13 Shocking Leadership Development Statistics

The Law of the Lid, the first lesson of John C Maxwell’s The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, states that the capability of an organization’s leadership is a lid on the organization’s overall performance.

Incremental increases in an organization’s leadership ability can generate exponential returns, and vice versa, poor leadership can crush productivity.

If you have experience in human resources and business leadership, I’m sure you’ve seen first-hand the effect of leadership ability on organizational performance. Which explains why leadership development is the number one priority for many organizations, and organizations spend more on leadership development than any other training category.

But developing leaders is not an easy task, and those charged with developing leaders in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world face numerous challenges. To help illustrate some of the difficulties HR leaders face in developing leaders, here are 13 Shocking Leadership Development Statistics:

In case you can’t see the infographic, or prefer plain text, here’s all the stats listed out:

1. To start, 10,000 baby boomers are retiring each day
2. And 48% of the workforce will be millennials by 2020
3. Meanwhile, 67% of millennials are looking for a new job
4. And of those who stay, 91% plan to stay at their current job fewer than 3 years
5. Which might be why 84% of organizations anticipate a shortfall of leaders in the next 5 years
6. Also, 83% of organizations say it is important to develop leaders at all levels
7. But only 5% have fully implemented development at all levels
8. And 25% of organizations say less than 10% of critical leadership positions have ready and willing successors
9. Not surprisingly, 58% of organizations top priority is closing leadership skill gaps
10. And 43% of organizations top priority is closing gaps across all leader levels
11. Only 18% of organizations say their leaders are “very effective” at meeting business goals
12. But only 19% of organizations say they are “very effective” at developing leaders
13. The bottom line is that more money is spent on leadership development than any other area of corporate training, yet 71% of organizations do not feel their leaders are able to lead their organization into the future.

For more on the future of leadership development in the digital age, and our approach to developing leaders who excel in the digital read our ebook: Future Leadership Development.

All statistics are from Brandon Hall’s State of Leadership Development 2015: Time to Act is Now.