Leadership Research & Insights

Our Proprietary Research and Findings

Turning Decisions into Data. 
And Data into Leadership Insight.

We believe leadership isn’t defined by experience alone, but by the decisions leaders make — and how those decisions shape people and performance.

That’s the intelligence we’ve spent a decade uncovering.

63% of senior executives have left or considered leaving their organization due to dissatisfaction with decision making.

That single insight transformed how we view leadership. Our research now focuses on the decisions that define cultures — and the leaders who shape them.

Decision Making

The New Cultural Lens

At Kingsley Gate, our analysis of 4,657 executive assessments across global markets revealed a simple truth
decision-making isn’t just a behavior. It’s a blueprint for culture. Through our research, we identified four primary decision archetypes that reveal how leaders think and act under pressure — and how those styles shape organizations.

Spotlight Research

Core Studies & Findings

Decision Making DNA: How the Most Overlooked Factor in Hiring Could Be Your Organization’s Greatest Competitive Advantage

When a Fortune 500 CEO described his company’s culture as “innovative and fast-moving,” his CFO characterized the same organization as “disciplined and process driven.” Both were correct from their perspectives. Yet this subjectivity reveals why traditional cultural assessment may fail, and why 63% of senior executives have resigned or considered resigning due to frustration with organizational decision-making.

The financial stakes are staggering.

Cultural misunderstanding costs organizations an estimated 6-9 months of executive salary in replacement costs, averaging $500,000-$900,000 per failed hire. For global enterprises, these direct costs pale compared to cascading effects: decreased engagement, damaged stakeholder relationships, and missed strategic opportunities that compound across quarters.

The root problem? Organizations cannot measure what they cannot define.

Bad Decisions: Why companies miss the most important factor in executive hiring

Astonishingly, the skill of making effective, timely decisions is often overlooked in leadership candidates. As companies search for new hands on the tiller to navigate uncertain waters, it is becoming clear that it is essential. For many senior executives, feeling empowered to make good decisions is a crucial aspect of their remit. This skill feeds into many other areas of responsibility, such as good management practices, communication, strategy and more. Despite its centrality, new research from Kingsley Gate reveals that decision making is the ‘missing piece’ in hiring strategy for leadership positions.

A quarter of senior executives say they were not asked about their decision making capabilities at interview stage and only around a third (36%) say that their decision making style aligns with that of their organization. There is also evidence to suggest that, even when asked about decision making, senior executives are not pressed to elaborate on their approaches to the process and thinking behind their decisions.

This report reveals the many benefits of ensuring that decision making is an integral factor in the leadership hiring process; how to empower senior executives to make good decisions; and how to accommodate contrasting decision making styles.

The Value of Decision Making: A LatAm Perspective

In the second half of 2023, Kingsley Gate conducted in-depth conversations with over 35 senior executives and board members across 11 Latin American markets (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic). Our interviews not only confirmed the validity of the findings from our quantitative study with FT Longitude of the Financial Times Group (published earlier this year) but also elaborated on a number of driving forces, nuances, and exceptions to these findings. Overall, we found that most senior executive participants not only believe that decision making is both a critical component of any leader’s mandate, but also that decision making does tend to look slightly different in a Latin American context.

Most agree the path to improving a company’s decision effectiveness is through “human-centric” factors more so than data, process, and technology, and many are satisfied with their current roles and decision-making environments. There is a consensus that Latin American organizations are more creative in decision-making, but opinions vary on contributing factors to this creativity. The idea of “gut feeling” and its contribution to decision making generated rich discussion and debate, with various perspectives represented herein.

A Measure of Decision Framework to Improve Adaptive Cognition & Leader Success

This study introduces and validates a comprehensive 24-item instrument designed to assess leaders’ decision frameworks, highlighting the critical role of metacognitive structures in leadership effectiveness. Drawing on responses from 5,009 senior leaders across diverse sectors, the research underscores significant disparities between leaders’ decision frameworks and organizational contexts, leading to dissatisfaction and turnover risks. By integrating this instrument into recruitment processes, organizations can enhance metacognitive awareness among leaders, facilitating smoother onboarding and integration into complex decision environments. The findings advocate for a proactive approach to aligning leadership capabilities with organizational needs, aiming to elevate decision-making processes and cultivate high-performance leadership teams. This instrument serves as a practical tool for fostering adaptive leadership and improving overall leader satisfaction and retention within organizations.

Behind Every Data Point Is a Decision. Behind Every Decision Is a Person.

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