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LEADERSHIP IS A PROCESS OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE, WHICH MAXIMISES THE EFFORTS OF OTHERS TOWARDS THE ACHIEVEMENT OF A SHARED GOAL.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Positive Leadership: Being Average is No Use


In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. 

It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labour, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.

There will always be change — new jobs, new products, new services. But the one thing we know for sure is that with each advance in globalisation and the I.T. revolution, the best jobs will require workers to have more and better education to make themselves above average. 

By way of illustration, here are the latest unemployment rates from the Bureau of Labour Statistics for Americans over 25 years old: those with less than a high school degree, 13.8 per cent; those with a high school degree and no college, 8.7 per cent; those with some college or associate degree, 7.7 per cent; and those with bachelor’s degree or higher, 4.1 per cent.

In a world where average is officially over, there are many things we need to do to buttress employment, but nothing would be more important than passing some kind of Recovery Act for the 21st century that ensures that every Briton has access to post-secondary school education.

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