One of the biggest issues facing young leaders today is a lack of suitable ‘guides’ to assist them along their path to becoming better leaders.
Yeah, I said it and I’m looking at you. And me.
There aren’t a lot of mentors that have made the journeys themselves and remembered to look back from time to time and guide others.We need those leader figureheads of some sort, those people that have traveled a bit more of the path and have come out on the other side a little happier and wiser.
Look on social media and all you see are ‘hustlers’ and ‘coaches’. We don’t need more coaches, we need more mentors. Coaches tell you how, mentors tell you why and help you find your path.
Think of it in sports terminology. Coaches help outline the plays, develop strategies, prepare the team mentally and physically. That’s a coach and they are valuable, but that ain’t mentoring.
Mentoring is helping others see what the path could look like, what our path looked like and how to tell if the path is even worth traveling. We share experiences, not shape them.
Today, we tend to have more elderly people than actual elders who have something to teach us. We long for mentors, at every stage of the journey, who are believable and reliable.
Who are your mentors?
Who are you mentoring?
Lead Forward
Semper Fortis
Chief Chuck
P.S. Want elders? Search #greywave on X (Twitter). You’re welcome.
As John Maxwell says, “Only a leader can make a leader.” The problem is leadership is no longer taught.
In the corporate world, many are hired or promoted to positions of leadership with absolutely no leadership training, coaching or mentoring. As I’ve always said, “you can’t give what you don’t have”. Thus these “leaders” fail to mentor those who work for them because they don’t have the knowledge and experience. They also don’t know that they’re supposed to mentor either because they never had a mentor.
Corporate leadership programs are usually run by a training department within HR. They don’t teach or mentor leadership either. And any content that’s labeled “leadership” is usually some bastardized form of management mixed with DEI. They usually outsource the leadership to an external company that’s the lowest bidder for that year. Changing consultants and program content frequently, thus never providing a consistent product.
For youth, leadership is not taught in high school or college (unless you have a really good sports coach). Business schools teach “management”, not leadership. The Boy Scouts used to be a solid organization where boys would learn and actively develop leadership skills, but the Boy Scouts of 30-40 years ago no longer exists.
Look at the President of the United States. We’ve not had a decent POTUS since Ronald Reagan. The sorry narcissistic batch that has followed have not been inspiring. Where are the Ron Reagans that talk of the “shining light on the hill”, the John Kennedys that said, “Ask not what your country can do for you”, the Teddy Roosevelts that talk about the Man in the Arena? I look at the current slate of candidates on both sides (even the ones running shadow campaigns) and say, “we’ve got over 330 million people in this county, and this is the best we can do?”
Am sorry to comment with such a rambling, depressing, dim picture of the current state of leadership, but this is just the tip of the iceberg of the crisis we’re facing.