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Headhunting: Psychodynamics of Potential Spaces
Created in the Executive Search Process.
THOMAS GILMORE
SOCIO-ANALYSIS 9:2007 (63-78)
This article overviews the key phases of executive search, exploring in depth the “scoping the
job phase” and other steps as ‘transitional spaces’ in which explicit and latent aspects of the
work co exist. Each of these steps affords an opportunity for creative working through tensions
between past and future, different visions among key constituencies, and laying the ground
work for a realistic selection and reasonable expectations for the chosen leader. The argument
is that a psychodynamic perspective can deepen the work of executive search and lead to
selections that fit the actual challenges the organization faces.
KEYWORDS: executive search, transitional objects and spaces for developmental thinking.
Introduction
Although executive search has matured into a significant global industry and profession,
the slang of “headhunter” reveals latent aspects of its practices. Brewers Dictionary
(1995) defines 'head-hunting' as, 'the practice … of cutting off the heads of slain enemies
and keeping them as trophies'. In the modern sense, head-hunting is the recruitment of
executives by one company from another, often through an agency. It’s a small step to the
slang for psychiatrists as head-shrinkers which 'probably originated as a derisory reference by
psychiatrists to shrink or deflate the delusions of grandeur of certain of their patients' (Morris
1971). Heifitz (personal communication) has noted how language often carries forward
latent, out-of-awareness meanings. The rational aspects of a significant service industry of
Executive recruiting’s rational task to match talent to strategic imperatives co- exists with
associations to war-like competitiveness for talent, trophies, and grandiosity.
Executive search work consists of a series of stages (see Table 1), each of which is
suffused with the three challenges of managing the interplay between past and future,
known and unknown, and ideal and real.
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Table 1. Stages of Executive Search and Key Issues
Stage Explicit Work Latent issues
Organizational need for
a new leader.
Participants: outgoing leader,
the board, significant external
stakeholders such as investors,
customers, suppliers, etc.
Working through issues of
retiring executive or terminating
someone’s employment.
Wrestling with the ‘right’ time to
leave, Killing someone’s career,
Legacy.
Existing staff feelings of
abandonment by a departing
executive.,
Scoping the job.
Participants: search committee,
search firm, or designated staff,
stakeholders who are involved,
board, employees, customers.
Assessment of how the industry
has changed, the future
challenges and how they link to
the role.
Conflict over conceptions of the
job.
Unrealistic expectations.
Accepting new features of the
competitive environment or
changes in the organization’s
identity.
Building the pool of
candidates.Participants:
search firm, search committee,
applications, sources of
applicants.
Matching skills and background
to the job description; screening
candidates in and out.
Selling dreams to candidates of
what this job might do for their
career.
The organization taking risks to
look in unfamiliar places.
Insiders versus outsiders as
candidates and the implicit
valuations.
Actively asking people to apply
and risking being rejected by
them or their being rejected by
the appointing authority.
Checking out finalists
via reference checks and
deciding.
Participants: search firm,
search committee, candidates,
references.
Analyzing strengths and
weaknesses of candidates relative
to the criteria in the scoping
document.
Reading character and personality
of candidates.
For candidates, issues of
competitiveness, being chosen,
or being rejected. For the
organization being turned down
by one’s top choice. Assessing
references’ candor.
Transition phase.
New leader, former leader, ,staff
The chosen leader preparing to
take the role.
Existing staff briefing the new
leader. Joining effectively.
Who will be kept or go?
The new inner circle?
Whom to trust?
Shadow of the prior leader.
Taking charge.
Participants:
New leader, existing staff, and
new recruits
Matching the new team to the
challenges.
Mix of listening and action,
Trait taking, and new trait making.
Working through overt and covert
resistance. Psychologically joining
the culture.
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Headhunting
Each of the above stages can be viewed as liminal spaces with varying degrees of
containment of the major participants and the attendant anxieties. When well structured
and led, each phase can address the primary task and associated primary risk (Hirschhorn
1999), thereby contributing to a creative resolution of the inevitable conflicts. The transitions
between each of the phases are also critical to the overall success of the process.
