“The 2024 Randstad Workmonitor study found that a third of employees (34%) never want to become managers. Like, never. Not only that, but 39% don’t even want to be promoted. Fifty-one percent are content with no advancement opportunities, if they’re in a role they like. – Mark Perna, Forbes (March 12, 2024)
As business and leadership coaches, VIM Executive Coaching has by now seen what feels like thousands of studies reflective of the study we quote above. “Leadership” seems to have become a “why bother?” sentiment, an afterthought, an irrelevant inconvenience. To reinforce these observations was another restated study from Deloitte:
“According to Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends report, 86% of business leaders view leadership as a top priority, yet only 13% feel confident they have a strong pipeline of leadership talent.”
Why Bother, indeed?
Executive leadership seems to have taken quite a beating since the pandemic; however, the trends were well in place before 2020. As we have noted over numerous blogs, the mass talent walk-outs of 2021, the quitting-even-before-starting in 2022, have declined but not stopped.
Indeed, as the pandemic was about to shut everything down, the prestigious Harvard Business Review gave a four-part analysis as to why employees were losing their motivation:
- There was an ongoing mismatch of values. That is, the old corporate adage of telling future talent, “My way or the highway,” no longer worked. Major corporations were seen as out-of-touch, having no commitment to an entire range of powerful social issues.
- There was a lack of what was termed “efficacy.” More accurately, being isolated or shown as having a lack of self-worth. If an employee gets that message long enough or embarrassingly loud enough, a disconnect can be assured.
- Disruptive emotions. The result of the two factors above will obviously prevent an employee from being effective. The noise of judgment automatically prevent a maximum effort. Again, a “why bother?” moment.
- Naturally, when an employee “gives up,” management seeks a target, an attribution error; namely, “Who is responsible?”
Unless upper management begins to view their culpability in these four areas, the pool of potential executive leaders will continue its decline.
The blame game
The decline in leadership talent has been ascribed to many things. The keyword list includes the rise of technology, a lack of communication, Artificial Intelligence, The Pandemic (naturally), a poor educational system, politics, pollution and associated health problems, social media, income inequality, DEI issues, gender issues and so forth.
Given the vagaries of the web and online search, one can pretty much pick a key word and refrain or reframe the entire leadership discussion on any aspect. The lists and logical or illogical arguments usually miss the point.
While it is painfully true that any one of those factors can lead “students” to a discussion on the paucity of leadership in the modern-day workplace no single reason is to blame. Admittedly, some of those keywords are responsible for many awful societal ills, they invariably appear to merge and flow through a backwards funnel to a common culprit: mindfulness.
In 2025, a lack of societal mindfulness still affects every issue we have brought forward. Our executive talent is in decline not because the talent isn’t out there. Rather, because most organizations are not aware enough, mindful enough, to cultivate and encourage the talent they already possess.
It is a pretty safe bet to understand that if upper management has not been mindfully nurtured themselves, they don’t support, encourage or teach mindfulness to potentially great executive leaders within the ranks. In short, everyone gives up. Talent walks away or worse, “never sees the light of day.”
Oftentimes organizations have asked themselves, “How come we don’t have good executive leadership talent,” when all-along, they should have been mindful enough to ask, “How come we have ignored the talent we have?”