Leadership and The Millennial Generation...

How to best grow the next generation of leaders…

As a longtime high school principal in a large suburban high school in the Atlanta area, I have found my previous experiences to be both helpful and sufficient in growing new leaders. My initial development began in the early 1990’s as a teacher of sixth grade in St. Louis, Missouri. While teaching, I began my college training at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.  Additionally, the environment around me included many seasoned mentors, with vast amounts of experiences, from which I could draw knowledge. I have been trained in a variety of techniques to best plan and implement strategies to foster an academic environment. Right or wrong, I have always seen that my role as a teacher is to develop the leadership of young people to take their own learning and condition to higher places. This is based upon their ability to link social interactions (context) with content.  In my experiences, limited as they may have been, I found that young people gained knowledge through experiential learning and a solid foundation of reflective intuition from these interactions. This experiential learning gave students confidence to attempt new things. A sort of mental bulletin board to pin their new learnings. This leads to successes that can be shared with others. Thus, students now had attempted new concepts, gained long term staying power of their learning, and lauded a confident swagger from sharing their newfound abilities. These new learners were acting as leaders of their own paths. Leaders of their own abilities. Leaders of their own futures. By ensuring their success as learners, we as a class and school became more successful. Attendance increased, engagement thrived, grades and other matrices were on the rise, and their confidence as emerging leaders was growing. I also found a growing sense of confidence in my abilities to foster this new skill…leadership. I found my calling to be developing the next generation of leaders.

Fast forward 20 years. I have now been the principal of various schools, each having a large workforce to employ, thousands of students to care for, and dynamic communities to hold me  accountable. The first Superintendent I had the privilege of serving was Mrs. Paula Gault. She had the wisdom of adding to my calling by stating, “Gary, your job is to build leaders. If you build leaders, the school will be a great place for kids to learn and grow.”  This command was right in my wheelhouse as I loved to build leadership in others. Call it my ‘Sheepdog'' mentality or my obligation to assist others. It was the best news I could have ever heard. From that minute on, I knew what my future held. Developing others as leaders and learners. I couldn’t be more thrilled. It was now my obligation to cultivate our own force of leaders to carry on the work of our organization.

My responsibilities ranged from recruiting excellent teachers and staff, hiring the right people for the mission of our organizations, and supporting their needs emotionally, academically, professionally, and personally. Next, I found the professional development of staff to be critical in their growth as teachers and leaders. As leaders, they are empowered to act in the best interest of students and their environments. It has been incumbent upon me to support their empowerment by guiding, coaching, and providing feedback to them along their journey. Aside from an obligation to assist in their growth, it has provided me with a new challenge to be able to cultivate others in the best manner to meet our needs. These teachers became the fertile ground from which I culled the next generations of leaders for the schools to which I worked.

Now, I have been lucky enough to have 19 leaders emerge through this channel of leadership. The social interaction necessary to foster this growth for aspiring leaders takes time and intentionality. What follows is a thesis on the tools I have used to develop these leaders and to foster my own growth as a leader of organizations and developer of others.

Leadership is the act of leading others… Well, duh! What does that mean? It means to positively influence someone toward an objective that is somewhat agreed upon. That is not a textbook definition, rather a definition that has come from years of trial and error. Judgments through those who employed leadership strategies and those who did not. Leadership skills are vital to influence others to accomplish an agreed upon task… Agreed upon elements, in my mind, are a must to mark achievement and to bring aspiring leaders into the process of growth. If you are “moving” or “influencing” others to a location not agreed upon, then it can be said that it is merely manipulation. To this end, I am ever mindful of discussing projected outcomes and continually reinforcing my vision for the organization. In addition to being a healthy exercise for the organization, it provides a real diving board for all leadership growth discussion and opportunities for staff.

Later in my journey to build leaders, I have seen shifts in the candidates for aspiring leaders. Many call them “Millennials”, others use certain letters for their generations like “Generation X” or later “Generation Y”. Whatever the name, they are an interesting breed of learners. To the point of their diversity, I found myself needing to learn about them and developing myself to be able to meet their needs as leaders.

Millennials are often referred to as a single age group. Generation X youth are often categorized by action and not birth range. For these purposes, I classify them as anyone born post 1980 and pre-1999. Throughout the years, I have found that Millennials are a wonderful group of young people to which I am ever thankful. They have been energetic, innovative, curious, and passionate. Of course, there are generalizations being made, but from my experiences, I will give broad strokes to illustrate.  From their generation, I have learned so many things. I learned organization, innovation, reflective questioning techniques, information gathering, pacing, confidence, and swagger.

