Most businesses say they want leaders.

In practice, many end up hiring experienced role-holders and hoping leadership shows up later.

On paper, the distinction feels subtle. In reality, it’s one of the most common (and costly!) hiring mistakes in engineering and manufacturing businesses.

Because filling a role keeps work moving. Hiring a leader changes how work happens.

Why the two often get confused

When pressure is high, the instinct is understandable.

A senior engineer leaves.
A production manager resigns.
A headcount gap starts to affect delivery.

The brief quickly becomes: “We need someone who’s done this before.”

So businesses hire for:

• years of experience
• familiarity with similar environments
• technical or operational competence

All sensible. All necessary.

But none of those guarantees leadership.

Leadership isn’t defined by what someone has done before. It’s defined by how they shape decisions, behaviours, and outcomes once they’re in the role. And when that difference is missed, businesses don’t just get a weaker leader; they inherit a set of downstream problems.

What happens when you hire role-holders instead of leaders

The most common symptom is stagnation disguised as stability.

The role is filled.
Work resumes.
Delivery improves (at least temporarily).

But over time:

• teams remain dependent on individuals
• problems are solved repeatedly instead of systematically
• senior people stay stuck in the weeds
• capability doesn’t compound

In engineering and manufacturing environments, this shows up as persistent firefighting. Processes don’t mature. Knowledge isn’t transferred. Performance relies on effort rather than structure.

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), leadership capability is one of the strongest predictors of team performance and retention. Yet it’s often under-assessed during hiring compared to technical competence.

The cost isn’t immediate failure. It’s a missed improvement over time.

Leaders change systems, not just output

A useful way to think about the difference is this:

• Role-holders focus on doing the work
• Leaders focus on how the work gets done tomorrow, next month, and next year, and why

In manufacturing and engineering businesses, good leaders:

• reduce dependency on individuals
• improve decision quality
• create clarity where ambiguity slows progress
• raise the baseline performance of the team

They don’t just deliver results themselves, they increase the organisation’s ability to deliver without them. That’s why leadership hires matter most in environments where complexity, regulation, and delivery pressure intersect.

Why leadership hiring is harder (and often avoided)

Leadership is harder to assess than experience.

It doesn’t sit neatly on a CV.
It shows up in:

• how people talk about trade-offs
• how they describe past failures
• how they’ve built teams, not just led tasks
• how they think about risk, not just output

Under pressure, businesses often default back to what feels safer: experience and familiarity.

McKinsey research consistently shows that organisations over-index on past experience when hiring leaders, despite evidence that potential, judgment, and learning ability are stronger predictors of success in complex environments.

The result is a leadership layer that looks strong on paper but struggles to move the organisation forward.

The hidden cost of “safe” leadership hires

The real cost of missing leadership isn’t dramatic failure. It’s slow erosion.

Projects take longer to stabilise.
Improvement initiatives stall.
Senior leaders remain overloaded.
High performers get frustrated and leave.

Replacing senior hires is expensive. In leadership roles, the opportunity cost is usually greater than the recruitment cost.

What hiring a leader actually looks like

Hiring leaders doesn’t mean ignoring technical or operational competence. It means going beyond it.

Good leadership hiring focuses on:

• how candidates build capability, not just deliver personally
• how they reduce risk, not just manage workload
• how they’ve left teams stronger than they found them
• how they balance pace with sustainability

It also means being honest about the mandate. Many leadership hires fail because the role is framed as strategic, but the reality is constant firefighting. Or because authority doesn’t match accountability.

Leadership can’t compensate for misalignment.

Leadership vs headcount: the question that changes hiring decisions

A useful test when hiring into senior roles is this: “Will this person make the organisation less dependent on them over time or more?”

• If the answer is “more dependent”, you’re likely filling a role.
• If the answer is “less dependent”, you’re probably hiring a leader.

That distinction matters far more than job title, sector experience, or years on a CV.

Final thought

In engineering and manufacturing businesses, hiring leaders isn’t about seniority or charisma.

It’s about building systems, people, and decisions that hold up under pressure.

Filling roles keeps the machine running. Hiring leaders improves the machine itself.

The businesses that recognise the difference (and hire accordingly) are the ones that scale with less friction, less burnout, and fewer costly resets.