"American employers face a potentially crippling shortage of leadership," asserts Joyce Gioia, a workforce trend watcher. "A huge number of organizations are headed by people who are more managers or administrators than they are leaders."
When times are good, it doesn´t take a tremendous amount of skill to guide a company down the path to profits. A lot of the success just comes naturally, almost in spite of the effectiveness of the organization´s leaders. This condition prevailed during the go-go years of the late 1990s, when an abundance of opportunities made failure difficult.
Surprisingly few employers took advantage of the good times to educate and train the next generation of leaders. They just rode the wave without making the investment in their future.
The slowdown in the economy triggered the need for a different kind of leadership. People at the top, fearful of looking bad to shareholders, concentrated on cutting costs. "While the kind of wisdom we attribute to leaders supports determining where to make the cuts, most so-called leaders merely concentrated on reducing payroll costs," observes Gioia. "In most cases, they were not future-focused enough to preserve their human assets; they used employee layoffs as the universal solution. That strategy is now backfiring on employers in practically every industry. They don´t have the depth and strength of leadership to build their competitive advantage during the economic growth that is underway."
The next year or two will require enlightened leadership-people who can maneuver an organization through a maze of changes in the economy and other aspects of the external environment, while inspiring employees to drive the internal growth. "To lead in this ´I-think-I-can´ economy takes wisdom, foresight, and a special touch with people," Gioia counsels. "The most successful leaders of this decade will be visionary, articulate, and highly accessible. They´ll be close to their people, yet respected and admired. These modern leaders will facilitate high performance by teaching, coaching, empowering, and holding people accountable."
Noting that there is a serious shortage of leaders-current and developing-who can perform under today´s conditions, Gioia warns, "organizations without strong leadership will be at a competitive disadvantage in the years ahead.
Investors, suppliers, employees, and prospective employees will be watching closely."
