Drilling Beyond the Surface

I suppose the challenge of Gen-Y leadership development is, where to start?


For me, the starting point was borne of necessity. I had found I'd inherited of a failing organization and confronted by an apathetic incumbent team, I looked to students from Gen-Y to help me turn things around.


Originally, we began by drilling beyond the surface of our core values to re-conceive what Quality would look and feel like. It soon led us to an understanding how these values must be expressed through the behaviors and traits of everyone in the organization and eventually to how all systems and processes should support and facilitate them too. It was a eureka moment!


Armed with  this insight, our ability to recruit the 'right' people transformed; and we quickly found ourselves moving from being a 'cornered' leadership into an engaged leadership - confident in our team's ability to overcome any obstacle.

It leads me to ask, how often do we take the time to audit the vibrancy of core values in the life of our organizations?


And, what is the consequence to performance and effectiveness?

Finding the DNA of Transformation

Upon meeting an inspiring leader, I am always intrigued by how their personal history informs their ability to nurture the potential of others.  Such transformative power comes from a deep understanding of what it means to be human. 

Clarity for me was achieved early in my career. Thanks to a series of eye opening encounters with successful, powerful people who, finding themselves in unfamiliar territory, revealed the same vulnerability I felt so intensely.

I realized that vulnerability defines us all, because:

·We are born of trauma and struggle to heal; yet we expend a huge amount   of energy masking this fact

·We fear our loss of dignity, so we cling to conformity; yet we long to be recognized for our uniqueness

·We yearn to belong, to be celebrated for our individuality; yet we live in fear of being judged for the very qualities that set us apart

Therefore, I've come to realize that for those engaged in transforming communities, the first task is to embrace these vulnerabilities. Next is to free ourselves of the impulse to differentiate ourselves into 'boxes': mainstream/ marginalized, clever/stupid, educated/uneducated, successful/unsuccessful, rich/poor etc. Only then, can we embrace what fundamentally connects us and forge new ways of working together.

I demonstrated this point to some students recently: I asked them to introduce themselves by name and tell me one thing  that they liked about themselves. The anxiety was palpable as each scrambled to think of the most anodyne but safe thing to say about themselves. 

The point was taken: we are all in need of greater self-esteem and self-confidence to be ourselves. Inspiring leaders know this, most by intuition. 


Consequently, it leads me to ask:

·What if, through a deliberative dialogue, they were enabled to crystalize their understanding and how it informs the core values of their organization?

·What transformative power would it unleash - to spell out the DNA of their approach and share it with kindred spirits in Gen-Y?