Are the Leaders in Your Organization Equipped for New Age Leadership?
Edwin C. Ebreo
I can’t even begin to explain how much the role of the leader has changed. The internal and external forces that shape organizations today brought this about. The advent of information and communications technology paved the way for the so-called knowledge based society that gave birth to new breed of employees who are more technologically savvy and exposed to limitless amount of information.
The mindset of most employees towards leadership however, has not changed as much as it should. In most organizations members still wait after the organization’s leaders for answers even if they know the solution as much as the problem. Empowerment, which is now a by-word in the business, has not yet reached critical mass to say that it has succeeded in turning organizational cultures around.
There is an imbalance here because there is so much to draw from the so-called knowledge workers but many leaders can’t harness them. The reason? They don’t know how. My current assumption is that many leaders have not caught up with the requirements of new age leadership. Many still exist in that old school where the leaders are the absolute power in their turf when they should rather be absolute source of empowerment.
There is a reason why this is so. Many companies promote leaders from the ranks or hire them for their technical qualifications and experience. In my experience as a human resource development practitioner, I’ve seen that even technical genius or all-around genius for that matter does not always translate to successful leadership. That is why there are so many incidences of companies that after promoting the "crème de la crème" lost their best worker and earn them a lousy leader.
It is true that many companies still throw inexperienced, unprepared leaders into the pond and many leaders find themselves in a sink or swim situation. Although some of them manage to float, very few are able to negotiate the waters as well as those who have the proper training and education. As a result, many leaders fail to achieve their full potential and worse they fail to lead their team to achieve their full potential.
It’s a pity that many companies forego the opportunity to prepare their potential leaders before giving them an appointment. It’s like sending their leaders to uncharted waters (as far as these individuals are concerned) with nary a compass or a sextant and expect them to find their way.
Leaders whether they are supervisors, officers or managers (when you look at how loosely organizations use these terms, you’d say that they are interchangeable) need to be equipped in crafting a vision for their teams, they need to know how to plan and delegate, they need to learn how to coordinate the actions of their team with that of other teams, they need to manage the team’s and individuals’ performance, they need to learn how to apply different tactics in dealing with different individuals (you know, different strokes for different folks) and last and certainly not the least, they should learn how to bring out the best in their people. It is never too late or too early to equip people with these skills and whatever new skills are to become necessary in this constantly changing business environment. Don’t be the one to miss it.
Breeding successful new age leaders need investment of attention and resources. As my former boss always says, "If you think training is expensive, try incompetence."