Remember Millennials were born post-internet. I realize that these “youngsters” were acculturated in a very different time than me. This has caused me to realize that environment plays a much larger role in leadership development than merely being born a leader. I will not pursue the born/bred debate. Albeit, I recognize the importance of the surroundings that one’s place in time has on their development. The time and place of an aspiring leader can define the bulletin board that experiences can be hung. The reflective aspiring leader can place themselves in arenas that give a robust possibility for such opportunities. However, we as Baby Boomers often find ourselves frustrated for the lack of understanding. and patience with this generation. Let me posit another thought. Is your frustration really with them or is it with ourselves? 

I have lived the chasm of mediating disagreements between co-workers, explaining the actions of a younger coworker as they appear to be "different" than the rest of the team, and learning my own methods of understanding their thinking patterns. Rather than find the inability of the millennial and my baby-boomer generation to effectively relate to one another as their crime... I feel as though it is my responsibility to use wisdom, experience, and  leadership to grow dynamic leaders. My  best advice for you to gain from insight is clear. Many facets characterize the growth I have gone through in developing leaders among the next generation. Rather than a laundry list of maxims, look at this list in terms of actions you can take to apply in a variety of situations to grow your leaders.

·        “But you’re our leader"- Millennials will not always look to authority as being the epitome of "truth" in many situations. They will, however, hold honesty, integrity, and service in high enough regard to follow. This means that positional authority means very little to them. They want to follow a belief system. They see leaders as sharing identical personal pedagogy that meets their expectations. If they see you as meeting this need, then you are as good as theirs no matter what occurs. You will be their leader regardless of title, position. or even a realistic ability to make change to benefit them.  

·        Deciding to grow Millennials means committing to grow yourself- Using similar techniques and strategies to leading those of your own generation will not work. That statement is very bold, but it is true. We, as Baby Boomers, hold different values and aspirations than do Millennials. Millennials want environmental change, to align themselves with like-minded people. Authority is to be earned from others based upon beliefs and values...not position and title. To understand this difference, try serving others from a new framework. By this I mean, look at the members of your team as peers, regardless of title and position. Hold team meetings where everyone is an equal at the table. Discussions are centered around content, not the context of the person delivering it. 

·        Is your vision picture-perfect to you and your team? - Millennials, as stated before, are internally led by their beliefs. They want to follow a leader who shares their values. Similarly, they want to work in an organization that aligns with where they see change and progression in the world. For Millennials to follow a vision, it must align with their beliefs. Hiring is a critical intros phase. Select members to join your organization that share common beliefs. Don't expect Millennials to change to meet the beliefs of the team, rather hire for common consistency among beliefs. Once on-boarding begins, start discussing your vision in terms of where you wish to go and how this aligns with their understanding of the change in the world. Remember, they are global thinkers. 

·        Challenge yourself, inspire others- Millennials want to see that you are willing to be challenged and embrace a change in stance. They have grown in an era of constant change, an ever-increasing multiplication of known information yearly. They are seeking to acquire skills and abilities quickly and efficiently. They use tools such as YouTube and other platforms to see skills demonstrated and expect to master them immediately. If we, as supervisors, don't understand and display this, Millennials will not give credibility as able to support them intellectually.  

·        Make everything a win/win opportunity- My experience with millennials in the workplace has been that completion is not a true leverage point to elicit an improved performance. My baby-boomer generation, on the other hand, thrived on competition to seek validation. Millennials would rather seek to do their best without the benchmark of another player to compare. That is not to say that they are afraid to compete, rather it doesn't seem to motivate them the way it did for us. For optimum performance of team members, I find that I align the qualities of each team member to the tasks that we need done. I look to put each member in the best position for them to benefit the team and then plant them in stretch opportunities. These stretch opportunities need to be carefully chosen so as to not overcommit the Millennials. Too much of a leap will cause a lack of confidence to emerge between members.  

·        Most qualified is not always the best- When selecting members to join your team, the best resume, highest degrees, or most prestigious colleges won't win the day. Among millennials, look for the ability to be flexible, communications strategies, and collaborative experiences. Millennials are notorious for being individualistic and having tough times in groups. I found this to be true. Much of their time growing up has been spent solo on technological devices. Face to face interaction and verbal communication which is dependent upon intuition and discernment is difficult at best for them. Much of their adolescence and youth was spent with individual tasks. I always looked for youthful members that can speak well, talk off the cuff on a number of topics, and look at topics from a multitude of perspectives. 

It is my hope that these tips are not taken as an indictment of the Millennial generation. Rather, an indictment on what skills and techniques that I, and my generation, need to learn to be effective leaders. I love the young staff I have been lucky enough to employ. They have taught me so much in terms of technical ability, new perspectives of thought, and have made me determined to grow to meet their needs. I am thankful to them for this.