Has anyone seen our leaders?

By JULIE MIDDLETON

One hundred shiny, happy "emerging leaders" and 350 of their elders assembled to rah-rah the country's future.

But the Knowledge Wave leadership forum in Auckland obscured a worrying fact: despite that sterling collection of talent, New Zealand faces a serious shortage of people who want to lead.

Former King's College head John Taylor summed it up in a Herald story just after the conference.

Now, as the University of Auckland's head of external relations and involved with the university's infant New Zealand Leadership Institute, he says: "There seems to be a pulling back of people who want to lead or be in middle management."

Talk to business leaders, academics and recruiters and they all sing the same song: there's a dearth of good talent stepping forward. Why?

* Demographics

Sheffield partner Christien Winter says there aren't enough Generation Xers - today's 26- to 37-year-olds - to replace the baby boomers, now 38 to 57, who are starting to retire.

And those who are stepping forward are looking for better work-life balance than their parents.

* Unwillingness to accept increased profile, risk and accountability

Taylor reckons the increasing legal, human resources and contractual requirements of top jobs has made them unattractive.

The public is vociferous in its demand for greater accountability from managers and leaders - and for heads to roll in the wake of various corporate collapses.

And as well as being all things to all people, CEOs have to deal with the media - terrifying for many.

With the working world increasingly uncertain and turbulent, Taylor picks that for many, "making difficult decisions about colleagues" is unappealing.

Mandy Buck, business development manager for recruiter Robert Walters New Zealand says simply that middle managers "have become battle-weary".

One writer, JH Jones, describes the shortage of good leadership worldwide as "a fourth potential threat to civilisation as we know it". The other three, by the way, are nuclear warfare, plague and ecological devastation.

But it's not quite as dramatic as it sounds.

"Leadership is part of the glue that holds societies together," says Australian businessman turned academic Ken Parry, of the Centre for the Study of Leadership in Wellington.

And Parry's 1999 New Zealand Leadership Survey, with colleague Sarah Proctor, pointed out that the shortage is a worldwide problem.

Filling New Zealand's gaps with overseas people is not a good long-term strategy.

"Leaders of future New Zealand will need to be sourced from within the country," says Parry.

* We're not looking in the right places

There are many capable leaders in our midst but we are not flushing them out.

"A lot of [potential leaders] must be sitting around thinking 'gee, I've got the ideas and I want to do something here, but I'm not given the opportunities'," says Parry.

Companies need to start seeking talent, especially in the middle of hierarchies, where people don't have absolute power so tend to have to use their clout in more collegial, "ethically defensible ways, rather than just using it for power's sake".

This is called transformational leadership: getting people "tuning in so they're willingly doing what you want them to", says Parry.

But New Zealand leadership tends to the transactional, he says: giving orders and expecting them to be obeyed.

* Less willingness to put work first

Increased money and status, says Parry, might not be worth the sacrifice - long hours, stress, office politics, and the impact on relationships.

Two-income families keen to strike a balance between work and family, adds Taylor, may feel less pressure to go for dollars over everything else.

"Consciousness of work-life balance ... does narrow the field," says Nicola Pohlen, of recruiter Pohlen Kean.

"We are constantly seeing middle and senior managers in New Zealand - here or returning - who will take a lesser role so they can stay in New Zealand for lifestyle reasons. Up is not the only way."

Quite. Flatter management structures, says Swanson, have denied many the opportunity to just keep rising up the ladder, so they're looking at different opportunities outside management.

* Office politics

"To get to the top job you require less leadership and more power-broking, networking and self-interest," explains Parry.

"In many cases, these good leaders ... don't have the incentive to work their way to the top."

* Brutal and short tenures

People have watched the tenures of CEOs shorten - and many bosses sacrificed for the shortcomings of their boards' governance.

"It is even worse in the public sector," says Parry. "If you make a couple of mistakes in the private sector, but the bottom line is all right, you will be safe.

"But in the public sector, if you make one mistake, then you are hung out to dry publicly."

* Neglect of career development

The survey also asked 1350 managers who should bear responsibility for career development - the nuturing of skills that lead to greater responsibility.

Twenty-seven per cent said learning and growing was solely an individual issue; 18 per cent said it was up to the company; 40 per cent said it was the job of company and individual, working together; and 11 per cent didn't have a clue.

That's not good enough if we want good leaders in future, says Parry. "Organisations are less willing than they should be to develop the senior managerial skills of their people."

He sees career development as a partnership - a two-way thing that matches company needs with personal aspiration.

* Lack of succession planning

Too few companies - and leaders within them - think they have a responsibility to nurture their successors.

You can call it ego, a fear of competition - or a chronic case of short-term thinking.

In the leadership survey, which sampled more than 6000 private and public organisations, just half of middle and junior managers were considered by bosses as having the potential to move into senior management positions and become effective leaders as well.

But, says Pohlen, "to be an effective leader you have to be trained in it. The old adage of an expert in a function rising to management and automatically being effective is long gone."

So what can we do to address the leadership vacuum?

"Let's work out who we want at the top and start telling good stories about the people who are the good role models," says Parry, who practises what he preaches with the book The Hero Manager (Penguin), a collection of profiles of our high achievers, co-authored with colleague Brad Jackson.

"Let's look for the good leaders, not continue to look for the mistakes, even if made by otherwise impeccably credentialled people," he advises. "We're too ready to look for mistakes, rather than laud achievements."

Sheffield's Christien Winter says that companies need to put genuine commitment and resources into dedicated schemes to train talent.

They also need to be realistic about the changes in attitudes to work, especially workers' increasing push for work-life balance.

The media also has a role to play, says Parry.

"If the media continues to reflect the tall poppy syndrome, nothing will change. But if the media displays leadership in the values and stories they tell, the public will begin to fall in line, and attitudes will change.

"There is no quick fix, but that is one start to the journey."

* After five years, Ken Parry is leaving the Centre for the Study of Leadership, a joint venture between the New Zealand College of Management and Victoria University of Wellington, for a post at Brisbane's Griffith University. The new director of the Wellington centre is his colleague Brad Jackson.