Wolf&Grayson EditorialBy the time a search committee sits down with a finalist, it already knows the facts. What the committee still does not know is whether the person across the table can lead a community through the uncertainty that comes with transition.
That is the gap Lori Clement has built her work around. A Partner at DRG Talent and a long-time adviser to mission-led organizations, Clement has watched executive recruitment evolve from a transaction into something closer to narrative architecture. Candidates who treat the conversation as a walk-through of job titles rarely stand out. Those who can explain why their work matters, how they lead when it is hard, and what their presence will mean for the organization tend to move forward.
“The biggest mistake candidates make is focusing on qualifications and failing to share about their purpose, their story and why they’re present today for this opportunity,” Clement says.
When the resume is already assumed
When Clement met the CEO of what is now DRG Talent, the firm’s ambition resonated with her because of its shift from simply filling roles to helping organizations both find and retain leaders. She joined with a focus on retention, but was quickly drawn to a more fundamental question. What makes a leadership match work, not just on paper but in practice.
The answer, for Clement, had been forming years earlier. She spent roughly a decade in education, working alongside school communities where leadership churn was more than an operational headache. It was destabilizing. “There were some communities that I loved so greatly, but they struggled because they had a revolving door of leadership,” she says. New leaders arrived with impressive records, yet could not replicate results in unfamiliar environments. The problem was not always competence. Often, it was misalignment.
For candidates, that same question surfaces in the interview room. Committees have already seen the chronology. What they need is meaning. “What they don’t know is the why, and they don’t know the how,” Clement says. “This is where there’s opportunities for connection, for people to see themselves in that candidate, and to see the candidate in their community.”
A credible story is tailored, not polished
In executive hiring, “authenticity” is often invoked as a vague virtue. Clement makes it practical. Credibility comes less from sounding natural and more from being specific to the organization in front of you.
“When leaders take time to tailor what they’re sharing to the organization before them, then you move beyond a script to a conversation that is really matched to the moment,” she says.
That work begins before the interview. Search processes leave clues: the board’s anxieties, the organization’s bottlenecks, the outcomes the role must deliver in the next 12 to 18 months. Candidates who pick up those signals can choose examples that map to real conditions rather than generic leadership virtues.
Clement also cautions against mistaking numbers for evidence. Many leaders arrive “armed with all the statistics,” like headcount, budgets, and fundraising totals. “Those are useful, but incomplete without context,” she says. “Were you maintaining that organization or were you growing it? Was this an organization that was contracting? Were you going through a merger? Did this happen in an economic environment where there were strains?”
Context answers the committee’s core question: what, precisely, produced the result and how transferable is it. It also reveals something subtler, the candidate’s ability to read the room and narrate complexity without defensiveness.
Make outcomes visible, then claim them responsibly
Clement’s first practical step for candidates is to start with the written record. Experience has shown her that most leadership narratives fail before the first conversation because the written materials, such as resumes and LinkedIn profiles, focus on responsibilities rather than outcomes. “When you’re a leader, organizations care about the outcomes you can help them achieve,” she says. That means pairing scope with impact, not just the budget size, but what changed under a leader’s stewardship.
Candidates often hesitate here, worried about taking credit for teamwork. “If you were leading that team, then that is an outcome you can claim responsibility for,” she says. She also urges seasoned candidates to take up appropriate space. “Leaders with 15 plus years’ experience, you should take up more space because you literally have lived more life and done more work,” she says. In more than 70 searches, she recalls only one committee objecting to the length of a candidate’s resume.
For executives, a longer document can be an advantage when it clearly documents evidence of impact, including published work, presentations, fundraising activity, partnerships, and achievements that are often left out because they did not sit neatly within a formal two page resume.
Lead with learning, not perfection
Perhaps Clement’s most counterintuitive advice is to make room for failure. “Leaders often think that they must present perfection and share only their accomplishments,” she says. “There is a tremendous opportunity in talking about failures and flaws and places where you’ve learned.”
The difference between a disqualifying mistake and a compelling one is preparation. Candidates who have reflected on the experience can speak to both professional and personal learning, from behavior under stress to how they repaired trust. “Being able to speak to that and lead with it is an absolute asset, and it sets candidates apart,” Clement says.
It also shifts the story from accomplishment to character. A candidate who explains how they overcame a failure communicates judgment, accountability, and resilience, qualities a board cannot verify through references alone.
What boards are listening for
“Leadership transitions at organizations are fraught with emotion,” she says. “Change often brings a certain amount of fear.” In her assessment, much of a committee’s caution is rooted in that fear, whether it is fear of instability, reputational risk, internal conflict, or the simple worry of getting the decision wrong.
“What all of these people are looking for is someone who will make them feel safe, make the team feel safe, make the organization feel like it’s in a secure position,” Clement says. That reframes the purpose of a leadership story. Done well, it signals to stakeholders that the candidate understands the stakes and can hold the complexity without theatrics. The subtext should be, you can stop worrying, I am here, and I will take it from here.
The irony is that the most persuasive leadership story is rarely the most polished. It is the one that is thoughtful, contextual, and honest enough to be trusted.
