This is not a political article. But it is imperative for us to understand that leadership development and corporate culture will be impacted by the events that our current and future employees witness in these stressful times.
During almost 50 years of working in the learning and leadership development field, I can recall hundreds of times that we reached into the history books of national or political events for a key story or quote.
Once, I took a group of rising leaders to the fields of Gettysburg and we talked deeply about courage, conflict and lessons from that battle.
Another time, I brought my friend Kathleen Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and niece of John F. Kennedy, to my learning conference and we explored what “Profiles of Courage” meant in the corporate workplace.
We’ve interviewed keynoters including former first ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama about lessons they took away from their political lives that were equally powerful elements for leaders in corporations.
My interaction with American politician, diplomat and retired four-star general Colin Powell in front of 2,000 learning colleagues focused on tough lessons from politics and military leadership and how those impacted his brand as a leader.
We can think of so many ways that rising leaders look at and either emulate or reject the styles, values and approaches of national and global political moments.
As learning leaders, we are experiencing — right alongside our current and future employees — the intensity of these times:
- Pandemic leadership: How have our presidents of the current and previous administrations handled the challenges and pressures of the coronavirus pandemic? What are their leadership approaches, and how have they approached transparency, data, science and empathy?
- Racial injustice: How did our political leaders and the corporate leaders around the United States choose to respond to the focus on racial injustice in recent times? What were the range of responses from leaders — on both personal and organizational levels?
- The election of 2020, rioters at Congress and impeachment: What can we take away about leaders’ approaches to conflict, to due process, to accepting loss and to accountability?
As I said, this is not a political article. Each reader will have a range of personal reactions to these events and a spectrum of takeaways about leadership lessons.
As leadership development designers, we need to accept that one cannot gather a group of employees in a leadership program at work without touching on these keywords:
- Empathy
- Transparency
- Collaboration
- Honesty
- Ambiguity
- Storytelling
- Accountability
- Listening
- Diversity
- Leadership culture
In the virtual leadership programs that I am currently running, these words come from the mouths, stories and souls of the participants.
Empathy, the first word, is the most powerful one to use as leadership developer in order to address and leverage the lessons of today and yesterday: empathy for the differences among people, and empathy for the impacts of those events on current and emerging leaders.
Our workforces are currently a mix of exhausted, energized and challenged by political events in the U.S. and around the globe. One group presenting at a recent virtual conference was so excited to promote social media as a learning tool … until they were confronted by many participants who were upset with the role of Twitter, Facebook and other platforms disseminating what they feel is false information. The social media leadership conversation had to immediately adapt and add context from breaking news.
We don’t need to have sessions called “lessons from the pandemic” or “lessons from the impeachment trials,” but we do need to honor how the current events in our lives will impact how we and our rising leaders lead.
Over a year of pandemic isolation. The deep divisions between neighbors and families. The pain of seeing a man die with a knee on his neck and a Capitol police officer being crushed by a raging crowd. These events are real and will help shape current and future leaders.
Everything is changing. Support and encourage your leaders of tomorrow to clarify, explore and stretch their own “Profiles in Courage.”
Yours in learning,
Elliott Masie
