OverNorth Names Partner
May 13, 2021 – Chicago, IL-based executive search firm OverNorth has named David L. Hansen as partner. “Clients appreciate and benefit from his disciplined approach to candidate assessment and client service, and he has helped many of OverNorth’s clients recruit difference-making senior executives to their companies,” said Jane C. Beatty, managing partner of OverNorth. With 20 years of experience in executive search, Mr. Hansen has a track record recruiting transformational leaders in the sectors of industrial and business services, manufacturing, and private equity. He has an extensive career committed to executive search and has advised clients and developed and executed strategies on high-profile searches from the vice president through to the CEO and board director levels.
The majority of Mr. Hansen’s previous search experience was with A.T. Kearney Executive Search, where he served in the firm’s industrial markets practice. In that capacity he forged strong consultative relationships with clients in the manufacturing and business services sectors. Mr. Hansen has also held leadership roles in executive recruiting for a leading Chicago-based private equity firm and a publicly held management consulting firm.
OverNorth offers customized, senior level, executive recruiting services to a broad range of companies, from venture-backed startups to Fortune 500 companies. Areas of expertise include professional services, human resources, information technology, logistics and operations, manufacturing, private equity, supply chain management, and transportation. Ms. Beatty established OverNorth in 2011. Her practice expertise spans senior general management, HR, private equity, operations, and supply chain management.
Transformational Leaders
Now, more than ever, businesses require leaders who understand technology and its possibilities to spearhead change. “To be successful, leaders themselves have to be transformational,” according to a report by Wilton & Bain. Top-down authoritative leaders are increasingly being replaced by those who take a more dynamic, innovative approach.
“More and more of the organizations that we work with today are less command-and-control in their style,” said Colin Baker, a partner at Wilton & Bain. “You lead and manage through influence. You don’t necessarily own the resource that you’re trying to draw the outcomes from, and that’s a completely different skill-set from even 10 or 15 years ago where a lot of senior managers we would see would be command-and-control type people, meaning ‘I own it, I’m setting out the objectives, I control, and you’re going to do it because you work for me.’ Those days are fading out rapidly. The need for that kind of skill-set is dwindling.”
Transformational leaders, he said, embody a range of characteristics that can bring out the best in their teams. Rather than demand, they inspire and motivate. “You’ll find that a lot of people that have this kind of skill-set are typically very inspirational-type people,” said Mr. Baker. “They have idealized attributes. They’re role models. People want to be like them. They walk the walk. That’s how they engage with the team, leading from the front.”
Transformational leaders have an ability to make clear to their teams the vision of the enterprise, what they are trying to accomplish and how all that connects to their roles on a day-to-day basis. “They tend to communicate consistently and link those individual’s role’s back to the broader strategy and objectives, so people really understand where they’re going,” said Mr. Baker.
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
