Instead of asking, “Who is the best leader?” contributor Stephen Murgatroyd argues, boards should be asking, “What kind of leadership is required by this organization now?”
Non-profit boards continue to search for the “ideal” leader. Visionary yet pragmatic. Collaborative yet decisive. Strategic yet empathetic. Innovative yet disciplined.
The problem is not that these qualities are undesirable. Taken together, they describe a leadership abstraction that rarely exists in practice – and, more importantly, is rarely what an organization actually needs at a given moment. The persistent governance error is not poor candidate selection; it is asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking, “Who is the best leader?” boards should be asking, “What kind of leadership is required by this organization now?”
Leadership is a fit, not a profile
Leadership is often treated as a set of stable personal qualities. Decades of research suggest otherwise. What matters is alignment – between the organization’s context and the capabilities of the person leading it.
Non-profits evolve through phases: early formation, growth, crisis, consolidation, renewal. These phases are not linear, but they are real. Each creates different leadership demands.
- Early-stage organizations need improvisation, energy, and personal commitment.
- Scaling organizations need systems, controls, and legitimacy.
- Crisis demands decisiveness and speed.
- Maturity requires stewardship and risk discipline.
- Stagnation calls for transformation.
The same leader is unlikely to excel across all of these conditions. Yet boards often behave as if leadership should be continuous and cumulative. They retain leaders whose strengths no longer match current needs, or recruit leaders whose capabilities are misaligned from the outset.
The real issue is misfit
What is often described as leadership failure is more accurately understood as a failure of fit. The founder who resists effective anticipatory governance is not ineffective; they are operating beyond the phase where their strengths are most relevant. The servant-oriented leader who hesitates in crisis is not lacking commitment; they are applying the wrong repertoire under pressure. The structured leader who slows innovation is not incompetent; they are extending a model suited to stability into a context requiring change. In each case, the issue is not capability. It is alignment.
What is often described as leadership failure is more accurately understood as a failure of fit.
This reframing matters. It shifts governance conversations away from personality and toward diagnosis. It asks not whether the leader is good, but whether the leadership is appropriate and fit for purpose at this time.
There is no single model of leadership
It is more useful to think in terms of leadership modes than ideal individuals. Across the sector, recognizable patterns emerge:
- Founders create where nothing exists.
- Builders introduce systems and credibility.
- Servant leaders strengthen culture and care.
- Transformational leaders redefine purpose.
- Turnaround leaders stabilize under pressure.
- Adaptive leaders enable learning under uncertainty.
- Collaborators align ecosystems and partner with like-minded organizations.
- Stewards protect continuity and trust.
Each of these modes is valuable. None is universally appropriate. The governance task is to determine which mode is required – and whether current leadership reflects it.
Boards are recruiting for the past
Most recruitment processes do not reflect this reality. Job descriptions remain generic. Selection criteria emphasize familiarity. Interviews focus on experience rather than context. Cultural continuity is often prioritized over strategic necessity. As a result, boards recruit for the organization they have been, not the one they are becoming.
This matters more now than in the past. Non-profits are operating in conditions of sustained volatility: unstable funding, rising demand, workforce pressures, and accelerating technological change. These conditions compress time. Leadership misalignment that might once have been tolerated for years now becomes visible in months.
Leadership is an ‘architectural’ choice
Some organizations are beginning to respond differently. Rather than seeking a single leader to meet all needs, they are designing leadership architectures – combining complementary capabilities across roles.
A national organization facing stagnation, for example, retained a stewardship-focused operational leader while appointing a more externally oriented executive director. This allowed renewal without destabilizing core functions. This approach reflects a deeper shift: leadership is not simply about who is appointed. It is about how leadership capabilities across the organization are configured.
What boards need to do differently
If leadership is a matter of fit, then recruitment must begin with diagnosis. Before hiring, boards need to ask:
- What phase are we in?
- What are our most pressing challenges?
- What kind of change is required – incremental, transformative, or stabilizing?
- What leadership mode does this demand?
These are not easy questions. They often surface uncomfortable truths about performance, direction, and identity. But without them, recruitment becomes guesswork. Boards must also be willing to confront a difficult reality: the leader who was right for the past may not be right for the future.
From ideal leaders to aligned leadership
The search for the ideal leader persists because it is reassuring. It suggests that complexity can be resolved through selection. But the evidence from research and an analysis of thousands of cases points elsewhere.
Leadership effectiveness in non-profits is contingent, dynamic, and situational. It depends less on who the leader is than on whether leadership is aligned with context. Organizations that understand this will make better decisions – not because they choose better people, but because they ask better questions. Those that do not will continue a familiar cycle: strong leaders, disappointing outcomes, and repeated turnover.
The issue is not leadership. It is fit.
