ELiN
The New Reality of Leadership & Executive Search 2026
WHITEPAPER
A sharper view on executive search, leadership fit, and the realities of transformation, succession and scale. And why leadership today requires those who can both design and deliver
27 March 2026
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Executive Search
Leadership
Why Leadership Selection Fails and What High-Growth Companies Need Instead
Leadership is not a title. It is the ability to create impact in a specific context.
In a market defined by change, speed, and complexity, the best leaders are not always the most obvious profiles.
This paper explores why traditional search methods often miss what really matters and what organizations should look for instead.
By Ineke Kooistra

Interim CEO | Strategic Advisor
Founder, EliN Partners Executive Search
Introduction
Executive Summary
Executive search is changing
In many organizations, the real challenge is no longer finding a strong CV, but identifying a leader who can succeed in a specific phase of the business.
Over the past years, I have found myself in many boardrooms, sometimes as an advisor, sometimes as an interim CEO, and often as an executive search partner. What stands out is not a lack of ambition, nor a lack of strategic thinking. If anything, organizations are more aware than ever of what needs to change.
This paper argues that leadership selection should be based on context, behavior, courage, and execution power, not just experience, titles, or network.
The most important questions are no longer:
Who looks right on paper?
But: who can truly lead this organization in this moment?

I believe that the answer lies in a more disciplined, more contextual, and more human way of assessing leadership. The new Reality of Leadership. Why executive search is becoming more selective, and why leadership today demands those who both design and deliver.
"The real shift is not that execution matters more.
It is that leadership can no longer outsource execution"
New Market Reality #1
New Market Reality #1 -The Problem With Traditional Executive Search

Too many leadership appointments still start with the wrong assumption: that the best candidate is the one with the most impressive background.
But leadership success depends on much more than past roles.
A leader who performed well in one environment may fail in another.
A strong profile is not the same as a strong fit.
Organizations today face constant pressure from transformation, growth, succession, restructuring, and internationalization.
In that reality, the cost of a wrong leadership decision is high: lost time, weak execution, internal friction, and missed business momentum.
That is why executive search must move beyond profile matching.
It must become a process of understanding context, challenge, and leadership potential.
"The market is active, but far less forgiving"
Appointments take longer
Conversations go deeper. Expectations are more explicit and the room for an "almost right" match has all but disappeared.
A more selective market
This does not indicate a slowing market. It indicates a more selective one.
New Market Reality #2
New Market Reality #2 — The shift from profile to contextual relevance
Why This Matters Now
The business environment has become more complex. Companies are expected to move faster, adapt sooner, and lead through uncertainty.
This changes what leadership requires.
It is no longer enough to have industry knowledge or a strong track record.
Organizations now need leaders who can create trust, drive change, make decisions under pressure, and build momentum in a shifting environment.

That is especially true in moments of transition:
  • growth phases,
  • succession situations,
  • international expansion,
  • private equity involvement,
  • organizational turnaround.
In these moments, the right leader is not always the most obvious one. It is the person who can match the phase, the challenge, and the culture of the organization.
The myth of the one-size-fits-all CEO, someone who can lead any type of company through any phase - no longer holds. leadership is contextual and seasonal.
Assessing Leadership in Context
My View on Leadership
I believe leadership should be assessed in context. That means you have to look beyond the résumé. Focus on how a person leads, how they make decisions, how they create energy, and how they behave when the pressure is on.

The best leaders combine four things:
Courage
To make difficult decisions, even in the face of uncertainty or opposition.
Character
To build trust and foster strong relationships, essential for collaboration and influence.
execution power
To turn strategy into decisive action and achieve tangible results. Strategy that delivers.
context awareness
To deeply understand what the organization truly needs in its specific operational environment.
"A leader who succeeds is not simply someone with the right experience. It is someone whose strengths match the specific moment of the business"
Leadership
Seasonal Thinking
The Seasonal Leader
The idea that one leader (such as CEO, CFO, CHRO, CTO, CPO) can excel across all phases of an organization is appealing, but fundamentally flawed. Every organization moves through seasons, and each season demands a different kind of leader.
I refer to this as the Seasonal Leader: a leader whose strengths are precisely matched to the phase the organization is in. I wrote more articles about this believe.
Leadership effectiveness is not static. It is seasonal.
Spring — Growth Spurt
  • scale
  • hire
  • accelerate
Summer — Crisis Mode
  • reposition
  • change
  • decide
Autumn — Innovation Phase
  • structure
  • align
  • deliver
Winter — Consolidation
  • simplify
  • optimize
  • discipline
It is not a leader's past that determines success,
but the alignment with the organization's current phase
" The mistake is rarely the leader.
It is the mismatch with the phase"
Addressing a Costly Pattern
The tension we need to address more openly
Each season requires a different type of leader. The Seasonal CEO is the leader whose strengths match exactly the season the organization is in.
The question therefore changes from “Is this a good leader?” to “Is this the right leader right now?”
01
Engage the Seasonal CEO
Deploy an experienced interim leader (Seasonal CEO) with a clear, time-bound mandate to stabilize the organization, build a strategic plan, and provide immediate leadership.
02
Create Strategic Space
Use the interim period to step back, learn, and run a focused search for the next leader.
03
Ensure Contextual Fit
Choose a permanent leader whose strengths match the organization’s current phase and execution needs.
  • There is a strong and often overlooked pool of leaders who perform well in specific phases such as growth, change, or stability. Organizations should use this talent more deliberately, rather than waiting for a crisis. The result is faster progress, fewer costly mistakes, and stronger leadership continuity.
Strategy is rarely the problem. Execution almost always is. Most organizations have a reasonably sound strategy on paper. Where things break down is in the translation into practice: decisions are delayed, priorities remain diffuse, ownership is unclear, and momentum leaks away. In large transformations, failure is far more often caused by weak execution than by weak ideas.
This is why organizations now need leaders who can both design and deliver: no longer a separation between thinker and operator, but leaders who turn strategy directly into rhythm, decisions, and behaviour.

