The Leadership Lament!

Leadership Doesn’t Just Happen—It’s Managed

The constant lament from managements and academics about the lack of leadership in organizations isn’t just a passing trend. It’s a real and recurring issue.

But here’s the irony: it is management itself that selects, grooms (knowingly or unknowingly), promotes, and assigns responsibilities to individuals from whom they later expect leadership—or worse, from whom they may have actively stifled it.

Most organizations recruit young professionals based on their ability to perform in well-defined domains of explicit knowledge. These individuals are chosen for their functional competence—efficiency, quality, and task execution—not for their leadership potential. Naturally, they’re encouraged and rewarded for operating within the box.

Fast forward a few years: some of them are promoted into leadership roles. Suddenly, they’re expected to think creatively, influence others, and lead from the front. But by now, they’ve been conditioned to follow, not lead. Unless these individuals were specifically groomed for leadership—or laterally brought in for their tacit knowledge beyond domain expertise—it’s unfair to expect them to excel in leadership roles overnight.

The responsibility for this disconnect lies squarely with management—for not recognizing or nurturing leadership tendencies early enough. The truth is, many managers themselves lack the awareness or wisdom to identify and prepare individuals for leadership roles that demand more than technical know-how.

Adding to this complexity, domain-specific expertise has exploded over the last few decades—and shows no signs of slowing down. In this environment, forward-looking organizations have learned a key lesson: they must groom both specialists and generalists, and deliberately develop leadership talent.

They’ve understood that leadership isn’t a skill you can buy, clone, or bolt on. It’s not a stereotype. It’s an art. One that must be cultivated, case by case, person by person.

Ultimately, the responsibility for managing leadership rests with top management—and, most of all, with the Board of Directors. After all, they choose the CEO or MD. And it is these leaders who must uphold the art of managing leadership in a sea of expectations, roles, and yes—stereotypes.