Beyond the leadership pipeline: Cultivating vibrant leadership teams.

Organizations that support effective leadership development are 17 times more likely to be great places to work and are five times more likely to innovate effectively. Yet, at the end of 2023, only 25% of companies believed their leadership development programs were delivering high value. Employees are miserable, trust in leadership is down , and organizations struggle to innovate.

The Leadership Development Crisis

The modern workplace has drastically changed since 2020 (not to mention since 1980s). The nature of work has changed, complexity has skyrocketed, and much of the leadership job now involves influencing and inspiring a distributed workforce at a distance, leading multicultural teams, and navigating novel challenges.

Despite this change, many organizations still cling to models of leadership identification and development that focus on “executive presence ,” pedigree, and appearance rather than substance or crucial cultural, people, and complexity-management skills. Rusted old leadership pipelines are ill-equipped to produce flexible and organic leadership able to handle the intricacies of today’s environment.

The New Leadership Models

Traditional leadership pipelines have long favored a select archetype: the dominating, assertive leader who has all the answers and talks way more than listens.

This “ideal” overlooks the more reflective, thoughtful leaders, introverts , collectivistic leaders, and the wealth of talent with the very strengths crucial for meeting today’s challenges. Women, disabled talent, and neurodivergent talent are less likely to enter leadership pipelines, and when they do, the pipeline is designed to “homogenize” and rid people of what makes them unique and different to shape them into the “ideal.”

And that is a big problem.

We need the opposite to homogenizing. We need leaders with diverse skillsets and perspectives, supported in working with their strengths. We need leadership teams with diverse and complementary perspectives . ??

In my new book, The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work , I talk about crucial pivots in leadership development that can support ?today’s leadership needs:

• Increasing the focus on co-leadership and leadership by teams with complementary strengths.
• Pivoting away from a single “pipeline” that invites a very narrow range of humans to enter in, and is designed to produce even more homogenous leaders. A homogenous team is not a useful team – especially not in a complex environment.
• Developing strengths-based paths toward leadership that acknowledge and celebrate the value of analytical abilities and relational abilities, strategic minds and creative minds.

Such diverse leadership teams will be much better positioned to create authentically inclusive, culture-add,?diverse, productive environments.

The Perfectly Imperfect Leadership

We need leaders with unusual stories and perspectives, leaders who bring insights that rarely come through traditional pipelines. Here is just one, abbreviated story of a leader I highlight in The Canary Code. He is an example of a leader organizations need, but it is unlikely he would have come through a traditional pipeline.

Luis Velasquez MBA, PhD. is a coach to CEOs, a published author, and a regular contributor to Fast Company and Harvard Business Review. But getting to that place took some doing. Coming from humble beginnings in Guatemala, he became an assistant professor of fungal genetics at Michigan State University. His identity was tied to his academic success, publishing papers, getting promoted, and making his family proud and financially secure.

Then, something did not feel right. Something was really, really not right. A brain tumor.

After his brain surgery, he went back to work. But he could not focus, analyze data, or perform simple calculations. He could no longer hear instructions and execute them: he had to have all the instructions in writing. He also lost the ability to pay attention to detail or finish projects; he had “the attention and focus of a toddler in the middle of a toy store.” He could not walk in a straight line.

His academic career was over, and his mind was taking him to dark places.

But, he rebuilt himself as an endurance athlete, got an MBA, started a consulting company, and became an executive coach. He gave himself permission to be imperfect, try new things, and see what else he could do. He made peace with himself as a “perfectly imperfect human.”

Luis also works differently. First, he is much more open to being wrong and is relentless in seeking feedback and suggestions to get better. He does not have to know everything as long as he can keep learning. Second, he is much more open to collaboration. He seeks out people with complementary abilities. Working with others really helps with his writing projects—and with his neurodivergent way of leading and helping others lead better.

We don't have to be perfect to be leaders, and we certainly do not need to be like everyone else. But we need to know our strengths and have the humility to seek complementary strengths in others. Humility beats the traditional leadership bravado.

We don't need ideal leaders. We need unique, human, imperfect, learning, authentic leaders who can work with other imperfect and unique humans.

In sum, the leadership development crisis presents a unique opportunity to understand what kinds of leadership are needed in the 21st century and to create approaches to leadership development that reflect these needs. The future of leadership lies in diversity and the collective strength of complementary leadership teams. It’s time to stop relying on "leadership pipelines" producing clones and start growing the unique talents that will help humanity flourish.

NEWSLETTER ITEMS

?? Check out the new Harvard Business Review article by the amazing Rebecca M. Knight , How to Make Job Interviews More Accessible , which quotes my work.

?? The Canary Code now has a LinkedIn page!