Employers will have to think differently about where the next generation of leaders is coming from, according to one management guru.

Bruce Tulgan, founder of US-based research and training company rainmakerthinking.com, was addressing the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's 'Human Resources Developing' conference last month.

He said the rules of the workplace had been changed, partly by Generation X (defined roughly as those born in the 1970s or the latter years of the 1960s).

He said the number of people in the prime age for leadership roles, 35 to 45, was shrinking. And even among those in this group, "a surprising portion does not want leadership/supervisory/management roles".

Another reason for the "leadership crisis" Tulgan described was that Generation X had changed jobs more frequently. He said: "The traditional long-term hierarchical employer-employee bond was morphing into a short-term transactional relationship."

Generation X does not want a return to post-war job security, he said. "They want to keep their options open."

He continued: "Organisations are so used to having their mid-level leadership talent become their core group. If you're not re-recruiting them every day, you should be very worried."

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