Consider the headlines from recent research about leadership development: 

• over half of chief experience officers don’t believe their direct reports have the skills to become part of the C-suite; Deloitte

• 42 percent of chief experience officers surveyed aren’t making leadership development a priority; Deloitte

• 63 percent of leaders lack the required abilities to achieve success today; CEB

• 81 percent of CEOs rate leadership development programs as less than highly effective; PWC

• 32 percent of mid-managers exhibit behaviors consistent with the global capabilities their organizations deem most important; i4cp. 

Even the data from my own organization, Advance Learning Group, is alarming: 83 percent of organizations do not have an adequate leadership pipeline for the next five years. 

Identifying the Problem With Leadership 

The data, surveys, research, and results all point to the same conclusion: leadership development not only isn’t working, it’s broken. Yet, businesses continue to spend some $15 billion each year in North America on leadership development. Why do they do this? I’d say there are three reasons: 

1. Companies know they need to have more and better trained leaders and don’t know where else to turn than existing programs and suppliers.

2. Suppliers do a good job of marketing their programs.

3. Executives want certificates from elite and well-known programs on their walls, along with the network that comes with them. 

Hitting your head against the wall may stop the headache, but it certainly doesn’t cure it. So let’s stop hitting our leadership heads against the wall and doing the same thing over and over with the same results. Instead, let’s have an open conversation about why leadership development is not working. Here are a few conversation starters: 

• Are the right people being trained as leaders? I have no doubt that many of the people taking these programs are “qualified” to be leaders. Yet do they have the right temperament, desire, and actions to be a leader? Are they most interested in growing both their people and their organization, or just themselves? Are they continuous learners? If not, perhaps they shouldn’t be on the leadership track.

• Are the actions of leaders being rewarded? We all know that what gets rewarded has a better chance of getting accomplished. Yet we often see that appreciating stock price is what organizations reward, and short-term wins get rewarded. But the actions a leader needs to take in terms of long-term growth and development of his or her people? Too often those are not rewarded at all. 

 “Working  Manager” Is an Oxymoron 

We look for heroes today more than ever. Celebrities in all areas are lavished with praise, whether they are business leaders, Hollywood and music stars, or just people who have dragged their 15 minutes of fame way beyond the limits. One of those “heroes” today is the working manager. It’s honoring extreme multitasking—you can lead, manage, and do the work. 

I’m seeing more leaders, including at the senior most levels, fall into the trap of being a working manager. What started in small organizations because of smaller workforces have become “in vogue” at the largest and best known firms. But as we’ve discovered with multitasking, you can’t do everything well when you’re so distracted. So, when given the choice, what is weighed more heavily, the work or leadership? The work comes first. 

Clearly, who is a leader and how they are trained need to be reexamined. We need the right people as leaders, even if that means outsourcing leadership and bringing in temporary leaders who can inspire and motivate the workforce. The dual career track, with people on a true leadership track, is more critical today than ever. 

What’s more, the working manager must go. We have roles and jobs for a reason. Why is a six-figure executive doing administrative work? Answer: Because it’s online and they can, and the company can save money on hiring an admin. Does this truly make sense? Is this what you want your executives to spend time working on? 

Moving Forward 

Future Trends in Leadership, a 2014 report from the Center for Creative Leadership, says “more complex and adaptive thinking abilities are needed” and “leaders are no longer developing fast enough or in the right ways to match the new environment.” 

It’s time to change our thinking on who is a leader, how they are trained, and in what ways they are rewarded and supported. Let’s rethink, reexamine, and redesign leadership development, and get the right people into leadership roles now, while we still can. 

In my next post, I’ll share some of the ways this can be done.