Financial services has a unique set of challenges when it comes to leadership.
A few that come to mind are:
- It is really difficult for us to recruit into this industry. It is very difficult for us to find people who are in the industry volunteer and say, Yeah, I want be the next leader, I want be the next person who will take this industry into it is future and have it thrive.
- The other thing is about that is the accountability. Leaders are having a tough time holding a volunteer work force accountable and because of that they’re letting things slide. They are hiring people who they wouldn’t normally hire in the past. They’re still hiring them, because they’re feeling desperate about bringing talent into their organizations. But lowering their standards isn’t helping the industry, or them for that matter. And, in the mean time if they became more strict on accountability for themselves this would allow them to have a deeper pipeline of people who could potentially be successful in this industry — that would help a lot.
- As for as leadership in the global big picture, it all boils down to the individual leaders. Is the leader leading both from their personal values as well as for the greater good of the organization? Then, secondly, are they holding themselves accountable and are they holding the people that report to them accountable? How do you do that? What kind of conversations are people having? What kind of benchmarks are they putting in place?
What’s needed is a higher level of self-regulatation, self-coaching and then taking the time to determine what they’re working towards accomplishing as a group — besides getting to the end of each day in one piece.