Train Your Leaders and Improve Your Organization

Corporate management is currently under siege, and senior leaders are retiring in record numbers.

Those who’ve not yet experienced the loss of ‘institutional knowledge’ via retirement soon will. The youngest Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) turn 61 in 2025, and the oldest Gen X’ers (1965 and 1980) are only a year behind them.

When these people leave the workforce, they’ll be taking years of training, knowledge, and mentoring opportunities with them. Many of those left standing will not yet be ready to assume the responsibilities of the roles left vacant, and their organizations will suffer a variety of negative consequences unless they act proactively to ensure a smooth transition as senior team members age out of the workforce. Savvy and forward-thinking organizations need to ensure that the next generation of managers is ready to step into leadership positions and be successful in them.

Recent research has identified many challenges that leaders are already facing:

The 2024 Workmonitorsurvey by Randstad found that ambition is no longer viewed in its traditional sense of career progression. Work-life balance, flexibility, equity and skilling are now at the heart of career decisions. 47% of (Gen Z) respondents said that they’re not focused on progression at all, and a third (34%) of workers never want to take on any managerial roles. [i]
Gallup’s “Six Workplace Trends Leaders Should Watch In 2024” report found that how employees are managed has about four times as much influence on employee engagement and wellbeing as their work location. [ii]
Trust in organizational leadership declined significantly since the onset of the pandemic until it started to recover in 2023. Yet, today, only 23% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they trust the leadership of their organization. [iii]
In 2023, managers were more likely than non-managers to be disengaged, burnt out and job hunting. This trickles down and 55% of employees surveyed are watching for or actively seeking alternate employment. What’s certain is that managers will need more training and support to lead effectively in today’s new work environment riddled with new expectations. [iv]
The need for more managerial training isn’t news. In 2020 The Society for Human Resource Management had already noted that “84 percent of U.S. workers say poorly trained managers create a lot of unnecessary work and stress.” [v]
SHRM’s 2019 report “The High Cost of a Toxic Workplace Culture” found that 57% of respondents “believe [that] managers in their workplace could benefit from training on how to be better people managers”. 47% said that their “direct manager could benefit from additional training in communication skills.“ [vi]
Fortune Magazine’s 2023 research found that nearly all bosses are ‘accidental’ with no formal training and research shows it’s leading 1 in 3 workers to quit. [vii]
Perceptyx’s latest panel survey found many corporate managers feeling stressed, in need of coaching, and worried they aren’t leading effectively. 70% of managers have taken action based on employee feedback, showcasing their attempt to do better in their role. However, while 81% have had formal training, about 60% say they could use more ongoing coaching to improve their skills, and 24% have not been coached at all. [viii]
Culture Amp surveyed over 250,000 managers and more than 1 million employees, across 3304 companies in 2023 [ix] and found that:

- Managers are under stress. New managers feel pressure to rapidly ramp up their skills when they step into the role.
- Managers are stuck in a bind between leading others and managing others. They receive mixed messages on where to focus their efforts.
- While the managers of managers want them to focus on leadership skills like strategy, their direct reports seek more support on things like growth and development.
- As managers rise through the ranks [of leadership] they spend less time focusing on developing effective manager behaviors. This results in a vicious circle where the people responsible for supporting others are not getting the support they need themselves.

Consistent throughout all of these studies is call for increased leadership training, and lest you think that these problems are unique to North America, they’re not.

The Good Governance Academy, based out of South Africa is a non-profit organization that collaborates globally to share information on critical business issues, including conscious corporate leadership. On November 5^th 2024, they’re offering an online webinar called “Good Governance with forward-looking leaders”, and featuring retired Guelph Ontario, police sergeant, coach, and author Douglas Pflug as one of its keynote speakers. Companies around the globe are facing these same things.

Corporations face many challenges, along with calls for immediate action on all of them. Thus, one must pick the battles that one’s prepared to fight, and win. Leadership development needs to be high on that list and using assessments should also feature prominently in any initiatives that are undertaken.

As Albert Einstein said, “Finding the solution is easy, it’s identifying the problem that’s difficult!” Therefore, figure out what’s wrong before you try to make changes. Two ways in which to do this include identifying those who are ready to adopt leadership roles, and identifying where skills deficits exist in current leaders – and then addressing them.

