One thing has always confused me about getting older. At some point, almost every generation seems to start complaining about the generation coming behind it.
They don’t work as hard. They’re entitled. They’re too sensitive. They don’t know how to communicate. They aren’t ready to lead. You’ve probably heard some version of it, and maybe you’ve even said some of it yourself.
I’ve never completely understood that. If the next generation isn’t ready, at some point those of us who came before them have to look in the mirror. They didn’t raise themselves. They didn’t create the culture they grew up in, build the institutions they inherited or decide what we would teach them to value. Before we spend too much time criticizing what we see, maybe there is a harder question worth asking: Who was supposed to prepare them?
I think about this a lot when I watch sports. There are plenty of things about youth sports today that have gone too far. The money, travel, pressure and year-round schedules can become ridiculous. But one thing sports gets right is the understanding that talent has to be developed.
Nobody finds a talented 12-year-old basketball player and assumes the job is finished. Coaches teach footwork, shooting, defense and how to understand the game. Players train, compete, make mistakes, watch film and come back to work on what needs to improve.
Good coaches also understand that development takes time. They figure out when to push, when to teach and when to let a player struggle through something. Eventually, that young athlete starts seeing things she couldn’t see a few years earlier.
We understand development when we’re talking about athletes, but I’m not sure we understand it nearly as well when we’re talking about leaders. I’ve watched organizations spend months searching across the country for their next leader while overlooking people who have been sitting in their own building for years.
Sometimes going outside is absolutely the right decision. New leadership can bring experience, perspective and ideas an organization needs. But if you always have to go outside because nobody inside is ready, that should cause some reflection. At some point, you have to ask what you’ve been doing to develop the people already there.
Too many organizations confuse having talented people with developing talented people. Hiring someone with potential is only the beginning. Somebody still has to teach them, challenge them, let them see how decisions are made and give them enough responsibility to grow.
That also means allowing people to fail sometimes. You can’t develop leaders while protecting them from every difficult assignment. Eventually, they have to make decisions before they have every answer. They’ll get some of those decisions wrong, and good development helps them learn from those mistakes so they’re better prepared the next time.
Some of the most recognizable leaders in history didn’t suddenly become leaders when the rest of us learned their names. Martin Luther King Jr. was only 26 when the Montgomery Bus Boycott brought him national prominence. It’s easy to look at that moment and see a gifted young leader emerging almost overnight, but Montgomery didn’t create King. It revealed him.
Long before America knew his name, King had grown up around leadership. His father was a pastor and activist, and his grandfather had also led Ebenezer Baptist Church. King had the opportunity to watch leadership up close before his own education, ministry and experiences continued shaping him. There were years of formation before there was a national platform.
Sports gives us another version of the same lesson. Ben Shelton grew up with a father who had played professional tennis and later became a successful college coach. The talent was Ben’s, but having someone close who understood the game gave him access to teaching, correction and perspective while he developed.
Those examples aren’t about creating another Martin Luther King Jr. or raising a professional athlete. They’re reminders that potential usually needs proximity to people who know something we don’t know yet. The King example shows the power of seeing leadership up close, while Shelton’s story reminds us what coaching can provide.
Success leaves clues, but so does leadership. Somewhere in the story of most great leaders, you’ll usually find people who invested before everybody else noticed. That’s the part of leadership I think we sometimes miss. Leadership isn’t only about what you build. It’s also about what you build in other people.
If we really believe that, there are at least three things organizations and leaders should be doing differently:
- Develop people before you need them. Don’t wait until the CEO retires, the principal leaves or the department head resigns to start asking who’s next. Give people meaningful responsibility while experienced leaders are still around to help them learn. Let emerging leaders see difficult decisions up close and understand not only what was decided, but why.
- Make development intentional. Leadership development shouldn’t depend on whether someone happens to have a great boss. Build an internal process for it. Mentoring, stretch assignments, leadership cohorts and succession planning can all be part of that work. If you don’t have the expertise or capacity internally, there is nothing wrong with bringing in a coach or outside partner to help develop your people. The important thing is that development happens by design rather than by accident.
- Measure what you leave in people. We tend to measure leaders by what they built, whether the organization grew or the team succeeded. Those things matter, but there is another question worth asking: Who became stronger because you invested in them? A leader’s impact shouldn’t disappear when the leader leaves.
That brings me back to our complaints about younger generations. Maybe the question isn’t whether they’re ready to take our place. Maybe the better question is whether we’re doing enough to prepare them. That responsibility belongs in our companies, schools, nonprofits, churches, neighborhoods and communities.
Who are you developing? Who gets close enough to learn from what you know? Who are you trusting with meaningful responsibility while you’re still around to help them grow? Those questions matter because eventually all of us leave the seat we’re sitting in now.
Somebody else will lead the organization, coach the team, run the company, serve the community or carry forward work we once considered ours. When that day comes, we shouldn’t be surprised by who is ready because we should have been preparing them all along.
Eventually, the next generation gets its turn. When they do, we can complain about the leaders they became, or we can ask whether we did enough to prepare them. The answer will be reflected in the people we taught, challenged, trusted and gave room to grow.
Because whether we’re talking about a company, a school, a team or an entire community, the principle is the same. You get the leaders you develop
