Discover a behavioural lens that complements your expertise and helps you see the person behind the performance.
Attracting, selecting, and retaining top executive talent is one of the most critical and complex challenges organisations face today. Talent acquisition professionals are highly skilled at navigating this complexity, using psychometric tools for recruitment, refined methodologies, deep networks, and honed instincts to find the best candidates.
We don’t come from the recruitment world, and we have deep respect for those who do. Our expertise lies in understanding human behaviour, communication patterns, and motivational drivers; the psychological layers that reveal not just who looks right for a role, but who will thrive in it. We’re not here to tell the industry how to do its job; instead, we offer an evidence-based, precise approach that helps assessors observe and analyse authentic behaviours, uncover cultural alignment, and detect leadership potential with greater clarity.
Where instinct and intuition have traditionally played a role, and where psychometric tools for recruitment provide valuable but static profiles, we add a structured framework that sharpens judgment and complements psychometric data with real-time behavioural observation.
PCM, the Process Communication Model, is unique because it doesn’t just describe personality; it decodes how people behave and communicate under pressure. It helps talent acquisition professionals spot authenticity, integrity, and resilience in action.
And these insights don’t stop at hiring. When integrated into leadership practices, they can transform organisational culture, improving engagement, retention, and team cohesion.
In an environment where the cost of a single mis-hire can reach 213% of an executive’s annual salary, and 77% of professionals report burnout impacting their work, these challenges are not hypothetical. They are the reality. What’s changing isn’t the need for expertise, it’s the tools we use to navigate complexity.
We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all solution. We believe in adding a new lens that helps seasoned professionals see what might otherwise remain hidden. Together, we can build on what’s already working, sharpening instinct with structured insight and strengthening the decisions that shape organisations for years to come.
In this article, we will share lessons from high-stakes industries, explore common hiring and leadership challenges, and show how behavioural science offers a powerful advantage. We are not her to replace expert recruiters, HR teams, or leadership consultancies, but to enhance and amplify their success.
Behind the Performance: The Challenge of Senior Leadership Recruitment
Picture this.
A polished executive steps into the interview room, poised, confident, articulate. Their answers are thoughtful, structured, and perfectly aligned with your organisation’s values. They’ve done their homework. Every word is carefully chosen, every story framed to show strategic insight, resilience, and results. They’ve anticipated your questions, woven in your language, and mirrored your culture back at you.
Their LinkedIn profile is spotless. Their CV is tailored, metrics quantified, leadership style reflected upon and refined. They’ve prepped for this moment with the help of research, interview coaches, even AI tools that simulate high-stakes questions [read more on how AI is reshaping leadership communication here]. They know how to use STAR and CSR frameworks, how to quantify impact, and how to ask the right questions at the end.
The panel leans in.
The psychometric assessments align.
The references sing their praises.
Everything looks… perfect.
And yet, a subtle unease lingers.
Are we seeing the real person—or the well-rehearsed version they want us to see?
This is the reality of executive hiring today. Preparation has become a performance art. The tools we trust such as structured interviews, psychometric tools for recruitment, case studies still matter. But they can only go so far when candidates are this well-prepared.
That’s why intuition, the so-called “gut feeling”, often resurfaces.
And the stakes couldn’t be higher.
- SHRM and Harvard Business Review estimate that replacing a senior executive costs 2–3x their annual salary, factoring in lost productivity, cultural disruption, and team disengagement.
- The Center for Creative Leadership reports that up to 50% of executives fail within 18 months.
- And most leadership failures aren’t about competence; they’re about behaviour: misalignment, communication breakdowns, and an inability to adapt under pressure.
That’s the lens we bring: a way to observe and interpret what’s really happening beneath the surface. Not to replace the tools and instincts you already use, but to complement them. To make confident talent acquisition decisions even stronger in an environment where the margin for error has never been smaller.
The Talent Acquisition Tools We Trust (And Their Blind Spots)
Hiring teams today rely on a powerful set of tools: structured interviews, psychometric assessments, simulations, case studies, and success profiling frameworks.
Success profiling has become an industry standard. It is a structured process to define the key skills, knowledge, behavioural competencies, and attributes required for high performance. Done well, it creates a clear capability framework, a detailed picture of what “good” looks like, from technical expertise to leadership style, from industry knowledge to personal values.
These profiles are typically built through rigorous methods. Structured interviews with high performers, analysis of what drives success and what derails it. They are invaluable for aligning selection, development, and succession planning around a shared understanding of excellence.
But even the best-designed success profile can only tell you what to look for. It does not always help you confirm you have found it, especially when candidates, polished and well-prepared, can mirror exactly what you want to see.
That is the gap we help bridge.
In today’s market, top candidates are not just answering questions. They are performing. They know the competencies you value: agility, resilience, emotional intelligence. They have rehearsed their stories, refined their phrasing, and anticipated your questions with impressive precision.
This is not a flaw in the system. It is a reflection of the stakes.
