Opinion: Why executive candidates need the truth, not the sales pitch

There is a point in many executive searches when stewarding the candidate begins to take precedence over informing the candidate. The science is presented at its most promising. The financial outlook is delivered with an optimistic reading. Problems within the leadership team are softened. Disagreement in the boardroom is framed as “healthy debate.” A difficult history attached to the role gets abbreviated because everyone is focused on the future.

This is not the approach I would advise. I have spent over five decades placing key leaders in life sciences, and I have never believed that difficult information makes an opportunity less compelling. It makes the mandate honest. The person you expect to address the company’s problems should know what those challenges are before agreeing to take responsibility for them.

There is nothing wrong with enthusiasm. I become concerned when enthusiasm starts replacing disclosure.

Senior executives are not being recruited into abstractions. They are inheriting companies with histories. Directors are stepping into boards with histories of their own. Decisions have already been made, programs have succeeded or disappointed and investors have expectations. Perhaps the board and management do not agree as completely as everyone would like a candidate to believe. That context affects what an incoming leader can accomplish.

Suppose you hire an executive to repair a function, but minimize how serious the problems within that function have become. The executive may be perfectly capable of fixing it. But you have sent that person into the company with a faulty diagnosis. Now some portion of the first months is spent discovering what was already known. That is an unnecessary handicap to impose on someone you presumably went to considerable trouble and expense to hire.

It also creates an immediate question of trust. Once an executive or director discovers that material information was sanitized during recruitment, he or she is entitled to—and likely will—wonder what else received the same treatment.

I understand why companies and boards hesitate to be transparent. They have found an exceptional candidate and do not want to lose that person over an ugly problem. But what have you gained if the truth would cause the candidate to decline? An executive search is not successful because somebody signs an employment agreement or accepts a board seat. The appointment has to work.

An experienced leader may even be more interested after hearing the difficult parts. Strong executives and directors tend to know that formidable jobs come with formidable problems. They deserve a clear picture of the obstacles ahead and confidence that the company or board, as appropriate, will give them the authority and support to address them.

A clear picture is especially important in life sciences. I have seen teams become enamored with what someone accomplished elsewhere. Those accomplishments matter, but they do not tell you how that individual will respond to the new circumstances at hand.

That is why candor during the search matters so much. You cannot learn how a candidate will approach a difficult financing environment, a program that has disappointed, tension within the leadership team or board or expectations that need to be reset if you have tidied up those realities before presenting the opportunity. You are evaluating the candidate against one version of the assignment while asking that person to accept another.

A serious search should give both sides enough information to have a harder conversation. Consider: “Here is where we are. Here is what needs attention. Tell us how you would approach it.” That discussion tells me far more about a prospective leader than another hour spent reviewing what he or she accomplished somewhere else.

Before going to market, company leadership and, where appropriate, the board should be able to speak plainly about the mandate. Where is the company falling short? What has already been attempted? What does the next person need to address that has not been addressed successfully before? The answers will not all belong in a job specification or director profile. They do belong somewhere in a serious search process.

There are obvious boundaries. Confidentiality matters, and candidates are not entitled to privileged information. That said, maintaining confidentiality should not cross the line into projecting an image of the leadership or organization that feels entirely foreign to insiders. Search firms need to resist that temptation, too.

A search partner who thinks the job is to keep the candidate excited has misunderstood the assignment. We should test whether the opportunity and the individual genuinely match, which is impossible when one side works from incomplete information.

Getting a candidate to say yes is not the objective. Placing the right person in the position with a fair opportunity to succeed is.

I began my career as a scientist, and perhaps that is why I have always wanted to start with the facts, including the ones we may not particularly like. You cannot expect an executive to make strategic decisions from incomplete information. You cannot expect a director to contribute at the level you recruited that person for if important realities only become clear after the appointment.

And in life sciences, we do not have the luxury of pretending that lost time is inconsequential. Companies have clinical and regulatory work to advance. They have capital to manage. There are people inside these organizations who need pragmatic leadership, and there are real patients waiting for the work to produce something meaningful.

This is why I have very little patience for dressing up an opportunity during a search. Tell candidates what is good about it. Tell them what is not working. If something is ugly, they need to understand that, too. Then listen carefully to what they would do about it.

Their response may tell you more about their ability to lead or govern than all the selling in the world.