People Don’t Want To Be Leaders?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jun 2, 2013
I don't know why I'm so amazed. After all, my wife has always told me that she doesn't want to be responsible for anyone but herself when it comes to the work she does. I have seen her teach and help people in many different ways, and always thought that she would be a great leader in any job where she decided that's what she wanted to be. But over the years I have learned not to bring it up to her, although when I hear her complaining about moves that someone she reports to has done that she doesn't like I'll always remind her that she could've been in charge. In my opinion it does no good to complain about something if you're not in a position to change it.
 |
Having said that, I was recently surprised by an answer I received from a bunch of young people on this topic. I was so surprised that I decided to do the video below to cover the topic better. I've always acknowledged because of my wife that some people aren't meant to be leaders. However it never really occurred to me that people who were probably qualified to be leaders, especially young people, would be thinking so far ahead that they decided for other reasons not to be leaders.
This doesn't necessarily mean that they won't take a shot at independent work later on, and yet some of them already feel trapped in the jobs they already have that they think they're never going to be able to do anything else except that specific kind of work.
Why is this an important issue? Because we've always talked about the dearth of new leaders and who's going to run corporations and the country as some of us get older. We also lament that sometimes the people who want to be leaders aren't the people we want as leaders. If it's turning out that the people who are qualified to be leaders don't want the job, I see this as detrimental to society across the board. And yet it's something to think about and address, which I do in the video below:
http://youtu.be/JwNfNCCg6ow
I think most young people are very much afraid to step into leader’s should, thought I personally doubt that majority of latest generation is capable to do that. It isn’t easy to be a leader and many times people calculate everything which is in contradiction to leadership by my opinion as leader should always be able to take a fast decision based on experience without thinking twice, but I think I might need to write another few pages of comment to be able to emphasize all my thought on this.
I think you might Carl. lol Actually, I think great leadership means calculating almost everything and making the best decision possible. Sometimes those calculations have to come way in advance, sometimes almost immediate, but one had better be thinking of the best way to go. And I hope more young people will actually be ready to step into leadership positions in the future because what I’ve found is there’s a lot of unexpected leaders who end up taking those jobs anyway.
All good points. Nowadays, it could me a mix of confidence, risk, qualification. But maybe it’s lack of focus. There are so many other priorities or distractions.
I wonder if technology can play a part in that?
I don’t know if technology plays a part in it. What I tend to believe is that young people have seen what’s happened to their parents and parents friends and decided they won’t want to take the risk. That’s too bad.