In the world of professional coaching, you can find a coach who has decades of experience but is “only” an assistant coach instead of a head coach. Meanwhile, you can find a young coach with only a few years of experience but is a head coach.
I want to be clear that there’s nothing inherently wrong with either of these scenarios. Not everyone wants to be the top dog in an organization. In fact, some people just enjoy doing the job instead of dealing with all the responsibilities of being the leader.
Where a lot of organizations fail is when they promote or appoint people into leadership roles when that person a) doesn’t want it and/or b) is not qualified for it. These situations can occur when people are promoted primarily based on years of experience or seniority or based on status (e.g. award winner, donor, family member, etc.).
A study by Gallup found that 75% of people quit their jobs because of their managers. The consequences of employee turnover to your organization include costs (2x the employee’s earnings) and low employee morale, according to a report.
Unfortunately these days, leadership training is not always offered or provided within organizations. I remember a former supervisor of mine apologizing for the way another supervisor treated me (belittling me instead of helping me), explaining that our company had discontinued leadership training several years ago.
Organizations sometimes assume that because someone has been on the job for years or is good at the day-to-day work, they are able to lead their peers. Indeed, some people are natural-born leaders, but for many people, it would benefit them to get training in areas such as communication, project management, relationship-building, accounting/finance and conflict management before they’re placed into leadership positions.