I was recently on a plane, explaining the concept of Integrated Teams to someone sitting next to me, who had worked in sales for Dell for the past 30 years. After hearing me wax poetically about the value of this team approach to leadership, where the leader’s focus is helping her team flourish in their own right, my seat mate looked and me and said “that sounds pretty soft”.
As a fellow Gen Xer, I completely understood where she was coming from. We grew up with this idea that being a leader meant telling followers what to do and a being a good employee meant obeying with a minimum of fuss. Everyone got along, right? Not really but we were sure that our leaders were smarter than us so we went along with a minimum of fuss.
Fast forward and our new workforce have had a smartphone in their hands since elementary school, possibly an iPad before that. With that smartphone has come a constant world newsfeed and with that newsfeed has come a global/national connectedness and awareness that my generation did not have. With that awareness has come an expectation to have a seat at the decision table much earlier than we ever dreamed. There is no waiting to pay your dues. They want change now. And they are willing to roll up their sleeves and be a part of that conversation.
To lead well in the future, it might serve us well to emphasize team concepts like empathy, emotional intelligence, generous authority, building collaborative, trustworthy processes and creating safe work environments, physically and emotionally. In other words, we have to trust that when we start to make movements towards understanding each other, we also create a better environment for overall creativity, innovation and productivity. Trust me when I say this does not minimize accountability as fairness and justice are the heartbeat of this generation.
Every generation has its own collective experiences that inform its DNA but we are better when we invite other generations into the conversations around how we work and live. There is much we can learn from each other but we must approach leadership with a little more humility, making space for more voices. And yes, with all of the hard things happening around us, I would offer that a little softness doesn’t go amiss.