At each stage, recruiters need to provide enough structure to support creative working
through of the tensions, especially to create good enough legitimacy for the subsequent
phases. All too often when leadership transitions fail, people look upstream and say, ‘the
search process was flawed.’ Key groups were not sufficiently represented, the scope was
wrong, the pool was weak, the checkouts were inadequate. In each of these phases the
tension is between an overly specified process ('round up the usual suspects') and the
experience of the depth dimensions with all the associated anxieties and hopes. For example,
even at the sales pitch, the search consultant and the selectors must grapple with fantasies of
the perfect savior leader (Storr 1996) and the realistic constraints.
Because of the anxieties involved in leadership transitions, often the processes are
treated as ‘ordinary’ (Trist 1963). The old position description is recycled with minor
changes or a few additions from the latest leadership literature such as emotional
intelligence. A realistic appraisal of the reasons for the leader’s departure is supressed, there
is little or no . exploration of the new and emergent features of its markets. The assumption
is that the context, organization, and role have not changed. The composition of the search
committee may be defensively shaped to appease various constituencies (what some term
a Noah’s Ark approach – two of each) rather than a considered choice of people with the
right temperament, attunement to emergent futures, and representational credibility. The
leadership, chartering, membership, and working processes of the search committee can be
fate-making in the outcome of the leadership transition. Yet these decisions are most often
made before the search consultant who brings multiple experience across multiple searches,
is retained.
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The Scoping Challenge
Consider how different is the concept of scoping as practiced by IsaacsonMiller,
a Boston based executive search firm that specializes in mission driven organizations.
“The scope tells a story.”
The best scopes tell a story, a true story, about a real life organization grappling with the real
world. They have a classic narrative frame. They introduce the organization, and some of its
people, as the chief protagonist. The introduction catches our attention. This is an important
organization, an important “person.” We want to know more.
The early building chapters reveal the mystery slowly, unveiling bit by bit the history, character
(culture), virtue (mission) and limitations (markets, finances) of the protagonist. The reader
feels drawn in, responding with respect and affection, but worried by hints of the drama to
come: the incomplete purposes, the unfulfilled aspirations. In the Challenge section, we make
success imaginable. We describe large, difficult tasks, but we bring the reader’s fears down
to the ground by making the challenges concrete and measurable. We understand that these
tasks will challenge the organization and also the character of the leader. We make hope
large. We imply heroism, in the quality of the mission served and the nature of success, but we
describe an imaginable human effort.” (IsaacsonMiller, internal manual).
When a scoping document is well-crafted by the right set of stakeholders it has a
legitimacy going forward. It guides where to find potential candidates, how to frame the
strategic challenges, and specifies the desired key characteristics of the leader. The scope
informs the ‘pitch’ to sources and candidates to ‘pull’ talented people who think they are
happy in their current jobs to consider this opportunity. A well-bounded scoping process
enables working through 'the tensions in systems between the purpose of the group or the
strategic objectives of the organizations and the interpersonal relationships among those
carrying out the required activities, and between their roles and accountabilities – that is,
the (interdependent) relationships when operating in a turbulent environment' (Bridger
xiii in Amado and Ambrose 2001). Thus, it can function as a ‘transitional object’ (Winnicott
1971) that cannot be imposed but only can be taken up by individuals or a group as a bridge
between old/known leader and new/unknown and between its known history and uncertain
future.
In many search firms, the scoping document is produced by the expert search
consultants via many individual interviews, creating a document that then is revised by the
search committee. The dynamics of those sessions will greatly influence the potency of the
scoping document and the degree to which it is really internalized. Clearly, latter stages of the
search have a high need for confidentiality, but too often the earlier stages do not sufficiently
engage key stakeholders in shaping the strategic context and translating it into the challenges
and essential characteristics of a successful candidate. Wider ownership of the scope
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document will help both with selection and transition later on.
After guiding the search for candidates, the scoping document plays an important role
in the final selection of the new leader. Rather than fall prey to the charisma of particular
candidates in interviews (narcissists often interview very well), the scoping document
represents the realistic challenges and their implications for the new leader. Furthermore, it
frames the choice among finalists triangularly: the fit of each to the challenges rather than
a competition among the finalists. As Mant’s (1983) conceptualization of triadic thinking
suggests, this is less susceptible to fight/flight distortions. One of the typical failures in search
processes is overreacting to some aspects of the prior leader. For examples, Harvard selected
Summers for his toughness to drive the strategic commitments to big capital expansions of
science but also in reaction to his predecessor’s gentility. That resulted in too great a clash
with the dominant culture.
