The leaders we have are not the leaders our teams want. Here’s what to do about it.

“The Leadership Divide -Global Insights on Who Leads vs Who Should” study by HOGAN highlights our inability to reflect some critical qualities desired by team members, in our leader selection and development. This is a talent management imperative that deserves our urgent attention.

The top five competencies exhibited by current global executives are what HOGAN calls “emergent leader competencies”. These emergent leaders are perceived to be leaderlike and have characteristics that get them promoted to higher roles. The top five competencies that survey respondents (team members) wanted their leaders to exhibit are what HOGAN terms “effective leader competencies”. These leaders exhibit characteristics that build and maintain high-performing teams.

Let’s look at how they stack up, side by side:

There is literally no overlap between the top five competencies of emergent leaders who tend to get promoted and hired, and the top five competencies the survey respondents want to see in effective leaders.

Some other differences between what team members want to see in their leaders but aren’t demonstrated as much by our current leaders, are listening, forward-thinking, modesty, humility and valuing teamwork, belonging and data-driven decisions.

The news is not all bleak. Data shows a good match in some areas between what team members want to see in their leaders and what our existing executives demonstrate. These are behaviors like competition, drive, cooperative communication, emotional control, decisiveness, communication and openness.

Let’s name the gap.

First, our existing executives: They bring momentum, power, visibility and upward influence, all of which are important to move businesses forward and inspire others. Where they are falling short is being better listeners, demonstrating humility, visibly taking accountability for their own actions and actively building cultures that value teamwork, belonging and data-based decisions. These are what their teams would like to see more. In addition, they run the risk of overusing their strengths when confidence becomes arrogance, risk-taking becomes testing the limits and charm becomes manipulation.

Now, leaders our respondents would want to have: They demonstrate the behaviors that teams desire (effective leadership) but are not being perceived as promotable. They need coaching on navigating a culture that values demonstrable confidence, visible accomplishments, structure, form, design, money, authority, risk-taking.

The HOGAN report has excellent recommendations on actions we can take to overcome this leadership divide: promoting leaders with the characteristics that teams desire, helping “effective leaders” demonstrate emergent behaviors and promoting trust and accountability through performance systems.

The HOGAN recommendations are the right interventions for leaders who are already in the gap and in making systems changes to reward behaviors desired by teams. They address what exists today.

But what about tomorrow’s executives, the individual contributors and first-line leaders sitting in your organization right now? If we wait until they’ve risen to senior leadership to close this gap, we’ve already paid the price. Alternatively, if our talent systems only identify and promote “effective leaders” into leadership roles, we shrink our pipeline of talent and fail to engage the power of emergent leader characteristics in moving businesses forward. The goal isn’t to stop promoting emergent leaders. It’s to develop them into leaders who can also do what teams need.

The more powerful opportunity is to grow leaders who never develop the gap in the first place. Help emergent leaders internalize effective leader characteristics and vice versa.

We need a fundamental shift in our leadership pipeline. When our future executives are early talent, individual contributors and first-line leaders, that’s when we need to build self-awareness and help them internalize these competencies and behaviors for maximum impact. Not only will we build a strong leadership bench for the future, we will raise the bar for current leadership significantly as early talent know what to expect from their leaders and become a positive force for change.

There are four deliberate steps that can be very impactful if implemented together.

Make values and expected behaviors non-negotiable. Clearly communicate what behaviors are expected at each level of leadership (including for individual contributors) and hold individuals accountable. Early talent follows example, not words. Having robust and transparent performance systems is a must for the accountability to be replicated at scale.

Building strong performance systems is only half the answer. Systems are only as powerful as the courage of the managers using them. Leaders tend to be risk-averse and conflict-averse. They fail to leverage this opportunity to give clear feedback, hold accountable and foster growth in others. First-line leaders specifically need the most help as they transition from an individual contributor mindset to a leader mindset. They see some of the biggest shifts in expected behaviors. How they show up has the most visibility among individual contributors and most impact on business results. Build a culture that empowers leaders to speak the truth and provide deliberate training that builds these skills. The right values and behaviors will show up consistently.

Don’t wait to invest in talent development. Show talent a mirror early in their career and help them see how their personality plays out within a team. Another powerful tool is future projection. Asking someone early in their career to map their personality to future leadership scenarios builds a kind of anticipatory self-awareness that reactive feedback rarely achieves. Not only do these actions build self-awareness, they make self-management an early habit. If cost is a constraint, pick simple assessments and identify high-potential early talent for this initiative.

Make mentoring work for you. Most mentoring programs for early talent are large scale with matching based on career aspirations or functions. They also leave the topics very open. Often, mentors and mentees find it hard to articulate the value of the program. Matching based on leadership traits and gaps, with clear goals for mentoring on competency or behavior gaps offers specificity that transforms mentoring from a networking exercise into a genuine development intervention. This will require mentor- mentee preparation, ongoing mentor support and robust systems to track progress. The investment will pay for itself many times over in the quality of leaders you gain.

Don’t reserve coaching for the C-suite. Use coaching to create impact for your early talent. Again, if cost is a constraint, consider group coaching where continued participation depends on visible effort and behavior change. Coaching early gives us two benefits. The coachee is highly committed to change because they came up with the intent and actions. They are not told what to do, they define what they should do. Additionally, taking ownership for personal development becomes a habit that compounds over time because it starts early.

The more powerful opportunity is to grow leaders who never develop the gap in the first place.

Your future executives are sitting in your organization right now as individual contributors and first-line leaders. The window to shape how they lead is open. Don’t wait for the gap to appear before you decide to close it.