LEADERSHIP HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AGE

We keep associating Leadership with Age. This is especially true when older employees feel the discomfort when working with young boss. But this is only true if organization have forcefully made someone a leader, who does not possess the quality of being a leader. If a person has naturally evolved as a leader and possess the qualities of a true leader, then I think the number of people opposing such a person will significantly go down.

One may argue that wisdom and experience only comes with maturity, which is partially true, because traditionally experience came only after you have spent significant time for gaining that exposure. But what if a young employee through exposures have acquired good amount of wisdom. Plus, combine this wisdom with energy and dreams, which is usually what young employee is full of.

Leadership Is All About Followership

Whom are you leading if there are no followers?

I think when it comes to leadership, for me leadership is all about followers who follow you. Now followership comes in 2 forms

-         Power or Designation

-         True Leadership

Followership coming from Power or Designation is temporary because these followers are not following you, they are following the position that you hold. This is the most typical Leadership in a lot of corporates.

And the other followership comes from following true leader, where the leader's age, education, gender, race nothing matters. Here people naturally look up to you as leader, as because of some experience, intelligence, or ability, you are able to do somethings that most people are not able to do. 

What Is Leadership All About?

If you ask me Leadership is all about Desire / Passion to Lead and some competencies that you showcase that helps you attract followers, who may or may not be bound to follow you, but still wants to follow you.

1.      Being Comfortable With Your Self

A true leader is always comfortable with him / herself. By which I mean he / she knows who they are and not pretend to be anything else. They know their limitation and so they constantly keep work to learn what they need to learn as quickly as possible.

Why I think this is important because, if you are not comfortable with yourself, instead of supporting your team you will compete with them to retain your supremacy which will eventually affect team bonding.

On the other hand, as a good leader you will also start preparing your team to take up your role by helping them to develop the required skills and competencies. This will create an opportunity for you to take up bigger role.

2.      Have Clear Priorities

Let’s start by understanding that Priorities and To-Do list are 2 different things. I think when a leader looks at all the task in hand, he / she ably distributes them into task which are just to be done (at times even at suboptimal level) and task that are aligned with the vision of the leader. Also, I have seen leaders not getting distracted by every other opportunity, as they very quickly evaluate if it fits with their vision.

Now why is this important? If leaders don’t articulate their priorities clearly, then the people around them don’t know what their own priorities should be. Time and energy and capital get wasted.

3.      Storytelling

Reading / Writing came much more later; it is the visual and hearing that came first. This is how generations have kept passing on the information, right?

Story helps followers visualise pictures of a leader’s goals rather than trying to understand the dry and abstract numbers. Also, rather than merely advocating and counter-advocating their points, leaders are able to help followers visualise the best of future they can achieve together.

4.      Optimism

Mr. Robert Iger in his book The Ride of a Lifetime says “Optimism is one of the most important qualities of a good leader, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism. Simply put, people are not motivated or energized by pessimists.”

I believe as a leader you may be speculative about how your plan will work out. But you cannot let those your negative thoughts percolate down to your team and so you will always have to put on a positive face in front of your team.

5.      Keep Learning

All great leaders have one thing in common - hunger for learning. A lot of people fell that there is no need to learn anymore once they reach a certain position or age. Imagine yourself surrounded by people who look up to you as a leader and expect you to have knowledge or better application of knowledge than them. Because when you are leading a group of people, a certain level of performance and output is expected of you.

Whether or not you are a leader, it’s essential to keep yourself updated to stay relevant in the current scenario. If you are a young leader, you can also learn from others experience. I think learning and growing your knowledge will help you lead your team with better conviction.

6.      Take Risk

“Don’t be in the business of playing it safe. Be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness.” says Mr. Robert Iger in his book The Ride of a Lifetime.

When I think of leaders, these are not ordinary people looking for ordinary life, these are extra-ordinary people with extra-ordinary dreams. And you don’t reach these extra-ordinary dreams without taking risks. I understand that some risks may not pay off but failure is an opportunity to learn. Also, risk creates opportunity, which may create a competitive advantage for your business.

Imagine you as a leader not taking risk will send a clear message to your team that they will not be backed if they take a risk. On the other hand, if there are stories of how you as a leader took risk or encourage risk taking, your team will always look to innovate and find new ways to succeed.

Now, looking at these few qualities, do you think age plays any role when it comes to leadership. At times, natural born leaders tend to exhibit leadership abilities from an early age, going from strength to strength faster and earlier than their peers. And at times, people with desire to lead keep building their strengths slowly and steadily.

Creating a Shadow Board

We all will agree that Youth has the advantage of energy and dreams, while maturity has the advantage of wisdom and experience. But at the end, leadership is a journey and rather than being threatened by, or dismissive of someone of a different generation, why not learn from them instead. We all have much to offer and much to learn from each other. In fact, development of inter-generational leadership teams should be encouraged by organizations.

Recently I came across an interesting HBR Article “Why You Should Create a “Shadow Board” of Younger Employees”, which suggested that a lot of companies struggle with two apparently unrelated problems: disengaged younger workers and a weak response to changing market conditions. And how few companies have tackled both problems at the same time by creating a “shadow board” — a group of non-executive employees that works with senior executives on strategic initiatives.

This not only brings diversified perspective in front of the executives but also satisfies Millennials craving for more visibility and access.

Similarly, Forbes Article “Assemble A Shadow Board To Integrate Gen Z And Stay Ahead Of Disruption” suggested that 77% of Gen Zers said that “having a Millennial manager remains the preference over a Gen X or Baby Boomer,” according to a 2018 survey. Which simply means Shadow Board may help companies to successfully integrate younger generations into their workforce, as well as stay ahead of disruption in the new digital marketplace

Final Take

I think leadership abilities should not be judged by age. And in todays world where the things are changing at such a pace, a good blend of Old and Young Leaders will create an opportunity which may be missed if seen in isolation by either of the group.

And creating a Shadow Board is a win-win, because it is a great opportunity for older generation leader to get insights of the young generation and the younger generation will not only get recognition which they crave for but will also get to know a lot about decision making and qualities of being a good leader.

Don't forget to share your thought.

Aniket A. Sonar