Leadership is vital to any institution because it sets a vision and supporting strategy, motivates people to perform to maximum efficiency and productivity, and achieve its goals. Consider the following:
- Westfall, a Forbes contributor, wrote the following: Leadership Development Is A $366 Billion Industry: Here's Why Most Programs Don't Work
- In Hard Times: Leadeership in America Kellerman states that "The leadership industry has a problem - a screamingly obvious one. It has failed over its roughly forty-year history to in any major, meaningful, measurable way improve the human condition.
- In Gallup's State of the American Workplace Clifton states that "The American workforce has more than 100 million full-time employees. One-third of those employees are what Gallup calls engaged at work. They love their jobs and make their organization and America better every day. At the other end, 16% of employees are actively disengaged — they are miserable in the workplace and destroy what the most engaged employees build. The remaining 51% of employees are not engaged — they're just there."
- In his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't Collins examined 1,435 good companies for 40 years. By his definition, 11 of those progressed to greatness. A significant difference in the leadership of the 11 that made the move was that they had level 5 leaders. According to Collins, level 5 leaders display a potent mixture of personal humility and unshakable will to advance the company.
- In his book The Miracle of Humble Leadership: Helping Good People Become Great Chappelear suggests that the absence of humility in one historical approach to leadership is the primary differentiating factor. Its inclusion in one's style may solve a problem that has plagued businesses and other institutions for more than forty years.
As leaders view an institution's future, how may they lay a path that will effectively move the institution and its people to that end?
