Has leadership development entered a new era? Generation Y employees, those hired in the past 3 years or less particularly, have a very different set of values and a different learning style from Baby Boomers or the 40ish Gen Xers.
Lots has been written about the values these young folks espouse, but little on what is being done to groom them for leadership positions or to engage them at a strategic level. Here are a few thoughts on how their development is shaping up differently from what has gone before.
Many of these are suggestions on what might work, and some are actually being tried.The global nature of business has forced many leadership programs to go virtual and this is a positive. We are learning how little face-to-face we really need for good relationships to form.
1. Focus on collaboration and solving issues as a group using a wide variety of tools and self-selected sources to help.
2. Make it experience-based, not classroom based. They learn by doing and by having specific objectives to accomplish as a team.
3. Provide access to coaches and mentors they respect is essential. These are not the usual corporate coaches that are skilled at counseling but have little technical expertise. Rather it is access to gurus, experts, retired staff who can provide depth, understanding and guide them to the best solutions.
4. Give them open access to corporate strategy, data and permission to cross boundaries and ask questions where they think necessary.
5. Develop learning portals as a way to make recommendations, provide background data, offer short formal lessons on a variety of topics, and act as a hub for collaboration.
6. Leverage mobile technologies and place lessons on their iPhones, use Twitter and experiment with mobile collaboration and information sharing.
I would very much like to hear from any of you who are experimenting with developing these young leaders.
