Disengagement? Turnover? Burnout? It’s a Leadership Problem.

In a recent article about increasing employee dissatisfaction at work, it was noted that leaders were struggling to understand why this is happening, even in the face of raises, increased paid time off, scheduling flexibility and other recent “improvements” for employees. The fact that leaders are confused is foundational to the leadership crisis we are facing across many organizational contexts.

The disconnect between historical leadership development, skills, and styles on one hand and the actual leadership needs in contemporary organizational settings on the other hand is disconcerting. What’s even more disconcerting, however, is the apparent ignorance of the disconnect itself! There is no deep mystery about what is going on, but the notion that something cryptic or baffling is at play is as troubling as the problem itself. This would be analogous to health care providers not knowing that COVID is caused by a respiratory virus, then being confused about why patients are sick.

Much of what still passes for leadership today reflects approaches that are often literally a century or more old.

At the Transformation Collaborative™, we have known for a long time that there is a growing chasm between what followers need from leaders vs. what leaders believe followers need or are capable of providing to them. That is not new. However, we frankly misjudged just how clueless large numbers of leaders (executives, boards, sr. managers) are about how they must bring value in today’s operating reality. In some ways this is understandable because so many leaders were “developed” to achieve results using tools and approaches based on perceived realities that were likely inaccurate even in the past, but that are radically misaligned today. Moreover, leaders who were molded over the last few decades were almost never rewarded for achieving, or even understanding, what matters today.

We believe that many leadership traits and approaches employed with Boomers and Gen Xers were not successful because they were well thought out or innately effective, but because previous generations performed despite the misalignment between their needs and how they were being led. Operating environments are drastically different today AND younger generations will simply not sacrifice themselves to the dissonance and inequity of many contemporary work milieus in which they are not even afforded the Faustian pacts their parents agreed to with employers. And why would they? At least their Boomer and older Gen X parents were afforded some level of job security and benefits, and their labor allowed them to often own a home and retire with some level of stability if not comfort.

When leaders today offer a modest raise that, in theory, might keep buying power in line with inflation, then puzzle over why an employee doesn’t voluntarily rush back to work at the office or dramatically increase engagement and productivity, they are not only showing their ignorance as leaders, they are showing their ignorance of human nature. We know from extensive research with huge sample sizes by Gallup and Alight, as well as our own proprietary research at the TC, that an adequate salary and a reasonably flexible work schedule are now table stakes. By themselves, they have nothing to do with employee retention or engagement or loyalty, etc. In order to maximize the contribution of human capital today, organizational leaders must be transformational leaders—not simply so that they can lead transformation—but because those same skills, traits, behaviors and values are also essential to effective leadership in day to day operations in contemporary organizational environments. And those skills, traits, behaviors, and values look nothing like most leaders today. To be clear, although this model is, in fact, very value laden, the leadership profile we believe in at the Transformation Collaborative™ is essential, not because it fits our philosophy, but because it is necessary to effectively navigate the environment that leaders and their employees actually operate in.

For example, traits such as vulnerability, humility and self-awareness are far more valuable today than bullet-proof confidence or authoritarianism. And this is not woo-woo, touchy feely stuff. It is simply a reflection of the fact that employees today will not trust leaders who don’t project authenticity as a real human being and they certainly won’t simply take orders that cause dissonance through moral injury or inequity because those orders came from someone further up in the hierarchy. An unfortunate historical legacy still common in leadership today is the notion that leaders are a kind of parent to employees, who as children, must be told what to do.

Relatedly, transformational leadership values include things like humanism, diversity, fairness and sustainability—not as a political agenda—but as a recognition that both organizational settings and target markets are comprised of diverse human beings who value fairness. Sustainability is a business principle which serves all stakeholders when achieved. The traditional focus on short-term gains may have temporarily benefitted some stakeholders, but at longer term cost. And, younger employees today.

Lastly, it is through transformational leadership that leaders create environments in which employees are engaged, loyal, appreciative, and committed because they can find purpose, they are supported as autonomous human beings, they see equity in action, collaboration is the rule, and their own growth and development are valued by the organization as a win-win. The fact that many leaders are confused by this is frankly alarming.

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