'Emerging Leadership' is a new buzz topic these days. When I first began working on developing the Emerging Leadership Program for OMS, I had barely scratched the surface on what's been written on the topic. I've since found that emerging leadership is becoming a hot topic at many of today's companies. I recently talked with a representative who worked for a subsidiary of one of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies that expressed that they were grappling with the topic in his office just that same week.
As cultures change, companies and even non-profit organizations are forced to adjust their human resource and sometimes even corporate strategies to deal with the differences in cultures. A large cultural shift took place between the 'Greatest Generation' to mid Gen X, and again between mid-Gen X and the Millennial generations.
So how do we define an emerging leader today? Let's start with a look around the business or non-profit world for other definitions of emerging leaders, and then I will share with you mine.
Some organisations define emerging leaders by age. They make the assumption that all of the people working for the organization are leaders, or capable of leading, therefore the defining factor is built on the age of the person. A year ago, during a private conversation with the president of the Banana Republic clothing store company, a colleague of mine asked about the types of employees that he is looking for. "First and foremost, I'm looking for leaders." he replied. But is everyone that works at Banana Republic, or any organization a leader? Would that organization be healthy?
Other organizations are suggest that age is not a factor, but that the gift of leadership is 'emerging'. It was suggested during a recent conversation that a 60 year old man could change positions that allowed him to use his leadership skills and therefore would be 'emerging' as a leader.
I have a hard time buying into this line of thinking though because everyone has a need to work within their gifting. It's hard to imagine that a person could go through a career as a genuine leader, and not have had that skill or attribute recognized or revealed itself prior to this experience. Spending ones life as someone gifted in another area, only to find out that you've had the gift of leadership all along, and were unaware of it until its emergence years later seems unlikely to me. Leadership is a quality that generally self-identifies whether the leader is aware of it or not.
I found yet another organization that used the term 'emerging leader' to represent any individual who had donated $1000 and contribute 20 hours of volunteer time. Clearly this is a misuse of the term in my mind, but this non-profit is one of the largest in the United States, so perhaps they know something I don't. How about this, why doesn't everyone who is reading this send me $1000 dollars, and donate 20 hours of your time to OMS and we'll see if the term fits.
The reality I think is that all the answers above are correct in some way. I think that emerging leaders are leaders first, by this I mean that they have the natural gift to lead, motivate and inspire people toward a common goal. Secondly, their leadership gifts are in an 'emerging state', which isn't necessarily bound by age, but I tend to believe that that vast majority of individuals whose leadership gifts are 'emerging' will be identified probably by their mid 30's, some much younger than that.
The point of this is that emerging leaders are men and women who have been gifted with a natural leadership ability that currently is in it's raw or emerging state. These young men and women are in need of development to become tomorrow's leaders, and that begins with an intentional, well thought out plan that consists of a combination of both teaching and refining professional skills, and personal growth development.
This is what we're developing at OMS.
In my next blog post I will tackle the agreed upon characteristics of emerging leaders and how they are different from their parents and grand-parents generation of leaders.
God Bless,
Jonathan
No comments:
Post a Comment