What I look for in General Managers and Executive Leaders

One of the harder transitions I see in resources, energy and industrial businesses is the move from leading a function or department to leading an entire business or portfolio.

Most of the people I assess for General Manager and Group leadership roles are already successful leaders. They have built capable teams, delivered results, developed strong technical and operational credibility, and earned organisational trust.

The challenge is that the characteristics that make someone successful at a departmental level are not always the same characteristics that make them successful at General Manager or Group Executive level.

At a departmental level, leaders are often close enough to the work to identify issues firsthand. They can walk the site, attend meetings, observe behaviours directly and intervene directly when required. Their influence is often immediate, visible and hands-on.

As leadership scope expands, that becomes impossible.

A General Manager cannot personally observe everything across an operation. At Group Executive level, that distance only increases.

The question changes from, “Can this person lead a team?” to, “Can this person build an organisation that performs when they are not there?”

Michael Watkins explores this theme in his work on the transition from functional leadership to enterprise leadership. He argues that leaders must move beyond optimising their own area and develop a broader enterprise perspective, balancing priorities across the organisation rather than focusing only on the function they previously led.

Consequently, I am often looking for evidence of five things:

1. Can they build other leaders rather than simply lead followers?

Many operational or functional leaders are effective because of their own capability. Enterprise leaders achieve results through the capability of people several layers below them. The quality of the leaders they develop often becomes more important than their own technical expertise.

2. Can they create clarity?

In complex organisations, confusion creates risk. Strong enterprise leaders simplify priorities, make choices clear and ensure people at different levels understand what success looks like.

3. Will information, concerns and bad news travel back up to them?

Some leaders are effective at ensuring messages reach the front line. Far fewer create an environment where bad news, risks and operational concerns move upwards quickly. Research on leadership and speak-up cultures consistently shows that people are more willing to raise concerns when leaders actively listen, respond and create psychological safety.

4. Do they think beyond their own function?

A common reason leaders struggle in broader roles is that they continue to view decisions through the lens of their previous discipline. Enterprise leadership requires trade-offs between competing priorities. The best leaders demonstrate an ability to think about what is right for the whole business rather than what is best for their own area. There is little value in reducing production costs by one dollar if it increases maintenance costs by two.

5. What happens when they are absent?

The real test of leadership is not what happens when the leader is standing in front of the workforce. It is what happens when they are not.

• Do safety standards still hold?
• Do people make sound decisions because priorities are clear?
• Are supervisors empowered to address issues early, and do they act?
• Do managers escalate concerns appropriately?
• Does the culture continue to reinforce the behaviours aligned to the business strategy?

Research from Harvard and McKinsey points to a similar conclusion. As leadership scope increases, the role becomes less about direct supervision and more about creating alignment, enabling collaboration, building systems and shaping culture. The leader’s influence is exercised increasingly through the organisation rather than directly over it.

When I assess candidates for General Manager, Executive General Manager, Group leadership roles or C-Suite, I balance exploring what they personally achieved with what continued to happen because of the environment they created.

Ultimately, leadership becomes harder as influence becomes less direct. You can no longer rely on personal oversight, technical expertise or force of personality. Success increasingly depends on the quality of the leaders beneath you, the systems around them and the culture that guides decisions when nobody senior is present.

That is the shift I am looking for when assessing General Manager and Group leadership candidates.