Are you Ready? Leadership Development for the Next Generation of Leaders
After 17 years of working with the next generation, I have noticed few themes of leadership development that have sticked with the next generation. If you are reading this, I hope this brings clarity on how to engage, recruit, and retain the next generation for your organization, ministry, and/or business:
Intentional Mentoring Pathways
Forbes came out with an article of how important mentoring is to next generation leaders. In short, Forbes suggests that engagement, recruitment, retainment, and professional + personal growth flows for young leaders happens through mentoring.
I would agree. In fact, intentional mentoring will help leaders go further faster in their character development, calling, and competencies than any other form of learning. Do you have intentional pathways for mentoring? This will be a must in the next 10 years of leadership development.
Online Learning Platforms
Furthermore, young leaders are looking for education opportunities online. Why? because learning online is economical, flexible, and strategic. Think about this for a second. Education is STILL important but learning is changing. Why? Because it is more cost effective, adaptable to real life needs + responsibilities, and engaging for online platforms for young leaders. Some may argue about the style of learning online but it does bridge a gap for the next generation. How are you offering online platforms to help recruit + retain the next generation of leaders in your organization?
Contextualization of Resources
In the next 100 years, experts suggest that the digital age will develop 100,000 years worth of creative content. This is an amazing reality. With that said, the contextualization of resources will be extremely important for organizations to continue to be effective. Cookie cutter ministries/organizations won’t cut it anymore. Ministries and businesses will need to adapt to the felt-needs in their context, become intentional in reaching those needs, and strategic in implementation. If not, they will be drowned out with all the creative content our world will offer. How are you contextualizing your resources?
Collaboration of Staff + Teams vs. Hierarchal Culture + Positions
Collaboration and teams will become the norm in businesses, ministries, and organizations. As the shift of senior leadership will be given to young generations, teams will retain young leaders. With that said, these teams will need clear defined roles + responsibilities and yet will have a flat line structure (even with pay). For younger leaders, this is the BEST way to create strong productivity, collaboration of decision-making for buy-in and implementation. In my experience, this style of collaboration and team leadership has increased in businesses, organizations, and ministries that are led by leaders under the age of 45. How are you building a culture of collaboration and team building?
In your leadership context, what are the themes for leadership development in the next generation? Feel free to add to the conversation below.
Looking forward in hearing from you.