A Professional Organization Seeks a New President
In this section I focus on the scoping challenge via a case in which CFAR played an
important role prior to the official search process, helping to work through complex tensions
to prevent their distorting the search process. The organization is in the arts, with unionized
professionals, who had considerable tensions with the outgoing, long tenured president.
Parallel to the president who oversees operations, is an artistic director who reports directly
to the Board chair, who five years ago had taken on the added title of CEO, even though
a volunteer. The institution faced major challenges in their ‘industry’ in terms of changing
economics and patron support.
CFAR explored the challenges and the desired characteristics via a highly interactive
working session among the key stakeholder groups: the board, the staff, and unionized
professionals who create the value for the enterprise. This made the balancing of different
interests more transparent early in the search and transition process rather than only when a
successful candidate was announced.
CFAR was invited to create a diagnostic, transitional process to get the parties into a
good enough alignment to undertake this search after tensions from earlier disagreements,
including a bitter strike. CFAR undertook a set of interviews as a build up to a day-long
retreat. Our fear was a rigid re-enactment of fixed positions where each party blamed the
others. Our hope was to create 'potential spaces for imagination…[a way of examining]
the idea of gaps, those "spaces between" where there was room for the play of speculation'
(Phillips 1998, pp.1-2). These spaces can be between the organization’s history and its future,
between the past and future leader, and between the surface track record of a potential
candidate and their personality/character as revealed by a biographical interview (Isaacson
1988).
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In a sense, this retreat was a transition into the search process in table 1, where
they would need to: i) choose a search firm; ii) decide a representative process for the
stakeholders, iii) generate a shared conception of the challenges and how they translated into
essential characteristics; iv) winnow candidates to a few finalists, and v) select and plan for
the transition.
This case raises the broader issue of how the consulting world has specialized into
separate firms (and industries) of executive search, strategy, and governance, yet in most
cases there is a wicked intertwining of succession, strategy, and board development (CFAR
2007). As noted earlier, often the outside firm is hired by a search committee, formed without
benefit of the pattern level experience of the search firm who do many per year, when
the organization may not have done one for 5-10 years. In this case, the leadership wisely
realized that there needed to be a pre-search phase to prepare the ground for an effective
recruitment of a new president.
Especially in the early phases, there is a risk of ungrounded thinking with rescue
fantasies of the leader who will bring the organization through the wilderness to the
promised land. One participant (a professional) stated ironically (but capturing a widespread
wish), 'the board needs to hire a Messiah and he will be able to do what no one has been able
to do in the past ten years – to work with the board and we can get back to our work.' Yet
developing the position description and key challenges must support creativity and discovery
and take into account the way the role itself needs to change in light of its past and future
challenges.
In this instance, as is often the case, the role of president had evolved over the decade
of the outgoing leader’s tenure to match his strengths and delegate to others areas he was
weak in. One person described the role at the time of the search as “no longer a role, but the
biography of the prior occupant,” which is common with long tenured leaders. Developing a
scope and job description resembles Winnicott’s history taking in which a safe enough space
is created for the stakeholders represented in the search committee to reach an ‘appreciative
understanding’ (Winnicott as quoted in Phillips 1998) of their history and the key transitions
facing them for the future. As Hirschhorn (1998 p.110) suggests, a vision 'must be grounded
in reality…helps simplify our view of the setting we are in and it highlights a mechanism of
action.' Later, Hirschhorn notes that when followers overly invest their leaders with magical
properties, they cede their responsibility to collaborate in creatively working through the
'adaptive challenges' (Heifitz 1994) that the organization faces. The challenge at the front
end of a leadership transition is to not let the parties collude around an ideal but unrealistic
job description or candidate, who in the future will magically resolve the dilemmas the
organization is facing.
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Headhunting
The Design
We began the session with the 40 participants seated at five tables of eight, mixing the
professionals, board members, and staff. After a brief framing of the day’s goals and design,
each participant interviewed someone else at their table on an assigned question and were
interviewed in turn about their question. After several rounds of interviewing one another,
all the participants who were asking the same question caucussed to extract and post the key
themes and interesting outliers for the full group. The process strategy of beginning in pairs
increased candor to find a voice in a conversation/interview without others identifying one
or feeling the pressure of one’s identity group solidarity. This was especially so for the union
members. The resulting themes functioned like a musical overture, putting core issues in
play: the top opportunities, the top challenges, significant organizational issues, the essential
characteristics for a new president, and governance issues. Then these informed in a systemic
way the subsequent working sessions.
