Leadership and What We Can Learn From Gen Z

Hi everybody! Sylvia Lafair here, with the Sylvia speaks, where Sylvia says for Tuesday.

What I’d like to do is just talk a little bit about the polarization that’s in the world, and what to do about it, and I learned a lot the other day from my 15 year old granddaughter, Arielle, who was saying to me, ‘Grandma, what do you do when people are fighting about points of view when nobody’s listening?’ And i said, ‘Honey, that’s one of the biggest issues we’re dealing with, and I remember in school, learning about how to debate, and debate means winners and losers.

So, we talked about the idea of dialogue, and she said to me, ‘Do you know about the youtube channel, Jubilee and Middle ground?’ And I didn’t. So, those of you watching this, if you don’t know it, please go and find it. It was fascinating. What they do is, they bring people from polarized points of view or separate points of view.

Let me put it that way to begin to talk with each other, and it’s so interesting to see how that happens. They have democrats and republicans. Young people coming together. They have pro-choice and pro-life people coming together. They have atheists and Christians coming together. They have pro-gun and anti-gun coming together to talk to each other.

Now, I’m curious to see what kind of real changes come about, but listening to Arielle, she said, ‘You know grandma, my generation is much more open to differences than the older generations have been,’ and she said, ‘As the older generations kind of go away, we’ll take over and we’ll make the world a better place,’ and I thought, you go girl but it then reminded me of something we’ve used in our leadership program, in our total leadership connections program, and it’s little segments from the play that became a film called, ‘ 12 Angry Men,’ and if you haven’t seen it, please, please watch it. It’s not a rang bang shoot ’em up thing. It’s about 12 men sitting in a room, a fairly dingy room in New York that are jurors that have to do a case to see if an 18 year old young Hispanic boy has murdered his father and they’ve been in the courtroom. They’re the jury and it’s interesting 12 angry men and that’s because women did not get the right to sit in juries until 1970s, which isn’t that long ago.

So, it’s interesting to see how changes occur but in this with 12 angry men, and the one I really liked is the one that was done. I think in 1998 with Jack Lemmon in it, and some other people that you certainly will recognize but they’re sitting there. These jurors and they come in and they have their points of view, and they’re ready to convict this young young guy of murder, and then he will be in jail for the rest of his life or then possibly get a verdict for death. There’s one man in there. He happens to be an architect. It’s the role played by Jack Lemmon, and he’s very quiet, and while they start the voting, it’s eleven to one. Eleven to one, when they take their first vote, and I don’t want to destroy the film for you because it’s so powerful, but there is a moment where Jack Lemmon as this architect says they’re very upset with him. They just want to get out of there. It’s hot. The air conditioning isn’t working. There’s a baseball game in town. They want to get out of there, and finally somebody says to him, what do you want? And he says, ‘Can’t we just talk?’ And that brought back this whole idea of jubilee and middle ground, and the question is, can’t we just talk and really get to know each other? And it is fascinating because in 12 Angry Men, they begin to just talk, and what happens is what I know from the work.

I’ve done all these years, and that is that each of us comes into a situation with pre-formed ideas that happened from the way we grew up or it’s a generational thing that can go back a lot of years.

So, can’t we just talk. I’d love you to watch 12 Angry Men, and I’d love to get feedback. Send me feedback. Send it to [email protected], and we can just talk, but it’s time for a change. It’s time from the polarization to begin to melt away, and we can begin to see that there are ways through what we’re living with in a more effective appropriate, helpful way.

Join me in that. It’s an important thing and if you’re interested in learning more about total leadership connections or any of the other programs, call me, email me and let’s make the world a better place, and I want to thank Arielle for steering me to a jubilee and middle ground. I suggest you all watch that too, and let your teens watch it. It’s very powerful.

Thank you. Have a beautiful day. This is to your success. Thank you.

About Sylvia Lafair

As a curious kid, I was fascinated watching how often people would make the same mistakes and complain about the same upsets time after time. I observed it in family, neighbors, at school and even in books and films.

As I grew older I saw how specific experiences become behavior patterns that people lived by yet barely noticed. It was “same stuff, different day,” just like in “Groundhog Day.”

My fascination with the power of personal and cultural patterns deepened after my father died from a sudden heart attack when I was 14. The cause? Constant conflict at work.

My determination to understand what happened and why led me to an amazing discovery: unresolved family patterns follow us to work. That’s what was behind the stress my father carried throughout his career.

Work stress became the enemy.

My search for more answers became my passion, to find ways to transform outdated, ingrained patterns that destroy health and the joy of success.

Now, I do what I do to prepare, liberate and empower leaders and teams — and to ensure no one need lose a loved one over unresolved conflict and stress at work.

Ready to take your leadership to the next level?

Take the leadership quiz>>HERE<<

Find out why kind of leader you are and how you can break through the barriers holding you back!

— Sylvia Lafair PhD — founder of Creative Energy Options (CEOInc.) and the world’s leading authority in Pattern Aware Leadership Development, Top Global Leadership Guru and award winning author of Don’t Bring It To Work.

Read Sylvia’s columns in INC.com and The National Business Journals