📌 #2) Myth: everyone inherently knows how to lead – no training is needed. Scientific studies suggest that leadership is 30% genetic and 70% learned. We generally promote based on technical skills (or favoritism/other unsuitable reasons) and then throw these new leaders to the wolves. We mistakenly expect that leaders will inherently know how to lead and manage others. While some people are inherently more skilled than others, development is still crucial. The role of leadership is navigating human behavior and this is not a simple thing to navigate.

📌 #3) The environment is rapidly changing. Leadership needs to have highly developed agility skills and the ability to motivate, engage, and prioritize innovation. By not developing leaders, not only are you missing out on strategically staying ahead of the competition, you are actually falling way behind and putting yourself closer to extinction territory. The organizations that recognize the value in developing leaders will be able to navigate this rapidly changing environment much more effectively and with less burnout.

📌 #4) Currently, Baby Boomers are retiring at a rapid rate (some suspect the pandemic as the impetus). Millennials, the largest generation in the workforce, are being thrown into leadership positions wildly unprepared. Additionally, these Millennials are experiencing the highest rate of burnout. They need and expect to be developed. Many are reaching out to me to invest in their own development (either their organization has turned down their request to pay for their development or they don’t even care to ask because they are planning to find a better work environment).

📌 #5) Developing employees starts with leaders. Undeveloped leaders don’t fully grasp how to develop employees. There’s a lack of delegating, lack of coaching employees on essential skills (because leaders don’t have these skills themselves and don’t know how to coach others), lack of holding others accountable, lack of creating and nurturing a future pipeline of leaders. Employee development fails if you don’t invest in leadership development.