Many searches are confidential for a simple reason: the current leader does not yet know that their departure is being considered. This is a delicate situation. For executive search firms, it means that the right match can only be made on the basis of limited information — which is unfortunate, because a deeper understanding of the organisation is precisely what is needed. Sometimes that is simply the reality. But this is also exactly why the Seasonal CEO model makes sense: it allows organisations to move quickly, while giving all parties more time to assess what is truly needed — perhaps in the next season.
Contextual Leadership
The real cost of a misfit
A wrong leadership decision today costs far more than a single recruitment fee.
Months of delay, uncertainty in teams, stalled transformations and, often, a second search within a year: that is the real bill of a mismatch.
In a high-pressure environment with a narrow margin for error, most organizations can no longer afford that.
Promoting too early
In another article, I addressed the risks of promoting leadership too early without considering the phase of the organization.
Leadership is not an absolute quality. It is defined by timing, context, and the specific challenge that needs to be solved.
New Market Reality #3
New Market Reality #3 — strategy is rarely the issue, execution almost always is

In the majority of organizations I work with, strategy is not the primary problem. Strategic direction is often well thought through, clearly articulated, and broadly supported.
Where things begin to break down is in the translation of that strategy into action.
What is often perceived as a strategic challenge is, in reality, an execution gap.
Where things break down
  • Decisions are delayed
  • Priorities remain diffuse
  • Ownership becomes unclear
  • Momentum slows
execution gap
Organizations tend to overinvest in defining direction, while underinvesting in ensuring that direction is consistently translated into decisions and behaviour.
"The Real Challenge is not the strategy. It is execution"
Perspective
What boards, investors and leadership Teams Need Now
The problem is not strategy. The problem is translation.
Precision Work
executive search has become precision work, not a CV comparison exercise.
Context Over Pedigree
Phase, challenge, and team dynamics define what good leadership looks like.
Design & Deliver
Leaders must be able to design and deliver and be assessed on their ability to operationalise the how.
They are translators.

The leaders who stand out today
  • The most effective leaders I see are not pure visionaries, nor pure operators.
  • They take strategy, break it down into decisions, structure it into rhythm, and build teams that can execute without constant intervention.
The HOW-question
Where leadership is actually tested
This brings us to what I consider the central question of leadership today.
WHAT
Most organizations can articulate what they want to achieve.
HOW
Far fewer are equally clear on how they will get there.
OPERATIONALIZE
Even fewer leaders are able to operationalize that "how" in a way that creates momentum across the organization.
This is where leadership moves from theory to practice and this is where many otherwise strong leaders struggle.
"The real shift is not that execution matters more.
It is that leadership can no longer outsource execution"
FLOW and BRIGHT: making execution visible and manageable
In my work as interim CEO and executive search partner, I have developed two practical frameworks to make execution tangible.
  • FLOW focuses on the structural layer of execution:
    Focus, Leadership, Operating rhythm, Winning teams.
    It reveals whether priorities are truly clear, ownership sits in the right place, the meeting rhythm accelerates rather than slows, and whether the team is set up to win.
  • BRIGHT exposes the behavioural layer:
    Behaviour, Roles, Impact, Goals, High Trust, Tempo.
    It shows where tempo is lost, where tension is avoided, and where trust is missing – exactly the factors that determine decision speed and agility.
These models do not change the people; they change the conditions in which people perform. Research consistently supports what practice confirms. According to McKinsey, approximately 70% of large-scale transformations fail, not due to flawed strategy, but due to insufficient execution capability.
Korn Ferry's research on leadership transitions indicates that nearly 40% of senior executives underperform within their first 18 months, with execution alignment cited as the primary gap. These are not outliers. They reflect a systemic pattern that the FLOW framework was designed to address directly.
"The real shift is not that execution matters more.
It is that leadership can no longer outsource execution"
Flow
Focus on Structural layer of execution
Flow
Organizations that have FLOW in place move with a sense of direction and pace that is immediately noticeable. Organizations that lack it often remain stuck, regardless of how strong their strategy appears on paper.
Focus
Clarity on priorities and deliberate trade-offs
leadership
Ownership of decisions and accountability
Operating rhythm
A cadence that ensures follow-through
Winning teams
Alignment and strength within the leadership team

