The Leadership Gap describes 2 different, related problems:

1. Not having enough leaders
2. Having leaders without the right skills

The Pressure to Promote from within

When organizations find that there is a lack of leadership for an area, many choose to promote leaders from the staff.

This is both a reward for hard work and leverages the person’s expertise.

This is often the only route for career growth in many organizations. If it is the only path for career, there is a great pressure and expectation from the workforce that expects promotion to only occur from within. If a leader is brought in from the outside, this can be a major demotivating factor to the workforce.

Leaders Lacking Skills

Many new leaders who are promoted from the staff often lack good leadership skills. Forbes reported on 4 key Leadership Gaps.

These leaders most often find themselves down the path of negative leadership techniques. In this case, we often find many of these signs showing up in as little as a month or it may remain hidden for years:

• Displeasure with the position
• Disconnect from the priorities
• Underperforming groups
• Staffing issues

The hardest part, is that the problems are identified separately, and not recognized as a core problem.

Leadership Planning

One of the factors that can reduce the Leadership Gap is to have a plan in place to build leadership before you need it. I recently heard from Dr. Gene Munson talking about this topic: Succession Planning. Having a roadmap to work on leadership skills before they are needed is a key part of the success. A new leader that has been given skills is much more likely to be successful, and will also be given more respect for having been given skills needed ahead of time. This also can give the new leader more self-confidence for the new position, a confidence that has a solid basis.

Key Points for Organizational Success Closing the Leadership Gap

• Career pathing that includes other routes besides Leadership
• Internal training programs that give leadership skills
• Use of external -based training programs for leadership skills
• Solid expectations of positive leadership approach

External Resources

One program I’ve seen that is very low impact to organizations yet can be very powerful at providing leadership training as well as helping to self-identify new leaders is the Toastmasters program. It doesn’t take long to see new leaders begin to bubble to the top.

There are many beginning Leadership programs available; however, most of these are geared to those who are already in leadership positions. Often the approach is just a stop-gap for getting higher productivity – which is a short term solution. We need to see more educational programs based on training leadership skills before a person takes on the leadership position.

Seeing the Gap

The most important part is realizing we have a gap. We are already in the gap, and your organization is probably already feeling the issues that happen with the gap. Don’t let your organization get caught in this gap.

Working on the issue now is the best way to insure future success.