There are many tools available to help employers do both and more, and they include titles like:

The Leadership Potential Assessment determines whether a person possesses the personality traits that characterize good leaders, and evaluates the type of techniques he or she would utilize if given a leadership position.
The Management Skills and Styles Assessment is an all-encompassing, in-depth assessment that evaluates a person’s managerial potential.
The Manager 7.0 is designed for candidates applying to entry-level leadership positions who tend to supervise salaried employees.
The Supervisor 7.0 is designed for candidates applying to entry-level leadership positions who tend to supervise hourly employees. Sample tasks for these jobs include but are not limited to: planning and preparing work schedules, assigning employees to specific duties; coaching employees on attendance, conduct, schedule adherence, and work tasks, developing employees’ skills; training subordinates; prioritizing multiple tasks and priorities; and making day-to-day decisions with minimal guidance from others.
The Work Personality Index II ® assessment provides a clear framework for understanding the impact of personality on job performance. Unlike other personality measures, the Work Personality Index assessment measures personality traits that are directly related to the work environment and job performance, making interpretation of results straight forward. It offers 6 different report options, including a Leadership Report and the new Leadership Potential Report.

Just some of the managerial development options include:

The Career Development Report For Managers, which helps identify leadership style, strengths, weaknesses, find a new line of work and “sell” yourself.
The Competency Behaviour Inventory 360º identifies and develops leaders with excellence, problem solving and team skills across 15 competencies for a wide variety of roles.
The Executive Solution helps assess planning, directing, coordinating, formulating policies and overall management skills of senior executives.
The Leadership Development Report helps provide insight into leaders’ work-oriented personality leadership character and help increase their overall effectiveness.
The Leadership Effectiveness Profile to measure 8 core leadership competencies via 96 items, with either self or 360 degree feedback.
The NEW Leadership Skills Profile-Revised is a unique, personality-based assessment that uses information about an individual’s personality to predict their strengths and development opportunities, and predicts performance on 50 competencies that are critical to leadership effectiveness.
The Leadership Unlimited Profile helps managers and leaders spot the early warning signs of leadership derailment.

There are many others available, including assessments for role-specific applications for executives, account managers, HR positions, and leaders in finance, healthcare, hospitality, retail, customer service and more.

If your organization is struggling to keep the right people in place, needs to train the next generation to assume leadership responsibilities, or has existing leaders who need remedial intervention, then contact us and let us help you achieve meaningful change, drive results, and resolve conflicts. It’s what we do best and guess what?

As always, There’s a test for that!

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David Towler is President of Creative Organizational Design, a firm offering nearly 50 years of expertise specializing in employee assessments and which has over 5000 different product titles available. Creative Organizational Design has assessment tools designed to help employers screen out other people’s rejects, assess skills, aptitude, attitude and ‘fit’ within an organization. For more information about the options available and help selecting the best tools for your needs please contact us because no matter what personnel challenges you’re facing – there’s a test for that!

Endnotes:

[i] Half of global workers are more interested in balance and belonging than climbing the ladder. – https://www.randstad.com/press/2024/half-global-workers-are-more-interested-balance-belonging-climbing-ladder/

[ii] 6 Workplace Trends Leaders Should Watch in 2024 – https://www.gallup.com/workplace/547283/workplace-trends-leaders-watch-2024.aspx

[iii] 6 Workplace Trends Leaders Should Watch in 2024 – https://www.gallup.com/workplace/547283/workplace-trends-leaders-watch-2024.aspx

[iv] 6 Workplace Trends Leaders Should Watch in 2024 – https://www.gallup.com/workplace/547283/workplace-trends-leaders-watch-2024.aspx

[v] SHRM Survey: Workers Think Managers Need More Training – https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/managing-smart/shrm-survey-workers-think-managers-need-training

[vi] SHRM Survey: Workers Think Managers Need More Training – https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/managing-smart/shrm-survey-workers-think-managers-need-training

[vii] Nearly all bosses are ‘accidental’ with no formal training—and research shows it’s leading 1 in 3 workers to quit – https://fortune.com/europe/2023/10/16/bosses-accidental-formal-training-workers-quit-cmi/

[viii] Perceptyx Report: 1 in 4 Managers Are Flat-Out Miserable Right Now – https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/07/16/2913823/0/en/Perceptyx-Report-1-in-4-Managers-Are-Flat-Out-Miserable-Right-Now.html

[ix] State of The Manager 2023 Report – https://www.cultureamp.com/resources/report/state-of-the-manager-2023-report