And it is why, even with a robust success profile and structured tools in place, assessors sometimes say:
“Something didn’t sit right, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
That instinct is worth listening to. But it is also subjective, hard to explain, and even harder to defend in a process that demands fairness, consistency, and rigour.
What is needed is a way to translate that gut feeling into something observable, explainable, and actionable. A way to complement the strengths of existing tools while filling the gaps they cannot always reach, especially when the performance is polished but the authenticity remains unclear.
That is where PCM can support. Let’s see how this challenge plays out in a high-stakes environment.
The Swissair Example: A Masterclass in Selecting for Long-Term Leadership Success
Swissair’s approach to pilot recruitment offers a striking example, with lessons that extend far beyond aviation.
Werner, our co-founder, knows this first-hand. As a former airline and air force pilot in Switzerland, he served on the panel responsible for selecting ab initio candidates at Swissair, now known as Swiss International Air Lines.
Unlike many airlines that rely on external flight training organisations to supply pre-trained pilots, Swissair chose a different model. They recruited candidates, typically young and with no prior flying experience, and trained them from the ground up. The goal wasn’t just to teach technical skills but to ingrain Swissair’s culture into every student. This culture blended technical excellence with non-technical skills.
This created a unique challenge for the selection panel.
- How do you assess whether a candidate, with no aviation experience, will thrive in a high-stakes, high-pressure environment?
- How do you predict not just who can learn to fly an aircraft, but who can be a reliable co-pilot for years, and then make the leap to become the captain, the leader responsible for the passengers, crew and aircraft?
- How do you identify who will perform not just for the next year but across a ten-year career trajectory?
Swissair’s panel assessed candidates on four criteria. The first three, authenticity, integrity, and motivation, were non-negotiable.
Only once those were satisfied did they consider the fourth: technical aptitude.
Let’s pause on that.
- Authenticity. Is this person truly showing up as themselves?
- Integrity. Will they make decisions in line with their values, even under pressure?
- Motivation. Do they have the inner drive to sustain performance over time?
Only when all three were met did they look at whether the candidate could learn to fly.
The result? A success rate of over 90%. An astonishing figure in a complex, high-risk industry.
The insight is clear.
In leadership, as in flight, it’s not mainly about what a person knows. It’s about who they are and how they think, communicate, and respond when the unexpected happens.
The Missing Piece: From Gut Feeling to Structured Insight
So, we know what matters: authenticity, integrity, and motivation. We know the stakes are high. And we know even the most structured processes have their blind spots.
But how do you reliably detect these essential qualities? Especially when candidates are polished, prepared, and well-rehearsed?
Gut feeling has its place, but it is not enough.
Success profiles and other talent acquisition tools provide a solid foundation, but they still rely on interpretation in the moment.
This is where the Process Communication Model (PCM) offers a critical advantage.
PCM does not replace your executive recruiting tools. It strengthens them.
It shifts the focus from what a person says to how they say it.
PCM gives assessors a systematic way to listen beneath the words. Speech patterns, tone, gestures, posture, and facial expressions become windows into how a person is wired, how they process information, what motivates them, and how they respond under pressure.
When we use PCM, we are not just hearing the story. We are noticing the way it is told. And that reveals so much more.
For example:
- Authenticity: We look for alignment between a candidate’s words and how they naturally express themselves. Do their language, tone, and delivery match the narrative they’re presenting, or is there a subtle mismatch? Are they saying what they think you want to hear, or what truly reflects who they are?
- Integrity: We observe how someone talks about challenges, decisions, and relationships. Do they take ownership, or shift responsibility elsewhere? Do they show openness when discussing setbacks, or avoid difficult topics?
- Motivation: By listening for what energises a candidate, we can understand what drives them. Do their stories reflect these needs? Do their motivations align with the role and the organisation’s culture?
PCM also helps assessors:
- Recognise early signs of distress behaviours, the subtle shifts that reveal how someone copes when under pressure.
- Ask tailored questions that dig beneath polished answers.
- Design scenarios that reveal a candidate’s natural patterns and how they respond in real-time.
Applying PCM: How to Spot the Big 3 in Action
Let us bring this closer to home and into the talent acquisition realm.
Listen for the Mismatch
Imagine a candidate says, “I love being organised.”
At first glance, it sounds like a positive trait. But a PCM-trained assessor knows to pause. A person who operates primarily with a Thought perceptual filter, someone who structures their world through logic, order, and precision, typically would not describe organisation as something they “love.” They would say, “I am organised” or “I structure my work efficiently.”
This small detail can offer critical clues. Does the candidate’s language match their natural communication style, or are they projecting an image they think you want to see? Are they showing who they are, or who they believe they need to be?
PCM tunes your ear to the subtle signals others may miss. It helps you notice when a story sounds polished but does not quite ring true. It trains assessors to look for mismatches between words, tone, and body language, and to test whether the story holds when the candidate is gently pushed out of their comfort zone.
Test for Authenticity under Pressure
Create scenarios or questions that gently push candidates beyond their comfort zone. For example:
- Ask someone who tends to speak warmly and focus on relationships to deliver feedback that could cause discomfort.
