Why is it still so hard to develop good leaders?

Everyone loves a good leader.

And almost everyone wishes their organization had more of them.

If you are top management, you wish you had other leaders you could handover operations to, so that you could focus on the future. 

 And everyone else just wishes they had leaders they could look up to and learn from.

 When we are lucky enough to work with good leaders, we remember them fondly for years later. They are the ones who enabled us to become better versions of ourselves.

 Yet good leaders are not easy to find. They are actually pretty rare, despite organizations spending so much time and effort on leadership development programs.

 Why then might this be the case? There are at least three reasons.

1. Leaders grow other leaders.

Long after the memories of a leadership development program have faded, we learn from what we see each day.

Leaders grow other leaders. Think of the many leaders developed by Kamath at ICICI Bank, JRD Tata or by pretty much any of GEs leaders. This is actually one of their most important (sometimes invisible) legacy.

 Leaders grow leaders by being role models and demonstrating leadership each day. There are few mechanisms as powerful as direct example for learning new behaviors.

And they also grow other leaders by allowing others with potential to develop their own capabilities. This means giving others space and counsel. And knowing when to give which.

But this means that in leadership terms  the rich get richer and poor get poorer. Organizations with a history of producing good leaders continue to do so very naturally, while organizations with very few good leaders struggle to develop any.

 And this is a big challenge, because it means that to develop good leaders you not only need good leadership programs, but you need good leadership to learn from. A challenge that is simply far harder to tackle without strong leadership in the first place.

So organizations may find themselves caught in a Catch 22 situation.

2. Organizational Incentives

Work for organizations long enough and you soon develop a sense for what is really important here—what really counts?

So what do your recent promotion decisions say about how much your organization really values good leadership?

If your organization says it values good leaders but regularly promotes and offers big roles to people who are known to be poor leaders, people quickly learn that here at least, leadership is nice to have, but not terribly important. 

On the other hand, if strong leadership skills count for a lot in promotion decisions, people will know what is at stake and act accordingly. 

So what are the real organizational incentives for good leadership?

3. At its very core—leadership is about character and inspiration

Ideas like “character” and “inspiration” seem very difficult, and a bit unfashionable to work with. Yet at their core—they matter a great deal.

And the more senior you aspire to be, the more these actually matter.

 After all, your board should care deeply about whether the CEO they are appointing will do the right thing when no one is looking. The stakes are simply too high to go wrong.

 Yet character is a mix of a strong moral compass, courage, integrity and vision. None of which are easy to develop. And none of which develop overnight.

 After all, you cannot suddenly develop character when you are CEO if you have never been through the wringer before, or as Bennis called them--through crucible experiences.

 So then developing leaders needs both an environment which allows people the space to develop their leadership potential, and enough people with strong leadership potential. 

 And all this… as we all know… is really really hard.

*Warren Bennis has written about these extensively in his very influential writings on leadership (Becoming a leader, Bennis, 1989).

“When you call out to your people—will they show up?” Bennis on Leadership here

(Dr. Shalini Lal works with clients in Organizational Development and Innovation. She has a PhD from UCLA, and an MBA from IIM-A, and has worked in this field for over twenty years. Write to her at [email protected])