Developer Leadership Quotient

Quotient – The number of times one quantity is contained in another.

The need to hire someone in your organization is typically driven by the needs of the organization today – we have projects to complete, those projects must be completed to ensure the success of the organization, we cannot grow without the successful completion of these products.

If you hire for the “now” you will most likely achieve the goal of completing the project that needed to be done today but you probably have not hired for to be able to grow tomorrow.

In simpler terms – think about when you go to a mechanic and something (anything) is wrong with your car.  Invariably the options to choose from always come down to – “I can fix it for today or I can fix it for tomorrow” – meaning you can finish this project, but probably not the next one.

There are seeds of inspiration, passion, cultural diversity and ingenuity in all of us, we all have different ways of showing it but it is all there.  When we hire for “culture fit” what are we really hiring for?  Can we explain this to someone?  Is it the round peg that now fills the round hole?  Is it Voltron coming together at last?  And what if this candidate put on their best show at the interview to make you think that fit existed when it didn’t?

When you finish interviewing someone, even to the extent that you are presenting them for consideration, you should constantly be asking yourself and that of your team – what that person’s Leadership Quotient is – would they have the ability to lead and take on projects on their own in a 3, 6, 12 months?  Would they be able to lead a team or a technical endeavor or anything else?

If you only see them as being able to continue doing what they are doing now, there is nothing wrong with that, but make sure that aligns with your expectations for this person so down the road you don’t regret the decision you made.