The prestige trap
We’ve all met the star. Flawless CV. Big-name logos. Confident on stage. Their reputation enters the room five minutes before they do. Yet, months after the promotion or hire, the shine has worn off: decisions slip, teams stall, and the role quietly becomes a rescue mission.
This isn’t about villainising individuals. It’s about an organisational habit: confusing visibility with value. We reward the signals we can see: pedigree, proximity, presentation and underweight the substance we actually need, operational judgement, context-fitted execution, and the discipline to turn ambition into outcomes.
The cost of this habit is becoming increasingly evident to organisations across sectors.
What clients are telling us
In searches and succession work, a clear refrain is getting louder:
- “We need a leader who gets things done.”
- “We’ve had too many people who love the optics of the role more than the work.”
- “Give us someone who can land the strategy, not just talk about it.”
Behind these requests are painful lessons; missed quarters, teams burned by constant re-prioritisation, stakeholder trust frayed by grand announcements without delivery. The market is tightening its definition of leadership from impressive to effective.
Why we mistake visibility for value
Several dynamics nudge organisations toward prestige-based choices:
1. The halo effect
Prestige can easily mask preparedness. Leaders with impressive affiliations or high-profile track records are often assumed to bring the same success wherever they go. Yet excellence rarely transfers automatically. What worked in one environment can fail in another. When organisations confuse brand association with capability, they risk overlooking the adaptability required to deliver real results.
2. Interview theatre
Confidence is a powerful leadership trait, but it’s too often mistaken for capability. In many interviews, style and storytelling dominate, and genuine evidence of performance fades into the background.
3. Outcome ambiguity
When leadership mandates are defined in broad, ambiguous terms such as “drive transformation,” “lead growth”, it becomes easy for style to overshadow substance. Without clear outcomes, compelling narratives can eclipse real execution, and organisations risk mistaking rhetoric for results.
What readiness actually looks like
Readiness is not a vibe. It’s evidenced capability in conditions that resemble the job to be done.
In practice, it shows up as:
- Operating cadence and discipline
A steady rhythm of planning, prioritisation, decision-making, and review is evident not just in long-term achievements but also in how a leader runs their weeks and quarters. Effective leaders create structure around execution, maintaining momentum without losing sight of strategy. - Contextual intelligence
The ability to recognise patterns and adapt playbooks to new realities; market shifts, regulatory change, or limited resources, rather than simply replicating what worked before. Ready leaders apply experience with nuance, not nostalgia. - Clear, simple execution
Turning strategy into a concise set of non-negotiable priorities with clear ownership, milestones, and trade-offs. These leaders cut through complexity, translating ambition into disciplined action that moves the organisation forward. - Team lift
Evidence that teams perform better under their leadership, retaining top talent, developing successors, and strengthening cross-functional trust. True readiness is reflected not only in results achieved but in the collective capability built along the way. - Learning agility and humility
A readiness to challenge assumptions, seek input, and adjust course early. These leaders keep ego in service of the mission, learning faster than the context around them changes. - Stakeholder sturdiness
The capacity to align boards, investors, customers, and teams through calm, consistent communication. They navigate tension without theatrics and hold steady through both opportunity and uncertainty.
Seven shifts to hire and promote for readiness
Organisations seeking more “operator” leaders need discipline in how they define, assess, and reward leadership. The following principles offer a practical framework for selecting leaders who can deliver sustained results rather than simply command attention.
1. Start with Outcomes, Not Adjectives
Replace vague descriptors like “visionary,” “strategic,” or “inspirational” with a clear 12–18 month outcomes that define success in measurable terms:
• Three key business outcomes (e.g., “achieve X revenue from Y by Q4,” “reduce delivery timelines by Z%,” “close the top five talent gaps”).
• Constraints such as budget, headcount, or regulatory realities.
• Known risks and dependencies.
Assessments should be built around these specifics, aligning every question and exercise to evidence of delivering comparable results under similar conditions.
2. Use Evidence-Based Scorecards
Replace intuition-led hiring with structured evaluation. Build a weighted scorecard tied directly to the defined outcomes, and agree on what constitutes “strong evidence,” for example, delivering a major initiative within constraints, retaining critical talent through change, or achieving sustained performance improvement. Calibrate assessors to ensure consistency and guard against bias or overreliance on charm.
3. Make the Work Visible
Integrate job simulations; prioritisation exercises, decision memos, or a 90-day plan under real constraints to observe how candidates think, operate, and collaborate. The aim is to see how they approach complexity, not just how they talk about it.
4. Interrogate Context Fit
When reviewing achievements, dig beneath the headlines. Ask:
- What unique conditions made this success possible?
- Which of those conditions will be absent here?
- What did the leader stop doing to achieve it?
This line of questioning separates those who can adapt from those who simply replicate past playbooks.
5. Reference for Outcomes, Not Personality
References should validate delivery, not likability. Anchor them to the scorecard:
- What was promised versus what was achieved?
- Where did the plan fall short, and how did they respond?
- Who improved under their leadership, and who didn’t?
Specific examples matter more than general praise. Push for counterpoints as much as endorsements.
6. De-Glamourise the Role Early
Be transparent about the realities of the position. Outline the trade-offs, political complexities, and first three hard decisions awaiting the successful candidate. Leaders motivated by optics often step back when faced with the practical demands of delivery; those motivated by results usually lean in.
7. Align Incentives to Delivery
Tie a meaningful portion of variable compensation to clearly defined outcomes, including collective, team-based results, not just individual metrics. When success is measured by execution and impact rather than perception, prestige loses its influence, and performance takes its rightful place.
What this looks like in promotion decisions
Internal promotions are where the prestige trap bites hardest. To avoid it:
- Distinguish peak individual contributor performance from leadership readiness
Many high performers earn visibility for personal output; that doesn’t automatically translate to leading systems and people.
Test for Readiness Before Title
Promotions should be based on demonstrated capability, not assumption. Before making it official, give candidates opportunities to prove readiness through short-term stretch roles or cross-functional projects.
Make the Path to Leadership Transparent
Clarity creates fairness and accountability. Define what readiness looks like for each leadership tier so aspiring leaders understand the expectations and can build toward them.
The point and the promise
Titles don’t run businesses; operators do. Reputation may open doors, but readiness is what sustains performance and drives progress. As AI reshapes industries and skills become the new currency, adaptability has become non-negotiable. Companies like Accenture are already signalling this shift, phasing out roles that can’t evolve with technology.
The leadership market is following suit. In a volatile, hyper-visible world where social media and public scrutiny intensify competition, companies can no longer afford poster leaders who prioritise image over impact.
At TheBoardroom Africa, our executive search experts are seeing this demand play out across markets; a growing emphasis on leaders who do not just direct. In response, we’ve built a structured framework that helps clients assess and select for readiness: leaders with the discipline, adaptability, and substance to deliver results in complex environments.
If the goal is to stop hiring the headline and start securing the delivery, the answer lies in changing the brief, the hiring process, and the reward system. The leaders who truly get things done are out there; they’re simply easier to find when organisations stop looking for shine and start hiring for substance.
