It's Been a Minute...

Editor’s note: Throughout this piece, the author uses the phrase “leadership development” several times. We see this as a very saturated market and have challenged the author to come up with a newer, better term for this kind of work.

It’s been a minute…

It’s been a minute since I’ve published here.

Actually quite a few, with the last being This Is Not a Newsletter on May 1st.

Meh, whatever. Things have been good.

A few weeks ago, I saw a post on LinkedIn from the president of a large company headquartered in Southern New Jersey with other offices around the world to accommodate their 9,500+ employees.

The post announced the launch of a retail leadership development program and that, out of a “competitive pool” of applicants, five employees were admitted into the program that will last two and a half years.

Something about this seemed off to me.

I got curious as to how companies and other organizations approach leadership development.

What I found didn’t shock me at all.

The organization I mentioned above is the exception, not the rule. Most companies aren’t putting enough resources into developing their younger associates into the leaders they will need in the future.

I bet if you looked at the budgets and balance sheets of any organization with 25 or more full-time employees, you’d see that they spend a disproportionate amount of money on leadership training, coaching, seminars, retreats and similar events for their C-Suite and other senior associates, those already in a position of leadership, than they do their emerging talent.

And this is costing them.

I read job postings all of the time; not because I am in the market, but because I find it interesting that they haven’t changed much while the mindset of today’s employees has.

I cringe when I see a job posting with “duties” that spill onto a second page. It is almost as if the company feels compelled to make the position seem busy.

And I give extra negative credit to the job postings that include the dreaded line, “Other duties as assigned by the supervisor.”

How is this still a real thing? Who wants to be surprised with more work that they didn’t necessarily sign up for?

“Hey, we are going to try to keep you busy, really busy to justify the position and the salary. Well, actually most of the stuff in this job posting won’t even get done, certainly not on a regular basis, and we will only check up on it once a year during your performance review.”

But…

“We offer a competitive salary.”

Most later Millennials and Generation Z members in the workplace are finally seeing through this garbage.

The days of salary being the one and only way to evaluate an employment offer are long gone.

This younger generation also wants to be seen and valued for their contributions.

Of course they aren’t interested in outworking their salary and want to be paid what they are worth. But they also want to work in an environment where their growth is a priority, both professionally and personally.

A 2025 survey of over 23,000 Millennial and Generation Z professionals by Deloitte Global indicated that only 6% of those responding consider reaching a senior leadership position part of their career goals; but they cite “learning and developing” one of their top three reasons for choosing an employer, along with “work-life balance”* and “career progression opportunities”.

They want to progress in their careers, but not necessarily to senior leadership roles.

So, what happens when these younger professionals aren’t getting what they crave from their employer? They leave.

“The Great Resignation” of 2020-21 saw approximately 47 million people leave or switch jobs in the U.S. alone. A Pew Research study found that the pandemic itself was not the major factor. “No opportunities for advancement” tied with “low pay” at 63%, and 57% said they left because they felt disrespected at work.

Read between those numbers and you can see a pattern emerging: their loyalty was tied to more than their paycheck.

They’d spent a year and a half being told to stay home but keep up production. That time also provided them the space to reflect and determine what really mattered to them.

They got to the point where they wanted to be more than a part of a line item or bottom line contributor. They wanted to be seen as and feel valued.

These younger professionals aren’t above caring about money. As Mickey Bergman (Danny DeVito) says in the 2001 movie Heist, “Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money.”

But pay and respect are intertwined. And 47 million Americans were willing to forego a steady paycheck (even just temporarily) in search of a better opportunity with an employer who is invested in them, professionally and personally, as much as the employer is invested in their output.

It can cost anywhere from 50-200% of an employee’s salary to replace them. When you think about all that goes into replacing a good employee, including the time you lose searching for and training their replacement, as well as the potential for lost customers when that employee moves on, these figures start to look accurate.

A survey from Gallup estimates that businesses in the United States lose a collective trillion dollars each year due to voluntary resignations. The same report indicated that over 50% of those who resigned said that their employer could have done more to prevent them from leaving, but never did.

Many business owners, executives, and decision makers like to talk about how it is less expensive to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one.

The evidence shows this is even more true when it comes to employees.

Yes, and it is far less complicated than it needs to be: companies need to invest more in the development of their younger, emerging talent.

A 2.5 year program for five associates might be better than what other companies are doing, but it isn’t nearly enough. There are very easy ways to install an in-house program with more touch points that impacts more of your employees.

Not every person is cut out to be a leader; and, as mentioned earlier, not every employee aspires to be one.

But what would it mean to your business if you were able to retain your best employees at a higher rate?

What would it mean to productivity if they felt invested in, as employees and as humans?

What could be possible for your organization if ALL of your employees, not just a select few, approached their work with an ownership mindset?

The future is bright because all of these possibilities exist.

P.S.: And this is mostly for my swim coaching readers, I drove up to Toronto a few weeks ago with my son to see two Phillies-Blue Jays games at the Rogers Centre, part of our quest to see games in every MLB ballpark.

On the way up, we stopped in Buffalo for lunch and drove past this facility. I’ve swum and coached at this pool, but not since 2008. One of the nicest, and busiest, aquatic centers on the east coast.