Team Stories at ghSMART: Steve Kincaid on Staying Curious After 20 Years

When people talk about long careers, they often focus on milestones. But after speaking with Steve Kincaid, it became clear that his 20 years at ghSMART are less about tenure and more about an enduring commitment to learning, growth, and helping clients make some of their most important decisions.

Steve spent his early career advising senior executives and organizations on people-related decisions, then joined ghSMART in 2006. Today, he works with boards, hedge funds, private equity firms, and corporations as they build their leadership teams, navigate executive transitions, and strengthen their talent. But what comes through most clearly is his curiosity about people and what drives success.

A Different Kind of Consulting

What first attracted him to ghSMART was not just the impressive client list, but their focus on building lasting advisory relationships with those clients, becoming true thought partners. As he learned more, he was struck by how deeply ghSMART expected its consultants to understand the business realities, competitive pressures, and market forces of their clients, and to put this to use in advising them on their leadership needs.

"It was a part of the DNA of the firm. ghSMART consultants were both MBAs and PhDs in psychology, it was a firm actually and practically integrating an understanding of business with an understanding of people. They were bringing so much more value to their clients.”

ghSMART is a global firm today, but Steve joined early enough in ghSMART’s history to be able to recall the team fitting around a single boardroom table. Those early days offered a front-row seat to how the firm's leaders, including Founder and Chairman Geoff Smart, pushed consultants to deliver high-quality, insightful work by becoming deeply curious about their clients, while still creating opportunities to build careers around their own strengths and interests.

From Diagnosis to Implications

Ask Steve how he's grown over the past 20 years, and his answer might surprise you. He doesn't believe the biggest change has been an improvement in his ability to assess the qualities of leaders. Instead, he sees his greatest growth in articulating what those observations mean.

Trained as a psychologist and having worked in respected firms, Steve joined ghSMART knowing how to help organizations evaluate talent. But he realizes his earlier efforts were most focused on the skills, style, and fit between a candidate and a role. Over time, his lens has broadened: How will this CEO’s strategic priorities change employee engagement? What might this CFO under-index on when presenting to the Board?  Can this COO still build followership while driving massive organizational change? “The ghSMART process leads you to think much deeper about the second and third order implications of candidates than other firms I’ve been at,” he noted.

The CEO Bet That Paid Off

While there are countless client moments Steve could point out, one story captures this well. A private equity client was evaluating two candidates to become CEO of one of its portfolio companies. One was a deeply experienced and skilled leader who had already been a CEO in similar firms, and one was a younger but fast-tracked leader, unproven in the C-suite and coming from outside the company’s market segment.

After conducting the assessments, Steve and his team determined the younger, non-obvious candidate was actually a better fit for what the organization wanted and needed: although there was less industry-specific skill, there was a more refined and detailed capacity for strategic thinking, an extensive and sophisticated ability to read organizational dynamics, a greater focus on margin expansion, and a “relentless” personal drive. But delivering this recommendation required conviction. Members of the Board were skeptical and had questions. The conversation continued over multiple discussions as Steve presented the data, insights, and pathways he foresaw for each candidate. Ultimately, the client agreed and hired the younger candidate.  

The result? A highly successful tenure as CEO of the company that saw new service offerings, increased market share, growth in EBITDA, and significant value creation for the client at a successful exit. Even more gratifying, Steve had the opportunity to watch that same CEO outperform expectations a second time with the next private equity owner, as they were also a ghSMART client.

For Steve, the experience reinforced not only the power of rigorous assessment and thoughtful judgment, but an awareness of the impact decisions can hold for years to come.

The Puzzle is Never the Same

Despite two decades of assessments, feedback sessions, coaching engagements, and client work, Steve remains energized by the craft itself.

He continues to love diving deep to help clients navigate complex decisions. Whether he's advising boards on executive talent, advising investors as they build out their teams, or coaching leaders stepping into their first C-suite role, he still views every engagement as an opportunity to learn something new.

What keeps the work fresh for him, he says, is that no two situations are exactly alike.

"The strengths you find in good leaders may be similar, but the risks are always specific," Steve explained. "And how those strengths and risks will actually play out within this culture, this set of dynamics in the executive team, and this business at this time in this market is what makes each situation so fascinating."

The Freedom to Build Your Own Path

So, what explains a 20-year career at the same firm?

For Steve, the answer is easy. Geoff’s vision for the firm, which first attracted him, remains unchanged.

“ghSMART has offered me the chance to join with remarkably talented consultants to serve the most impactful leaders in the world using the deepest insights of any firm,” he says.

He describes the ghSMART culture as being “the best I’ve seen at balancing professional independence with deep collaboration with colleagues.” Consultants are empowered to shape their own paths and follow their own skills and interests while benefiting from the partnership with their colleagues. As he put it, people have the ability to build careers that are uniquely their own – not by fitting into someone else's mold, but by leaning into their strengths and interests while continuing to grow.

That growth mindset extends beyond his client work. Steve remains active in ghSMART's research on Potential, is a past President of the American Society of Consulting Psychology, and works with elite undergraduate business students at the College of Charleston.

And for those considering a career at ghSMART, Steve's advice is simple: Know yourself. Stay curious. Take advantage of opportunities that come to you.

The more you bring to the experience, the more you'll get back.

The freedom to build a career around your strengths and interests is something Steve has valued throughout his time at ghSMART. If that resonates with you, we invite you to learn more about careers at the firm on our careers page.