Journaling is so important because it’s a reflection after the event takes place and makes you step back and think, “Why do I do that?”
When you journal, you’re going to see trends. And you get to the root cause.
What I’ve found over 40 years of leadership development is most of the time, the triggers that take place in our adulthood happen during early childhood development.
If you had trauma early on in your childhood in various and sundry ways, it formed how you react in your adult life. And if you don’t deal with that, it just continues to be an issue going forward.
(READ MORE: Appeals court rules against Dayton, Tennessee’s Bryan College in fight over Christian summer camp)
Q: What do you see as the most common leadership issues that ail institutions and other social contexts where leadership is important?
A: Most leaders do not know how to handle four different generations working for them. When I say four generations, they could have baby boomers working for them, millennials working for them, (Gen X’s) and Gen Z’s. Each one of them needs to be led, spoke to and dealt with differently.
That’s probably the biggest challenge. (Many) executives in Fortune 500s have already told their leadership, “Start looking for my replacements because I can’t deal with this multigenerational workforce.”
(The U.S. Census Bureau defines the “baby boom” as the years 1946-64, when the nation experienced more than 78 million births, according to The Associated Press. Subsequent generations, as defined by the Pew Research Center, are Generation X, 1965-80; millennials, 1981-96; and Generation Z, 1997-2012.)
(SIGN UP: Get today’s Chattanooga area news, sports and entertainment directly to your inbox. Sign up for our free newsletters at timesfreepress.com/newsletters.)
Q: When you think about the different forms that leadership can take, are there any that you see as being particularly, for better or worse, in vogue today?
A: There’s a difference in leadership and management. The first female rear admiral in the United States Navy back in the ’40s made this statement — she said, “You manage things and you lead people.”
And what’s happened over time is there have been a lot of managers put in leadership positions without teaching them leadership. They really didn’t know how to lead. And in today’s society, a leader has to be more of a coach than a manager.
A manager is someone that’s in the middle of everything to make sure everybody’s doing their job. A leader needs to be able to pull out of someone what they may not know is inside of them.
Q: Qualitatively what is different about institutions that have successful leaders? What changes in the air?
A: One word, trust. When people trust their leadership is going to ensure that they’re fed, clothed, housed and paid — and they know that they’re looking out for their best interest, and not the self-interest of the leader, you’re going to see trust permeate.
(READ MORE: TVA announces more changes in leadership)
Q: What are concrete things people can do to create a culture of trust?
A: We asked that question to a variety of companies. Here’s what the results of the questionnaire was: Trust can be created if the leader is humble and asks questions from the team, and listens. That was the first thing.
Two, they said a leader that doesn’t just get mad and slam the door shut when things go wrong.
And the third thing that they said is, when a leader will make themselves present in difficult situations, and sees those difficult situations come up before the people bring them to them, and say, “Can you help me fix this?”
Because what I heard people say is, “We want to help the leaders in the company fix it, but they act like we don’t exist.”
That was one of the exit interviews that Forbes and Harvard Business Review did. People said, “They’re just not listening to us. We could help them get through all these problems, but they’ve got to humble themselves to come to us and ask us, and we’re happy to help them.”
