Leaders With Impact
In August I had the good fortune to meet Sherri Reese at the Michigan CUPA HR conference. She’s the Director of Talent at Michigan State University, and her recent LinkedIn article, “The Art of Leading with Impact: 5 Lessons to Elevate Your Career and Inspire Your Team,” caught my attention. With my bent toward generational diversity, here’s how these lessons helped me:
1) Lead by Example: Harness the Power of Doing over Telling. Trust is one of the struggles younger workers have with older leaders. They are hyper-sensitive to hypocrisy and can detect it a mile away. Modeling the desired behavior not only teaches it without preaching, but it demonstrates a trustworthy leader.
Whether outright discrimination or implicit bias, older workers often feel that young leaders haven't lived long enough to know what they are doing. Besides, they haven't paid their dues to be leaders yet. So when a young leader demonstrates competence by doing what they are asking their followers to do, it lowers the barriers to trust.
2) Acknowledge Vulnerabilities as Strengths. In intergenerational settings this goes a long way in strengthening trust. Whether I am an older or younger leader, when I admit that I don't know how to do something, I am giving a member of another generation an opportunity to teach me. In Gentelligence® we have a saying: “Every generation has something to teach and something to learn.” The feeling of bringing something relevant to the team and that it’s a safe place to ask for help is not only empowering, but it is helpful for retaining talent.
3) Invest in Your Team’s Success. Skill building for older workers must never end. Providing younger workers with a clear path for career advancement impacts both engagement and retention.
4) Allow Mistakes as Stepping Stones of Success. Innovation is one of the biggest payoffs of an intentional multigenerational workforce. This is also the second step in the creative process: Frustration. You can’t create anything of significance without a bit of frustration. And the more diverse perspectives involved, the better outcome. Getting comfortable with ambiguity, frustration, do-overs takes time and practice. The more we trust each other and our strengths, the easier the hard parts are to navigate.
5) Communicate Intentionally. Mastering clear communication skills is so important because even though the five generations speak the same language, we all speak different dialects. We’re dealing with cultural differences between generations. Words change over time. What is crystal clear to my generation can be vague or meaningless to another. How can we avoid assuming people in different age cohorts get what I’m trying to say?
In Gentelligence® we practice the Third Conversation when we see potential communication blocks. First, listen carefully to the person you are engaging with. Then share your perspective on the issue as succinctly and non-judgmentally as possible. Third, ask how you can work together to find a solution that works for both of you. In intergenerational collaboration, we are always looking for the win-win.
Reese’s “The Art of Leading with Impact” supports the four guiding practices of Gentelligence®: Resist Assumptions, Adjust the Lens, Build Trust, and Expand the Pie. Thanks, Sherri, for supporting a strong multigenerational workplace!
How about you? Do you have other lessons we can add to the list and learn from? I’d love to hear from you.
And thanks to all who attended our webinar last Thursday. I’ll be sharing outcomes from the session next time.
Happy Halloween and Vote!!!!
More Soon,
Mary