Is HR putting leadership on an impossible pedestal?

Many employees have been conditioned to see leadership as the ultimate career goal but one industry expert says it’s a dangerous and unrealistic ethos which is seriously undermining the importance of being a team player.

“Over the past 20 years or so, we’ve started to really push the need for better leadership within organisations and now we highlight it in society everywhere,” says Dan Stones, a team dynamics specialist and CEO of Shifting Peers. “Just look at school marketing for instance – there isn’t a school out there that doesn’t say it develops leaders.”

With leadership put on such a high pedestal, employees tend to see a managerial role as something special which carries benefits in terms of compensation, significance and power.

“Not surprisingly, people got hooked onto that and started chasing it,” says Stones. “The problem is, on a team of 12, only one or two can make that step and even be chosen for leadership training.”

As a result, those who are not chosen for leadership training are left feeling disappointed and disengaged and often move elsewhere to seek better opportunities.

Further, the competition to climb the corporate ladder means ambitious employees are often more concerned with “going it alone” rather than working well on a team – a mind-set which will quickly harm any organisation.

Instead, Stones says organisations need to start preaching the importance of teamwork rather than focussing on a select few who may become future leaders.

“We need to start training and developing whole teams, preferably in a live environment, and we need to be stressing that being a team player is a highly-valued characteristic,” he tells HRD.

Of course, organisations already recognise the importance of teamwork but Stones says most aren’t walking the talk.

“There’s definitely the intention to always have the best team possible but there’s a huge gap between that intention and what’s actually being implemented to achieve that,” says Stones.

“The question is; what is being done to help teams work better together? How many businesses are actually training teams on the skills required to do these things?”

Even when organisations arrange so-called team-building events, Stones says they often descend into competition – the complete antithesis of collaboration.

“How many team-building events start with the group being split into two so they can compete?” he asks. “You see it all the time and the last thing you’re going to take out of those days is the ability to work better together.”

Stones – who also hosts Barnraisers, a podcast about teamwork – says humans are naturally wired to be more competitive which is why organisations should invest in building team skills.

“Collaboration is not a natural place that we go to and, from my perspective, that’s all the more reason why we need to actually start training people on these skills because they’re so sadly lacking.”