This thinking builds on earlier work shared via BusinessWise: 👉 https://www.businesswise.nl/strategie/flowframe-organisatiemodel-ineke-kooistra
Where I argued that organizations rarely fail because of a lack of ideas, but because of a lack of structure in execution.
BRIGHT
the behavioural layer leaders underestimate
BRIGHT — the behavioural layer leaders underestimate
execution, however, is not only structural. It is deeply behavioural.
A study by Harvard Business Review found that teams with low behavioural trust operate at significantly reduced decision-making speed; in some cases up to 40% slower than high-trust counterparts. This is not a soft finding. It has direct consequences for time-to-market, organizational agility, and the ability to execute under pressure.
BRIGHT exists to make that behavioural layer visible and addressable.
Decisions
Roles
Impact
behaviour
High trust
Tempo
In many leadership teams, misalignment is not visible in strategy documents, but in daily interactions. Decisions are revisited, accountability is unclear, and difficult conversations are avoided.

This is where the BRIGHT model becomes relevant:
What becomes evident in practice is that without behavioural alignment, structural improvements do not translate into performance.
Leaders often underestimate how much behaviour determines speed.
BRIGHT
LEADERSHIP
B — Behaviour
T — Tempo
R — Roles
H High Trust
I — Impact
G — Goals
Case Study
A Case from Practice: When Tempo, Not Capability, is the Issue
I once received a call from a supervisory board expressing a nuanced, yet palpable, frustration. "We are actually quite happy with our CEO. And with the team. But we are not seeing the results. Things are moving too slowly. In our reviews, both looking back and looking ahead, decisions are taking too long, and the actions that are agreed upon keep getting pushed to the long term."
This scenario highlights a common challenge: the issue isn't a lack of competence or strategic vision, but rather a deficit in tempo. My observations confirmed the board's intuition. The team shared mutual respect and a common direction, yet genuine goodwill alone doesn't suffice for high-performance. A management team needs ownership, 'edge,' and the willingness to challenge each other constructively.
Decisions were being deferred. Actions were planned for the long term when short-term demands were pressing. The review rhythm had become ritualistic, failing to drive momentum. My conviction in such situations is clear: fail fast, learn fast, improve fast. Stagnation is never neutral; it always incurs a cost.
What I did — and why it worked
My approach was not to introduce a new framework or strategy, but to engage with the team's existing agenda, as that's where the real work and the blockages reside. In a single day session, we moved through their priorities, pushing beyond the usual meeting rhetoric to address critical questions directly:
Priority Clarification
What is the absolute priority, and what are we willing to deprioritize to protect it?
Decision Ownership
Who decides, and by when? Where precisely is the delay, and what is its root cause?
Real Support
Who is genuinely helping whom, and is that support concrete or merely assumed?
Meeting Momentum
Does our meeting rhythm generate momentum or consume it? We shifted to fewer meetings, sharper agendas, and decisions made in the room.
What Changed
The outcome was transformative. The team's clarity, mutual appreciation, and decision-making speed dramatically improved. Decisions that once took weeks now happened in days. Actions moved from aspirational long-term goals to immediate implementation. This change was not just internal; it was noticed externally by clients and, most tellingly, by the internal organization itself.
This marked the genesis of a high-performance team, not because the individuals changed, but because the conditions for their performance were meticulously crafted. This is the essence of what BRIGHT aims to achieve: not external assessment, but unlocking inherent potential by making behaviour, roles, impact, trust, and tempo visible, explicit, and owned by the team.

