When a senior appointment goes wrong in local government, the conversation usually focuses on what went wrong with the process: the job description, the panel, the shortlist. Rarely does it get to the harder question: was this actually a skills problem, or a values one?
The evidence suggests it's mostly the latter. Research by Leadership IQ found that 46% of new hires fail within 18 months, and 89% of those failures are due to attitudinal reasons, not lack of skills. In other words, most executive appointments don't unravel because the person couldn't do the job technically. They unravel because of how they led, how they made decisions, and how they fit, or didn't, with the organisation around them.
The financial costs are well documented. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation estimates that a bad hire at mid-manager level, earning around £42,000, can cost a business more than £132,000 once recruitment, training, wasted salary and lost productivity are factored in. For a director or assistant director in a London or metropolitan council, where packages routinely sit between £90,000 and £130,000, the multiplier effect pushes that figure considerably higher. Research frequently estimates the cost of a wrong senior hire at two to three times annual salary.
But in local government, the calculus is different. Private sector organisations absorb a failed executive appointment as a financial hit and move on. Councils can't do that as cleanly. The reputational damage lands publicly. A failed director of housing, for example, doesn't just leave a vacancy. They leave a transformation programme stalled, a team demoralised and scrutiny members asking questions at the next committee meeting. Research indicates that mismatched executive appointments can lead to strategic setbacks for up to 18 months post-departure, while organisations conduct damage control.
The uncomfortable truth is that most local authority recruitment processes are still better at filtering for competence than for values. Structured interviews test knowledge and experience. Presentations test communication. What they rarely test with any rigour is whether a candidate's instincts, how they behave under pressure, how they treat people they don't need to impress, what they actually believe public service is for, and if they align with the organisation they're joining.
This matters more in councils than almost anywhere else. Senior local government leaders operate in a uniquely pressured environment: finite budgets, politically charged governance, communities with real and visible needs. A leader who is technically strong but culturally misaligned will produce decisions that look rational on paper and feel wrong in practice.
Teams sense it quickly. The best people leave quietly. Gallup's research shows that 70% of the variance in employee engagement is attributable to the quality of management and when a senior leader creates a disengaged environment, the organisation doesn't just lose one executive, it risks losing the best people at every level below them.
The fix isn't complicated, but it requires honesty at the brief stage. Before any search begins, the hiring organisation needs to be genuinely clear, not just articulate, about what values it actually operates by: not the ones in the strategy document. Search partners worth their fee will push back on vague person specifications and ask the harder questions. What has gone wrong before, and why? What does good look like here, in this culture, with this leadership team? Who has thrived, and who hasn't?
Psychometric assessment has a critical role to play here, but only when it is used with intent. The most useful data is not a candidate's headline strengths, it is the behavioural patterns that emerge under pressure: the bright side qualities that can become liabilities when overplayed and the dark side tendencies that surface when the environment gets difficult. Our own Altitude research consistently shows that these derailers are present in candidates who interview well and perform strongly in benign conditions. Rigorous assessment surfaces them. Ignoring that data in favour of instinct and interview performance is where many appointments quietly go wrong.
Equally important is what happens after the offer is accepted. Assessment profiles are too often treated as a recruitment artefact, useful for the panel but filed away once the decision is made. The organisations that get the most from their senior appointments carry that insight into onboarding: using development areas as the foundation for early conversations between the new leader and their line manager, and building a support structure that reflects what the data actually said. A thorough assessment process that informs nothing beyond the hire is a missed opportunity.
Good executive search in local government isn't just about finding people who have done the job somewhere else. It's about understanding which leaders will be equipped, practically and emotionally, to do it well here.
The cost of getting that wrong isn't just financial. It's borne by the communities councils exist to serve.
Ben Parsonage is a senior consultant with GatenbySanderson's local government practice