The next phase invited the three groups – professionals, staff, board members - to caucus
among themselves. One of the significant challenges in working with polarized issues is to
prevent projective processes that re-locate dilemmas existing in each of us into some ‘other’.
For example, if I feel 60/40 about the importance of financial stability over excellence and
am in interaction with someone who is 40/60, I may argue more strongly for my position,
subconsciously delegating to the 'other' the representation of that part of me that cares about
excellence. Over repeated interaction, the expressed difference can grow as we stereotype
each other as illustrated in the diagram below (Gilmore 1988).
Splitting Dynamics
CENTRALIZATION Expressed Differences
True Differences
Quality
Labor
Change
Cost
Management
Stability
DECENTRALIZATION
A’s
Expressed
Position
A’s
True
Position
B’s
True
Position
B’s
Expressed
Position
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In this instance, it was all too easy to see the board/staff as caring about financial stability
and the professionals about their craft. Rather than leave these dynamics under the table, we
charged each group with three questions:
1. What is it about your group’s interests that you feel the other groups have the
hardest time hearing?
2. What are one or two stereotypes that you think the other groups have of your
constituency?
3. What are 3-5 behaviors, actions, or types of support your group wants from each of
the other groups?
The rationale for this component was Bridger’s notion of the double task – the imperative
of being both 'purpose oriented' and a 'learning and self reviewing entity...that can pay
attention to the feelings of, and conflicts among its members' (Trist, xxv in Amado and
Ambrose 2001).
This session allowed participants to step back and be reflective about the quality of
their interactions. Aron (2006) notes the power of ‘coercive projections’ citing Davies,
'each becomes hopelessly defined by the other and incapable of escaping the force of the
interactive pull to act in creative and fully agentic ways' (Davies 2003, pp. 15-6). Aron (2006,
p. 352) notes the power of creating a ‘triangular space which allows for the possibility
of being a participant in a relationship and observed by a third person, and of being
an observer of a relationships between two other people.' In this retreat space, prior to
moving from the diagnosis to the task of specifying the new role relationships and desired
characteristics, we created a process that enabled people both to reconnect more deeply
with their identity group and discover intra-group differences. Via the exchange they could
begin to 'open up psychic space, transitional space, space to think, space to breathe, to live,
to move spontaneously in relation to each other interpersonally' (Aron 2006, p. 355). In this
context, there were two ‘thirds:’ i) CFAR as consultants holding the space; and, ii) the triadic
composition of the identity groups: staff, board, and professionals, whose relationships had
been distorted by the strike, especially in the minds of the professionals as them versus
board/staff as a fused group. Furthermore, because of the union, in turn, the other groups
had tended to lose sight of the range of different views among the professionals.
In the dialogue that CFAR facilitated as the third in this context, each group was able
to push back against some of the hurtful projections a sampling of which is provided below
where different reports are listed.
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Clarifying Interests and Positions
1. Report by Board Group
What It Is about Your Group’s Interests That You Feel the Other Groups Have the Hardest
Time Hearing?
A perception that professionals really believe that the board is only out to manage finances
and to do that by cutting expenses.
What Are One or Two Stereotypes That You Think the Other Groups Have of Your
Constituency?
1. Board is ignorant of professional substantive issues.
2. There is a perception among professionals that every time board communicates with
them it is designed in some way—subtly or not so subtly—as positioning toward next
negotiation.
3. Board (group of 55) knows nothing, does nothing, and they should raise and give
money—which they don’t do well.
2. Report by Professionals
What Are One or Two Stereotypes That You Think the Other Groups
Have of Your Constituency?
1. Underworked, selfish, greedy, whiny.
What Are Three – Five Behaviors, Actions or Types of Support Your Group Wants From Each
of the Other Two Groups?
1. Feel it’s important that board management and volunteers understand importance of
union role.
2. Proper delineation between management role so that we can do our job on stage without
distractions—management is responsible for providing us environment in which we can
work.
