Leaders! Are You Concerned About The Global Leadership Crisis and The Shortage of Real and Effective Leadership? A Solution to The Global Challenge.

As humans, we have a tendency of normalising the abnormal and maintaining the status quo even when the status quo no longer works or is harmful to us. When we talk about our global challenges, we often ignore that most of these problems have their genesis in leadership. We often also ignore that we cannot solve these problems without outside of leadership. We even under estimate the impacts of leadership and its lack thereof. Real and effective leadership is required everywhere.

1. Real and effective leadership is required in politics all over the world
2. Real and effective leadership is required in sustainable environmental management
3. Real and effective leadership is required for sustainable economic development
4. Real and effective leadership is required for making sustainable development a reality everywhere around the world
5. Real and effective leadership is required for effective and sustained success in pursuing sustainable development goals.
6. Real and effective leadership is required for extreme business and corporate success
7. Real and effective leadership is the cornerstone of leading countries and continents
8. Real and effective leadership is required for sustainable urban management and urban development
9. Real and effective leadership is required for effective and sustained success each and every one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

But here are our leadership-related challenges;

1. We already have a huge and growing global leadership crisis. This crisis is marked by the big disparities between leadership positions, leadership power, leadership authority and leadership competence.
2. The overwhelming majority of people get into positions of leadership not because they are great leaders, but because of their power or political skills and perceived, but non-existent leadership abilities. Leadership is one the big areas where many people rise to positions of their incompetence.
3. Many people in formal positions of leadership are extremely powerful and authoritative, but they lack the competence. They are either zero-leaders, or bad leaders or dangerous leaders or catastrophic leaders or poor leaders. (Shhhh! Some of them don't want to hear this because they also suffer from either bad ego or poor ego.)
4. The more incompetent a person in a position of leadership is, the less the person is capable of becoming a better leader. They are immune to any suggestions to improve their leadership through having wise and intelligent advisors, or through training, education and development. Many leaders also lack the ability and inherent desire to learn and improve their leadership performance and results.
5. Most leadership training, education and development programs do improve leadership performance and results, but not by much because they are too knowledge-centric and focus much less on leadership skills, strategies and personal and personality development.
6. Most people in positions of leadership are also affected by age; they do not think that they, at their age and positions, must be learning and training in leadership.
7. Most leadership "development" programs follow the academic structure, which structure is excellent for academic learning and much less suitable for the leadership practitioner.
8. There thousands of books on leadership and hundreds of leadership models. The problem is few of these books have a complete leadership development and improvement solution or a recipe because each book or model has a certain perspective and emphasise certain aspects and lacks the other aspects that go into real-world leadership action, performance and results. Most of these leaders tend to answer the question;

What is leadership?

Few books convincingly focus on the questions;

1. What is leading?
2. Who can lead?
3. What are the exact leadership results?
4. How do we measure leadership performance
5. What is the core set of leadership skills and how best does one develop these skills
6. How do I change my leadership performance and results

The One Size Fits All Approach

Yes, certain leadership aspects are general and universal. But, there are many different leadership contexts and domains that have their own unique leadership needs. For example;

1. Environmental management leadership
2. Business leadership
3. Political leadership
4. Organisational leadership
5. Economic leadership
6. Government leadership
7. Country leadership
8. Continental leadership
9. Military leadership
10. Thought leadership
11. Situational leadership

Add to this the many different models including;

• Servant leadership
• Authentic leadership
• Emotionally intelligent leadership
• Solo leadership, Visionary leadership and other leadership styles
• The plethora of "leadership characteristics" mentioned by different leadership thinkers, academics and authorities

Leadership Practitioners Training, Education, Equipment and Development

We need more effective leadership in every sphere of life.

1. We need more effective leadership in politics
2. We need more leadership in sustainable environmental management
3. We need more leadership in sustainable economic development
4. We need more leadership in making sustainable development a reality everywhere around the world
5. We need more leadership in pursuing sustainable development goals.
6. We need more leadership for extreme business and corporate success
7. We need more leadership if we are to our sustainable development ideals.

This more effective leadership needs a paradigm change in our theory and practice in leadership and in the development of leadership.

Groom New Leaders Early Before They Assume Formal Positions of Leadership

Once a person occupies a formal position of leadership, it is as rare as seeing a Halley's Comet to have that person think about and agree to serious leadership education, training, equipment, advice and development. Most become victims of the ego, attitude, arrogance and mistaken beliefs. Many (not all) people in formal positions of leadership mistakenly convince themselves that they are in those positions because they are great leaders and they already have all what it takes in terms of leadership. They lack the awareness of the potential disparity between leadership power and leadership authorities. They also lack conscious awareness of how to lead effectively and what it takes to be a great leader. Most also lack accurate self-awareness and also lack the awareness that deep and accurate self-knowledge and self-awareness are the master key to great and effective leadership. This is the reason why I believe that leadership training, education and development must be done at a young age, mostly before a person starts assuming formal positions leadership.

In addition, a new approach to leadership development is needed, one that addresses the specific needs of the leadership practitioner and not necessarily the leadership academic or philosopher.

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©Simon Bere, 2024