How many leaders would you estimate are in your city? How about your country? What about all over the world? If we're going to look at the future leader, then it's important for us to know just how many of these individuals we have now, and how many we might have in the future.
In the United States alone there are roughly 25 million supervisors and managers, people who are responsible for others. This is about 1 in 6 Americans. In the UK this number is around 5 million, which also comes to 1 in 6 people. McKinsey predicts that in 2030 the global workforce will be around 3.5 billion people (McKinsey, 2012). In 2020 the International Labour Organization estimates a workforce that is 45% self-employed, which has actually been decreasing over the past few years (World Bank, 2019). If we assume that 50% of the total workforce will be self-employed by 2030, that leaves us with 1.75 billion employed people (OECD, n.d.). The number of employees per manager or supervisor is referred to as the “span of control,” and the suggested number of employees per manager varies from 4 employees per manager to upwards of 20. This means that around the world, there will be roughly between 87,500,000 and 437,500,000 leaders, which is actually a conservative range since many of the self-employed individuals also have full-time jobs. That is a lot of leaders! Leaders help make our world, so we’d better make sure we have the right people in those positions. We all deserve to like (or, dare I say, love) our jobs, and this starts with having the right leaders at the helm of our organizations.
Leaders Today Are Struggling
Unfortunately, most of our leaders are, bluntly speaking, not good. If they were, then we would see that reflected in the data. It doesn't mean they are bad people, but the way that we teach and talk about leadership is extremely antiquated and that's largely what leaders today are familiar with and practice. It's a bit like trying to fly a modern jet when you were only trained on an original Wright Brothers plane. You might get it in the air, but you aren't going to go far.
According to a study conducted by Ultimate Software and the Center for Generational Kinetics, 80% of employees say they can do their jobs without their managers and actually think that their managers are not necessary (Ultimate Software, 2017). Another study by Randstad found that almost half of the 2,257 survey respondents said they could do a better job than their boss (RandstadUSA, n.d.). A second Randstad study conducted in 2018 found that 60% of employees have left jobs or are considering leaving because they don't like their direct supervisors (RandstadUSA, 2018). These numbers alone paint a picture of current leaders that makes them seem nonessential. Let's be honest: we've all felt that way about our leaders at some point during our careers. I certainly have; in fact, there have been several occasions when I would see a leader at work and my inner voice would say, “What do you even do here?”
A Gallup study of over 7,000 Americans concluded that one in two people had actually left a job at some point during their career to get away from their managers in order to improve their overall quality of life (Harter, 2015). Let that sink in for a moment. It's a very somber statistic, yet one that we can all relate to. The same study shows that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores. Even in the UK, research published by the Independent found that nearly half of British workers believe they could do a better job than their boss (Bailey, 2017). Perhaps the more alarming finding was that 13% said that their bosses are dangerously incompetent at their jobs.
Let's also not forget the seminal Gallup study on global engagement, which found that only 15% of employees around the world are engaged in their jobs. According to the study, “employees everywhere don't necessarily hate the company or organization they work for as much as they do their boss. Employees—especially the stars—join a company and then quit their manager” (Clifton, 2017).
An entire book could be written about how leaders around the world are failing us. These are supposed to be the people whom we look up to, admire, and want to emulate? These are the people who are supposed to lead our organizations and help us shape and create the future? While these numbers paint a bleak picture of present-day leadership, the numbers don't look any better when we look toward the future.
In its most recent Global Leadership Forecast report, DDI surveyed over 25,000 leaders around the world and found that only 42% said that the overall quality of leadership inside their organizations was high (DDI, 2018). Perhaps more shocking was that only 14% of organizations have what DDI calls a strong “bench,” which is ready-now leaders who can step in to replace those who retire or move on. This means that if a “leadership virus” wiped out all the present-day leaders, we would have nobody to step in to take their place. Even sports teams have talented players on the bench who could step up when someone gets injured, but our companies do not. Perhaps this is because our models of leadership are not changing, meaning we are teaching leaders how to lead in a world that no longer exists.
In another DDI report exploring the “State of Leadership Development,” half of the organizations surveyed said their leaders are not skilled to lead their organizations effectively today (DDI, 2015), and 71% said their leaders are not ready to lead their organizations into the future. A study by the Center for Creative Leadership found similar results in their aptly titled study “The Leadership Gap,” where the authors state, “Leaders are not adequately prepared for the future. Today's leadership capacity is insufficient to meet future leadership requirements. This finding is consistent across countries, organizations, and levels in the organization” (Leslie, 2015). Finally, in its report “Ready-Now Leaders,” the Conference Board in partnership with DDI found that 85% of executives are not confident in their own leadership pipelines. Here are a few more numbers for you to consider (DDI, 2014).
In Deloitte's most recent Millennial survey, which collected 10,000 responses from 36 countries, 71% of millennials said they are expecting to leave their employment in the next two years because they are unhappy with how their leadership skills are being developed (Deloitte, 2019). This is particularly disturbing because there is obviously a new generation of workers who want to step into leadership roles but organizations are not doing enough to make this possible.
Clearly something is wrong with leadership around the world, otherwise these numbers wouldn't be as abysmal as they are globally. Virtually every human indicator is telling us that we have a problem, yet most organizations and current leaders are doing nothing to address it. Just imagine for a moment that you're driving a car and in the middle of your trip the “check engine” light comes on, followed by the tire pressure warning, the low fuel light, and the battery light, all while your car temperature indicator is in the red. Now imagine your whole family is in the car with you. Would you really just keep on driving, hoping to make it to your destination? I would hope not. Yet in the business world we are on cruise control, and the worst part is that we are all sitting in the same car!