3. Respect us and advocate on our behalf—primary focuses of management.
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3. Report by Staff
What It Is about Your Group’s Interests That You Feel the Other Groups Have the Hardest
Time Hearing?
1. We have broadest understanding of issue and try to manage issues on both professional
and management sides.
What Are One or Two Stereotypes That You Think the Other Groups Have of Your
Constituency?
1. Professionals think that all we think is about money
2. Board thinks we don’t think about money enough
3. Expectation that new president will have all answers to all problems and opportunities
4. Lack of awareness that we are professionals in our own right and experts in our own
industry
What Are Three – Five Behaviors, Actions or Types of Support Your Group Wants From Each
of the Other Two Groups?
1. Appreciation and respect for role that we play
2. In looking at dots [balloted on the posted earlier diagnostic questions], we think that
professional’s role in governance is one of most important.
Plenary Discussion about Differences
After each group surfaced their thinking, the full group reflected on the dynamics. Note
that each group feels disrespected or devalued, which is easier to see in the triangular format
when the dynamic is in the other pair. Listening without the ability to react was powerful as it
interrupted the typical escalatory dynamic illustrated earlier in which each person becomes
more extreme as they react to the other and each get progressively further apart. This format
drew on Bowen’s work (Gilmore 1982; Bowen 1978) where each spouse is interviewed in the
presence of the other with a ground rule that the other must simply listen. In the discussion,
there were some candid discussions about the role of the union – that some of the key
actions of the union were in the service of great professional goals, a category too often seen
as non-existent by the board. The staff’s role in the middle was powerfully surfaced and they
made a strong ‘counter projective’ (Havens 1986) comment that established their perspective
as separate from the board’s. A few of the themes are captured below:
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Headhunting
• The Union—it may be a perception on the part of board members that loyalty is to
that collective union rather than to the organization, ensuring its viability, attending
to community and customers. We must recognize that this is a built in tension and
that challenges all of us to deal with that tension in a way that allows us to work
effectively. We have to think of ways to meet that tension together.
• All goes to show that even minute differences become amplified in instances of
great tension. The skill is to get on both sides and to play with issues at moments of
highest tension.
• What I found striking in hearing our self-evaluations was how little we know each
other. I’ve been in this organization for ten years. I don’t know most board members
either by sight or personally. If you don’t know people better, you fall prey to
stereotypes.
Working the Issues
After this reflective exchange, we reconfigured the participants into mixed working
groups, with the assignments of their members to groups made by the identity caucuses so
that they could match passion and expertise to the particular issues. Four interrelated issues
were taken forward from the earlier work by these mixed groups:
• Board functioning, size, and development challenges.
• Governance issues, – chairman and CEO, opening up governance more.
• Finances – fiscal challenges and opportunities.
• Visibility – marketing and new customers.
In taking up these issues, each group was asked to link to the leadership transition as
a way of directing thinking toward the specific challenges facing this organization at this
moment in its history, rather than just producing lists of ‘ideal leader characteristics’. The task
was as follows:
1. Clarify the key challenges or opportunities.
2. How do these challenges and opportunities help us think about the kind of leader
we need?
3. What characteristics, capabilities, and experiences would this leader need to have?
4. Where should we look for this leader?
5. What questions would we ask of a candidate for this role (in light of your topic)?
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Each group presented its thinking. One of the governance groups surfaced the challenge
for the union to develop more responsive and speedy mechanisms for their input on key
issues. The presenter was from the board and a union member in another group reacted
negatively, enacting the polarized labor - management dynamic, only to have a fellow union
member, who had been part of the governance issue group, disclose that 'it was the union
members in the governance group who had raised this issue.' This suggests a modest
beginning to seeing the issues more complexly and a willingness to surface intra-group
differences in the service of making progress on stale-mated issues.
Similarly, board members were transparent about some of their intra-group differences
about governance and changes that the board needed to make.
Identity Groups to Focus on Key Characteristics
for the New President
To prepare for the final conversations, participants were again invited to return to their
identity groups, to bring the thinking from their issue group and discuss among themselves
the attributes needed for the President/Executive Director.
