The Stories We Don’t Tell: Emerging & Established Leaders Keep it Real in Louisville

Last month, I was invited to the Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Louisville, Kentucky the day after the Presidential election to facilitate a session about leadership for emerging & established leaders. The session was called “Emerging & Established Leaderships: Working Together to Shape Our Future” and the idea was to model a space for honest and productive intergenerational dialogue & learning. I split the room up into 2 groups: Silent Generation & Baby Boomers and Gen X & Y. I told them to come up with 3 nuggets of information that they wanted the other group to know about their leadership experience. What happened in that room was amazing, how candid people were in telling the stories they don’t usually tell.

What Gen X & Y Want Established Leaders to Know

• We work harder than you think.
• We have had success stepping out of the box.
• Don’t be afraid we’re stepping on your territory.
• Teaching me doesn’t take away your power.
• We want to learn from your mistakes and your experiences.
• We do respect your years of experience.
• Just because I don’t have the same work model as you do, doesn’t mean I’m not giving 100%
• I feel you are not willing to mentor or train me.
• We have business experience that can be applied to the nonprofit sector.
• Give us a chance to prove we can be accountable.
• Established leaders aren’t expected to learn anything new.

What Baby Boomers & Silent Generation Want Emerging Leaders to Know

• You guys are going to be leading in 10-15 years, not today.
• We want you to learn the whole business, how to think strategically.
• We know that leadership development is a part of our jobs.
• There is a disconnect between when YOU think you’re ready and when WE think you’re ready.
• We want to take risks without risking the health of our organizations – funding, etc.
• We have not done succession planning very well.
• We fear that if we invest in you, you will not stay with us.

Here is the PowerPoint I used with the group. At the very least, everyone acknowledged how incredibly important it is to have these kinds of intergenerational conversations to help both emerging & established leaders work better together.

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