept that the people closest to the work might know something leadership doesn’t.

In return, you get a sharper brief, a more honest pitch to the market, a better definition of success, and a team that feels involved rather than just informed.

At Recruitment Labs, we tend to see the best outcomes when the brief is properly sorted before the market is engaged. This was the best example of that I’ve seen in a long while, and I’d love to see more businesses do it.

If you’re about to recruit a finance leader, ask the team first.