By Dan McCarthy
Help Wanted: Aspiring Leaders.
According to DDI’s “Pulse of the Workforce” report, Sixty-two percent of the individual contributors surveyed have no aspiration to assume a management role.
Wow - it seems leadership has a serious branding issue!
In the horserace to find and develop our next generation of leaders, almost two-thirds of the horses are scratched before the race has even begun. If you think we’re in a leadership crisis now, we’re going to be in an even deeper crisis if we don’t do something to make the role of a leader more appealing to our best and brightest.
Here is my advice for 2010 to repair the reputation of leadership:
1. Throw the bums out.Let’s start holding leaders accountable. It’s a few bad apples – probably only 10% - that are getting all the attention and tarnishing the image of leadership.
2. Recognize and celebrate the great leaders.
Great leaders are all around us – we just need to open our eyes and look for them. We then need to recognize and reward them, and expose people to them as role models and mentors.
3. Support our leaders.
Most leaders have good intentions but are often set up to fail. Let’s try to have more realistic expectations of our leaders, provide them the development needed to succeed, and help clear their plates of the bureaucratic nonsense that’s getting in their way of leading. Finally, while it’s way easier to point fingers, we can all work on becoming better followers.
Dan McCarthy is the author of the award-winning leadership development blog Great Leadership, which draws on his 20-plus years of experience in the field of leadership development. He is currently the manager of leadership and management development at a Fortune “Great Place to Work,” “Training Top 125″, and “High Impact Learning” (HILO 80) company. Dan is a member of the SmartBrief on Workforce Advisory Board, and an influential social media voice in talent management.
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