The core insight: The issue was never the people, but the system they operated in – characterized by unclear priorities, diffuse ownership, a counterproductive meeting culture, and an absence of the productive friction essential for high-performance teams. BRIGHT doesn't "fix" people; it optimizes the conditions for success.
New Market Reality #4
New Market Reality #4 — leadership is contextual, not absolute
What has become increasingly clear, both through direct observation and through the response to earlier work on this topic, is that the recognition of contextual leadership is moving from insight to expectation.
boards and investors are beginning to ask different questions at the start of a search. Not only: what has this leader achieved? But: does what this leader does well match precisely what this organization needs right now?
That shift in framing changes everything. It changes how candidates are assessed, how shortlists are built, and how appointments are ultimately made.
The Seasonal CEO is no longer a provocative idea. It is becoming a practical framework for decision-making.
1
Rapid growth
A leader who excels here may struggle in stabilization.
2
Stabilization
A leader who brings structure may slow down transformation.
3
Transformation
Leadership effectiveness is situational, not absolute.
The mistake is not choosing the wrong leader. It is asking the right leader to solve the wrong phase.
The tension we need to address more openly
At the same time, expectations placed on leaders continue to increase, while pressure from investors and stakeholders accelerates even faster.
Speed is demanded. Results are expected. Patience is limited.
However, speed alone is not a reliable indicator of effectiveness.
What leadership truly requires
  • Direction
  • Consistency
  • The ability to build something that endures
Replacing leaders more quickly does not necessarily lead to better outcomes. In some cases, it creates instability and masks deeper structural issues.
The real question is not how fast we can act, but whether we are addressing the right problem.
A broader signal from the market
This tension is also visible in the wider labour market.
In my analysis of Randstad and recent statements from its leadership, I explored how parts of the market appear to be slowing, while expectations on performance remain high:
What becomes clear is a pattern of uncertainty combined with sustained pressure, requiring leaders who can provide both direction and execution in a rapidly changing environment.
Board Brief
Market Dynamics
Key Takeaways for Boards, investors and leadership Teams
If there is one conclusion to draw from the current market dynamics, it is that leadership can no longer be assessed in isolation from context and execution. These five observations highlight the critical shifts that demand a new approach from boards, investors, and leadership teams.
Executive Search is More Selective
Executive search is not slowing down; rather, it is becoming more focused and discerning. The narrowing of the market reflects higher expectations for leadership profiles, not lower demand. boards are seeking leaders with precise capabilities for specific challenges.
Execution Gap, Not strategy Gap
The primary gap in organizations today is often not a lack of strategy, but a struggle in its translation into consistent execution. While most organizations can articulate what they want to achieve, fewer possess the clarity or capability to make it happen reliably.
Design and Deliver Simultaneously
leadership today requires a dual capability: the ability to design strategic pathways and the agility to deliver tangible outcomes simultaneously. The traditional separation between strategic thinking and executional leadership is no longer a viable model for success.
Context Over Pedigree
The effectiveness of a leader is now primarily determined by the specific phase and challenges confronting an organization, rather than solely by their past titles or prestigious career path. Contextual relevance has surpassed pedigree as the ultimate determinant of fit.
Rising Cost of Mismatch
The financial and operational cost of a leadership mismatch is significantly increasing. Selecting a leader who does not precisely fit the organizational phase or current execution challenge creates delays and inefficiencies that contemporary organizations can no longer afford.
Final Reflection
The executive search market is not becoming more complex.
It is becoming more precise.
What is changing is not the availability of talent, but the clarity with which leadership is evaluated.
The gap between what leaders promise and what organizations experience has become visible, and in that visibility, expectations have shifted.
The mistake most organizations still make is not that they fail to find capable leaders.
It is that they continue to assess leadership as if strategy and execution can be separated.
In today's environment, they cannot.
Many boards still define leadership as if strategic capability and executional strength can be split across roles or layers. In practice, that distinction has collapsed.
The most effective leaders today are not pure visionaries or pure operators.
They are translators.
The market is not asking for more impressive leaders.

The best leadership decisions are rarely the most obvious ones.
They are the decisions that combine context, judgment, and courage.
What Comes Next
If this whitepaper raised questions for your organization or leadership team, EliN Partners would be glad to continue the conversation. We work with boards, investors, and leadership teams to help them navigate executive search and leadership development in today's market.
Three ways to work together
Request a Leadership Context Scan
A focused review to see whether your current leadership fits the phase and challenges your organization is facing. You will receive clear, practical insight within two weeks.
Schedule an Introductory Conversation
If you are a board member, investor, or leadership team member going through change or pressure and need for example an (interim) CEO a strategy/BRIGHT session or advise, I am available for a direct, no-obligation conversation. We can talk through your situation.
Explore EliN Partners Executive Search
For organizations looking for leaders who can think clearly and execute well, EliN Partners offers a selective search process. We focus on strong fit, relevance, and long-term impact.
To connect or learn more about how we can support your leadership needs, please reach out directly:
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About the author
Ineke Kooistra
Founder, EliN Partners Executive Search
Interim CEO | Strategic Advisor
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Executive Search
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Personal Website & Background