The Board’s group flagged the changing world of this enterprise – and the challenge
to get someone who could adapt to those at present unpredictable shifts and escape the
polarized climate with the professionals. Some argued that the person might not need
deep skills and experience in the profession itself since that was in large supply inside the
organization. Others noted that there was a minimum amount needed to develop the trust
with the professional/unionized staff as well as inform decisions in which professional issues
were inextricably linked with financial.
The staff group saw passion as a key element and listed deal breakers of micromanager,
autocrat, and elitist. Professionals joined with the staff item of 'passionate about the work,
business acumen, and innovative thinking'. Earlier in the conversation, some of the
professionals who had been involved in national symposiums on the challenges of this
field, strongly rejected just going to the peer institutions and picking a number two in those
organizations. They argued successfully for looking for the unconventional candidate in fresh
places who would bring some innovative thinking to the challenges that the day had been
spent articulating.
In the final plenary, a sophisticated conversation ensued about the challenges of how
each group should report back to its identity group and the need for a consistent set of
messages. Collaboratively they created a small inter-group to develop a brief summary of
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the issues and the next steps that would model more aligned communications and effective
representation of the different interests. Note that this foreshadows the search process
during which a representative committee will have to deliberate, keep confidences, and keep
their constituencies adequately and appropriately informed.
Conclusion.
The table of the steps in the search process suggests that each of the phases should be
viewed as a ‘transitional space’ in which careful attention to good enough containment for
playful exploration is important as is attending to both the task and psycho-social processes.
In sum, features of potential space are the following:
• A climate that lets disturbing ideas in and does not judge them too quickly and lets
people come to know their own minds in respectful dialogue so that both individual
and collective learning take place.
• Good enough transparency so that the linking and thinking across key stages such
translating the implications of the strategic context into desired characteristics is
testable and the fate-making selection is informed by both the interviews and the
reference checks being linked to the scoping document so that the risks and upsides
can be realistically worked through.
• Encourages diverse points of view and permission for people to acknowledge that
they have multiple points of view inside themselves and not engage in projection and
splitting, where they project one side of their ambivalence into others.
• Mix of inter-group and intra-group thinking, acknowledging the political aspects of
the search.
• Aliveness to the back home constituencies and the challenge of effective
representation and communication in both directions within the constraints of
confidentiality that surround executive search.
I have explored in depth the scoping stage of executive search, but these issues of
design and process and containment show up throughout. For example, a much later stage
in the search process is the interview of finalists. Some search committees conduct a group
interview with little design or containment. A candidate for a national prominent non-profit
recalled the experience of being interviewed for the CEO role in which each member of the
search committee asked questions in turn. One question concerned her leadership style,
another concerned external threats to the organization, and the next one was, 'if you were
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a flower, what kind of a flower would you be and why?' Rather than her and the committee
learning about each other and triangularly about the organization, there was a bizarre
sense of fragmentation of both. Conversely, the psychologically informed search firm of
IsaacsonMiller conducts a biographical in-depth interview, often doing the interview with the
search committee first hearing the candidate’s story before opening it up to conversation.
Note the consistency in their approach from conceiving of the Scope as an organizational
narrative to viewing the biography of the candidate as the crucible for assessing a fit with the
future challenges, not their skill in an interview.
Although this article has looked in depth at just the scoping component of a much longer
process, as noted earlier, at the wider industry level, the consulting firms are segmented
into executive search, strategy, and governance consulting firms (CFAR 2007). Yet as we have
seen in this case, these issues are complexly intertwined. There may be missed opportunities
for integration that would yield richer potential spaces for creative work. At its best, good
search is strategy, informed by a realistic appraisal of the wider competitive environment, and
hardheaded assessment of the distinctive competencies needed in the organization and what
it is going to take for the chosen leader to help the organization to thrive in the future.
The psychodynamic perspectives, in particular the thinking about transitions, the
space between, reflection, the double task, the capacity for holding amid both anxiety and
creativity, not-knowing, and the mix of accepting brutal realities yet retaining hope can
significantly deepen the work of executive search. In doing so, the joining challenges for both
leaders and followers in the wake of a choice will have been well foreshadowed and can be
more adaptively taken up by all concerned.
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Socio-analysis 9
Biographical Note
Thomas Gilmore is Vice President of CFAR, a management consulting firm, and an adjunct associate
professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is a founding member of the
International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and has written extensively on
leadership transitions.
