At the recent 2nd Australian Positive Psychology & Well-being Conference that I attended in Melbourne, it was stated that 80% of people leave their workplace because of their boss or supervisor. Now it may well be that some of these staff had personal issues anyway that caused them to resign, but irrespective, what we do know is that it can’t be argued that 80% of staff left simply because of their own personal problems!

There is a huge loss to the employment sector not only in terms of intellectual capital walking out the door, but in actual dollars in relation to the cost of re-hiring and training new recruits (15-25% of salary?).

Where are the management and leadership courses? What are industries doing to train the next set of leaders in effective leadership practices? When are we going to get serious about leadership and how it impacts on any team (large or small).

It cannot just be assumed that everyone is a born leader. It’s a skill that needs to be trained — just like any other skill. Failure to do so simply means that we continue to lose money and expertise in an industry — and do you know any industries that can afford to lose both of these major ingredients?