PAPERmaking! g FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TECHNOLOGY Volume 4, Number 2, 2018
Barriers to Bridging the Leadership Gap To be sure, companies, government agencies, and nonprofits want their future leaders to be prepared. But internal and external forces are blocking or slowing down leader development efforts. Those include: 1. Outdated ideas about leadership . For many leaders and employees, the term “leader” still suggests an individual whose role is to provide all the answe rs. However, we know the most effective leaders are those who are skilled at influencing, collaborating, and helping a team or organization discover the answers. Our research has also found that some individuals view leadership roles as requiring tradeoffs with other priorities, such as family. Those perceptions — whether true or not — are likely dissuading many high-potential employees from pursuing leadership development and leadership roles. 2. Digital disruption. The pace of technological innovation over the last generation has reshaped markets, created new industries, and transformed the way we work. But many organizations and their workers are struggling to keep up. Training and adoption of new technologies — such as those required for remote working and distributed teams — hasn’t kept up. One study a few years ago found that more than 60% of organizations surveyed provided no training for virtual teams or virtual team leaders on how to deal with the challenges of collaborating virtually. And opportunities such as analytics and the promise of Big Data have many organizations scrambling to understand what talent and skills they’ll need to succeed in the future. 3. Flatter organizations and more dynamic environments. In our faster-moving economy, rigid hierarchical organizational charts have given way to flatter, more agile structures. While this helps companies respond faster to customer needs and changing markets, it has also eliminated the traditional “move up the ladder” leadership development path. Now lateral movement — perhaps to a different geographic or functional area — is required for individuals who want to become leaders. Mapping out these lateral-and-upward career paths is tough for individuals and organizations. 4. Intense competition for top talent and higher turnover . The days of a 30- or 40- year career with a single organization are long gone. Organizations find themselves focused on competing with other organizations to attract and retain talent. In addition, as more workers reach retirement age, organizations may be challenged to identify new potential leaders and build a leadership pipeline. 5. Misaligned systems for measuring and rewarding work performance. Old ways of evaluating employees and rewarding them don’t make much sense when career growth requires lateral movement and employees may switch from one employer to another every few years. Furthermore, organizations may be investing in outdated practices that contribute to the leadership gap and also fail to align with organizational goals and strategies.
Article 12 – Leadership
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