Do you develop your leaders (and yourself) or don’t you. Odds are 50/50.

From Leadership Excellence (01/10) Vol. 27, No. 1, P. 10; Bersin, Josh

Companies reaching the strategic stage of leadership development (LD) outperform firms with generic, inconsistent strategies. LD continues to be a leading priority, according to the Leadership Development Factbook, but there are several alarming trends, including the fact that only 50 percent of all leaders participated in some kind of LD in 2009. Many leaders also come up short in skills development, with just 37 percent of executives being described as having excellent skills.

WOW – 63% of execs are described as not having excellent skills. Combine that with the 50% number and 31% of execs are bad and not getting better.

Reminds me of a call I was on today. Senior VP, bull in a china shop, old school sytle. The CEO has had enough and wants to do a 360 on the guy. I wonder is this an excuse to let him go if he doesn’t get better or is it truly a desire to coach him.

The bigger wonder is why has this bully been tolerated for so long? My newsletter came out this week with an article called “The Workaround.” I will post that next so you can see this is a bad thing. For years they tried to work around this guy, it never works.

Do you invest in leader development or are you one of the other 50% who leaves it to chance?

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