Leadership Opportunities Being Accelerated By China

A recent spate of HR-related articles such as this in Workforce Management point out China's huge demand for more leaders and ones with better skills. With dramatic expansion and a prior business culture that didn't emphasize modern HR leadership approaches, China needs 75,000 for companies with international ambitions alone, 15 times as many as the 3000 to 5000 available according to this estimate, before even considering massive in-country needs.

Compare that with estimates that North America companies need 3 or 4 times available supply and you can see the worldwide shortage is astronomical. Of course, China is already shopping here, increasing our need that much more.

This is actually good news in lots of ways. It means far more opportunity for people with the right skills - and there are plenty, although many of them don't recognize they have the ability yet. It means the too-common, outdated, limited leadership style will die out that much sooner. As new leaders seek their footing, there's a huge opportunity to train them in better approaches. The only thing in greater shortage than new leaders themselves, is probably the lack of effectively leadership training...  which also creates opportunity for those offering it.

The parallel danger, of course, isn't that we won't have leaders. Oh no, we'll promote people somehow and many will survive, even if it's only survival of the fittest. The problem is that we may miss this exceptional opportunity to widely spread the better, umlimited leadership style that we now know is possible. The sink-or-swim approach to promoting people continues unabated despite a huge upsurge in coaching for established executives and some better training programs.