A633.1.2.RB - Leadership Gap

Has my attitude to leaders changed in life, and if so how? I would say yes and there are several different reasons. I am a Gen X person, I got live thru and see some of the leaders from the Baby Boomers generation. There are not many true leaders in Gen X and even fewer in the Millennials Generation.

I think that in the earlier generations leadership was earned. Leadership was taught by having experience people ahead of you to learn from and be mentored by. And to a certain aspect rely more on experience then education and degrees.

Leaders in the earlier generations lead for a reason, a passion, or a common goal. They were focus on a collective of people and not on self.

In today’s culture and climate, I think authority and leaderships should be identified separately. In my parents and grandparents, they were on and the same. In earlier generations those in authority saw their roles as leaders as part of their jobs and carried themselves in that manner. Today those with authority abuse their authority, I feel those with authority don’t see their roles to include that of leaders. They are meant to serve but to authoritarian favoring or enforcing strict obedience of authority at the expense of personal freedom. Obolensky uses the term polyarchy (a form of government in which power is invested in multiple people. It takes the form of neither a dictatorship nor a democracy) (Obolensky, 2014), this is the perfect description of today’s authority/ leaders.

Today’s leaders lead for deferent reasons. There are no more cause to bring people together, of course there are many, but nothing to galvanize the masses. Leaders and those of authority are seeking roles for self-gratification (monetarily or glory). Obolensky mentions the timeline of Homo Sapiens, if the history of the planet was compressed into 24 hours, we have been around for just over a second. (Obolensky, 2014) It took less than a millisecond for us to lose sight of the fact that leadership means the act of leading, inspiring, and motivating not just commanding and seeking personal gains.

Can the gap in the quality of our leaders of the past and future be closed? This is a loaded question; my hope is yes. I hope that my leadership skills and example can help influence someone behind me to consider their approach to leadership. But in reality I only think that it will get worse. Even with all the information in the world on leadership in our pockets in the form of cell phones the lack of respect of leaders from their roles and the lack of respect that each generation shows for authority I don’t see the gap closing.

Works Cited

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty. Burlington, Vt: Gower Publishing Company.