Michelle Lyons Joins Fisher Leadership

Michelle Lyon has joined Fisher Leadership as Associate Partner specialising in their Interim Management practice, working alongside their Interim team leader Eilish Devine.

With more than 11 years in executive search, Michelle’s move to specialise in Interim reflects her strong belief that this is becoming a more critical need for businesses in the future.

“It’s all about the pace of change. We often have only a few days to find people who can gain traction quickly and deliver on really challenging briefs. We’ve got to be ready to find the ideal fit quickly from within our outstanding pool of available talent.”

Michelle has always had a passion for talent identification, and she finds the Interim role provides the ideal balance of focus on the needs of her clients and candidates.

“Being ready to place someone right now means keeping up with where people are in their lives and careers. The members of our Interim talent pool are just as much our clients as the organisations who need their leadership skills. You have to know a lot about each side of the equation to make sure the fit is just right”.

Finding the right match between the Interim role and the ideal candidate involves an increasing focus on ‘soft’ skills. Becoming immediately effective in a leading role within an established team involves highly developed people skills so the need to measure personal attributes, personality traits, inherent social cues, and communication abilities has an equal focus to assessing past experience or academic qualifications.

“Interim roles are typically focussed on achieving a clearly defined outcome. The ability to engage teams around a task and focus on shared outcomes is critical for Interim leadership success. Not only do we have to recognise those skills in our candidates, we also have to have a deep understanding of the client’s team culture and organisational style to make sure we find the right person to fit in and make it work”.

Fisher Leadership looks forward to Michelle’s on-going contributions to the discussion around the future of leadership and the emerging role of Interim contracts as key to success of agile organisational management practices.