Yesterday was a big day. I had the opportunity to be in the room with some of my favorite nonprofit thought leaders – Jon Pratt, Ruth McCambridge, Bao Vang, Trista Harris, Ron McKinley, and Jeanne Bell in the pre-conference session here at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. We talked about the work and the field of leadership development. Some thoughts that came up:

• We need to make the move from individual to community-based leadership in some cases where we build leaders from within the community to solve problems unique to their region
• Individual needs will always have to be addressed to help others build their own skills
• People are often more in need of the “soft skills” of leadership – how do you develop your own agency and power within community and political networks? This is not taught at the graduate level
• We develop those soft skills best when we’re in an environment we can’t control, and that’s hard to simulate, but the experience is necessary
• There’s a big difference between leadership for the sake of “being the boss” vs. leading in order to serve the mission and create social profit

Unfortunately, I had to leave the pre-session early to figure out how we were going to do the opening plenary without my co-presenter Frances Kunreuther from Building Movement Project. She had missed her flight to Minnesota and we needed a new game plan. This turned out to be a wonderful learning moment for me…once the stress was over. As a young person and an introvert, public speaking doesn’t really come naturally for me, especially speaking to a crowd of 400. Frances was going to set me up with her research piece, then I would come into the second half and talk about moving forward together as generations all have something to offer. We ended up getting her conferenced in by phone to give her presentation via satellite and PowerPoint. It wasn’t the best thing, but the best we could do. Yesterday was a lesson learned that you need to expect the unexpected for any speaking engagement and be prepared to take over for your co-presenters in the case of a snafu. But that wasn’t the juicy part…I just wanted to give you a sense of how I’m learning so much from each experience I have the opportunity to be a part of.

I opened up my half of the presentation as I often do now, with the story of my personal journey into the nonprofit sector. I’ve observed how much more powerful it is to tell stories to people instead of listing facts. My agenda was to have the audience “try out” a real intergenerational conversation and then take what they learned back into the nonprofit community and their organizations. Our conversation covered 3 areas:

Creating a Shared Experience
After I told my story of getting involved in the nonprofit field, I invited the audience to write down their story and share it with their neighbor. This was the most powerful moment of the day, as people got so engaged with each other and all the generations – Baby Boomers, Veterans, Gen X & Y were actually listening to each other. During the report outs, people stood up and shared what they had heard from their tablemates. The idea was to illustrate that our passion for social change is what brings us together, no matter what generation we belong to. I think the exercise really softened folks up to begin to dig deeper into the issues together as professionals with more in common than they thought.

Developing a Shared Agenda
Then I shared some of the challenges we face in the workplace and the tensions that different generations feel in relation to the others. I asked everyone to think about five key challenges and discuss one of them at their tables, share experiences, and brainstorm solutions. In essences, this would become the shared agenda for this intergenerational group in Minnesota. The topics were: engaging young leaders, advancing your own leadership, working across generations, working for a baby boomer, and leadership transitions. We had asked participants in a survey beforehand what they were most concerned about, and these covered all the bases. Each topic group shared insight and it was clear that some good connections were being made around how everyone could play a part in solving these issues in their workplaces.

Pay Yourself First, Then Pay it Forward
The last thing I did with the participants was to challenge them to make a commitment to themselves and the group. I emphasized the responsibility that everyone had to not keep our conversation in those four walls, but to go out and share what they learned with others. I encouraged them to reflect on one thing they could do to increase their individual leadership skills and one thing they could do to help someone else build their own leadership. The room was so quiet as everyone wrote down the two things they would do to follow-up our great dialogue.

I’m grateful to the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits for allowing me to come and speak to this wonderful group of 400 leaders wanting to just get better at what they do and how they do it. It was a great learning experience for me to try out some of my ideas and test how the different generations could communicate better despite their differences. I hope to get the chance to do more of this and learn in other cities in the future!