- Invite someone who focuses on action and results to reflect on a personal mistake that had consequences.
- Observe how someone who typically keeps things light and playful handles a detailed, high-stakes task where precision matters.
- Ask someone who expresses strong convictions and beliefs to engage openly with a perspective they fundamentally disagree with.
- Challenge someone who relies on structure and logic to make a quick decision without access to all the data.
- Invite someone who prefers quiet reflection and working independently to stay engaged and share their thoughts in a fast-moving, emotionally charged discussion.
Craft Targeted Questions
Go beyond general behavioural questions. Try prompts like:
Communication Focus
Matching Question Example
Compassion and emotions
“What’s something about yourself you feel most people don’t see?”
Logic and thoughts
“When did you last think you were unsure or unprepared? How did you navigate that?”
Values and opinions
“Can you tell me about a time when you changed your mind on something important? What do you believe caused the shift?”
Humour and reactions
“When you’re stuck in something so boring, it should be illegal. How do you keep yourself from going completely bonkers?”
Initiative and actions
“Tell me about a time you made a mistake that had consequences. What did you do?”
Imagination and reflections
“Tell me about a situation where you spread yourself too thin. How did you handle it?”
Watch for congruence: Do their words match their tone, body language, and energy? Or is there a disconnect between the story and the way they tell it?
Tailor Simulations with PCM
Simulations reveal even more. They show how candidates behave when the pressure is real, when the script is gone, and their true patterns emerge. For example:
- If someone communicates in a highly structured, logical way, create a scenario with emotional ambiguity and see how they respond.
- If someone focuses on people and harmony, introduce a situation that requires tough prioritisation or confrontation.
- If someone is driven by energy and action, challenge them with a task that demands patience and reflection.
- If someone tends to express strong personal convictions, put them in a situation where they need to integrate diverse perspectives and find common ground.
- If someone keeps things light and playful, assign them a task that requires deep focus, precision, and sustained attention.
- If someone prefers quiet reflection and working alone, place them in a fast-moving, high-energy group exercise where they must contribute actively and make their thinking visible.
Validate the Story
PCM helps you validate the story. It transforms instinct into insight, behaviours that are observable, explainable, and defensible. It helps you see where the story aligns and where it might be a polished performance. And it extends far beyond hiring. When you understand how someone communicates and what motivates them, you can better support their growth, engagement, and contribution long after the interview ends.
Beyond Executive Hiring: PCM’s Role in Leadership & Retention
Even the best hiring decisions can falter if the organisational environment does not support the leaders who step into those roles.
Gallup’s research makes this clear. The majority of employee turnover is preventable, yet it often goes unaddressed. Leadership culture, communication dynamics, and the ability to adapt under pressure are key factors that determine whether a new leader thrives or becomes disengaged.
It is not just about who you hire. It is about how you help them lead once they are there.
This is where PCM shows its true strength.
PCM is not just a tool for recruitment. It is a practical framework for building connection, fostering trust, and adapting communication in real-time. It helps leaders navigate the human side of leadership. It helps them notice when a team member’s engagement dips and know how to respond. It helps them see the subtle signals that indicate someone is in distress.
It creates an environment where psychological safety is not just a concept, but a felt experience.
PCM does not rely on lengthy reports or labels. It gives leaders the ability to read a room, spot when someone feels overlooked or disconnected, adjust communication style in the moment, and understand what each person needs to stay engaged, energised, and focused.
This is not theoretical. It happens in the flow of real leadership. In the boardroom conversation, the one-on-one check-in and the project debrief. PCM equips leaders to work with what is in front of them, build trust quickly, and create the conditions where collaboration, innovation, and performance thrive.
Understanding communication styles is a powerful start. The real transformation happens when leaders practise these skills in safe, real-time environments. Through observation, tailored simulations, and hands-on coaching, insight becomes skill.
Closing Thought
In a world of polished performances, it is easy to mistake a well-rehearsed answer for the real thing. Candidates know the language of leadership. They know how to present themselves. They know how to say what you want to hear.
PCM helps you see beyond the polished answers. It sharpens your tools, adds a behavioural lens to your assessments, and helps you see the person behind the polish. It gives you the confidence to trust what you see, not just what you are told.
But the value of PCM does not end at the hiring stage. It continues into leadership development, team dynamics, and long-term engagement. When you understand how someone communicates, how they respond under pressure, and what drives them, you can support them to lead more effectively, adapt more skilfully, and contribute more fully to the team.
If you would like to explore how this perspective could strengthen your decision-making and leadership development practices, we would be delighted to have that conversation.
to do your work—we’re here to offer a perspective that may sharpen your instincts, strengthen your assessments, and help you build even more resilient, aligned leadership teams.
It is not about replacing what you already do. It is about adding a new perspective, one that helps you recognise authenticity, spot resilience, and support leaders to thrive, not just survive.
We believe this perspective matters, not just for who you hire, but for how you build cultures that last.
If you’d like to explore what this could look like in practice, we’d be happy to talk. Get in touch with us here.
