Impact in future young leaders in today’s generation

In today’s business where high problem in unemployment ratio where young leaderships are facing problems for jobs, diversity, different backgrounds, The mission of the  Forum of Young Global Leaders  is to create a dynamic community of exceptional young people from around the world with the vision, courage and influence to drive positive change. The community creates experiences for next-generation leaders that help to enhance their skills, broaden their world view and drive innovative solutions. Young leaders needs to be more involved in the society, engagepeople , bring awareness for present and young generation.3

They have a desire and willingness to be uncomfortable

Young people are looking at a country that is more divided than they ever remember. They’re realizing they have to have these hard, uncomfortable positions if they want to make an impact and move the needle forward on any issue. This could translate to speaking out at work, too. 

They see intersectionality as a key to change

Intersectionality recognizes the idea that class, race, gender, sexual orientation and disability do not exist separate from one another. Instead, they are deeply interwoven and even intersect for some marginalized groups of people.4 I observed that , still there will be hope and knows the future will be bright because young people are leading and believing in the need for intersectionality.

They recognize the daily opportunity to make change

Impacting the world is a big job to take on, and as a result, some older generations (who may have lived through stagnant and depressive times) see it as complex and beyond their control. 5Young leaders don’t make it complicated, and they recognize the daily opportunity to share their voice and spread change instead.

They own their title as “the future”

Young people are the future, and this generation of teens and in-betweens aren’t afraid to own that. They know it’s only a short amount of time before their vote (and not just their voice) will be heard.

Watch out world

There’s an entire generation of leaders who are ready to be uncomfortable, recognize intersectionality, act as accomplices, make daily change and own their title as “the future”—all while taking a killer selfie. Hopefully you will be there to embrace them and foster the best they have to offer. 6

Critical Importance of being a Leaders Tomorrow

Young people today are arguably more engaged in social and civic issues that affect their communities and countries than ever before. This week, Youth Will looks at youth civic engagement, how the global development community can empower young leaders, and how young people can be encouraged to take action.

Young people in tough situations need more support

Young leaders can be empowered through training, both within and outside of their native environments. “I learned the real meaning of leadership, democracy and good governance, and how to set a long strategy for myself and my colleagues.”It’s obviously very important for the youth to go to school, and to end up with as good a quality education as they can. We’ve always argued that girls, in particular, need nine years of continuous education. But the bigger thing for me are the side effects of investment and development. Some see development as “it’s a water project, or a health project, or an education project,” but what I get most excited about is the leaders of tomorrow. To stand as candidates in elections, you need young people coming through who are articulate, 7 well-informed, who can organize themselves, who can engage in the political process at a community level, maybe on a more formal level. It’s crucial that they are part of that, and that they do not feel ostracized, left out and on the margins. I sometimes think some of the best work we do is helping to create those leaders of the future, who will be more accountable to the people. We talk about intervention and aid, but in the end people have to hold leaders to account for things. 8  It’s seen far more impact in taking young women and girls and getting them to present the case for education than I could ever do with the current leaders in their own societies.”

Challenges and problems faced by young leaders?

Why does this matter? Surely over the years, newer generations have always entered organisations and have had to alter or suppress their own preferences and expectations to fit into the pre‐existing order created by the preceding generations. Organisations may not in fact have a choice as the new generation is becoming bolder, more confident and more outspoken, and we can expect more open expression of their needs.  Firstly, we refer to the old adage: a leader is only as effective as the team that sits behind him or her. Through better understanding of their team members’ expectations and requirements of them as a leader, leaders can get the best from their entire teams. As we have already established, when leader’s and subordinate’s expectations of leadership mismatch this presents suboptimal working conditions for the team. We have already touched upon some of the more noticeable differences between the expectations of Gen Y and the leadership characteristics of older generations. Secondly, talented new colleagues will gravitate towards leaders who are more in tune with them and their needs, 9 either within the civil service or in private industry if this offers more inspiring leadership. Increasingly the quality of leadership is become a weapon in the ongoing war for talent.

The Challenge to Be Developed rather than Discovered 

I’ve found that young leaders, including myself, can focus too much time and energy on being discovered rather than being developed. What I don’t think we realize is that if we’ll focus on being developed, then one day we will be discovered.

The Challenge to Be Teachable 

I would argue that this may be the number one challenge of young leaders. I’ve seen far too many people get sidetracked in their leadership journey because they were not teachable. They thought they knew better than the people that God placed in their lives to help develop them. As leaders, we all need people who can confront us, tell us no, and tell us things we don’t want to hear, but need to. Being teachable requires humility. Being unteachable is usually a sign of pride.  If you will humble yourself and develop a teachable spirit, there will be no limit on your growth! 

The Challenge to be Faithful and Patient 

Let me break the news to you, it’s going to take a long time for you to develop into the man or woman that God created you to be. Accept it and embrace it! You are probably already doing certain things that you’ll be doing in your future, just not at the level you’ll be doing it then. That is where faithfulness comes in. If you will be faithful day in and day out with what you have in your hand right now, you will get to where God wants you to go.10 Don’t let your impatience cause you to miss out on what God has planned for you.

The Challenge to Have an Abundance Mentality

When we’re young, for the most part, we’re all trying to prove that we have what it takes to lead, provide, be something, etc. As a result, we can often get jealous our peers and start compare and compete with them. If our peers seem to be surpassing us, we get envious, bitter, depressed, or even angry. When that happens, it’s clear that you do not have an abundance mentality. The truth is, there is enough “success” available in the world to go around! It’s possible for everybody to succeed and do great things. Too often, we get wrapped up thinking that if someone else is successful, then our success will be limited. That is a lie and it will limit what you can do with your life. Celebrate the success of others and recognize that there is plenty to go around!

The Challenge to Define Success Correctly

While we’re young, we tend to think that we will be successful when we have a certain position, possession, amount of money in our bank account, influence,

Network of people, etc.

While none of these things are bad in and of themselves, none of them determine if you are successful or not. 

Experience-oriented teaching of leadership skills

In now generation, we want to impart leadership skills through a more practice-oriented approach. In the context of theoretical discussions and case studies, students can analyse leadership challenges well and understand them cognitively, but we have found that, as is practiced in companies, students cannot empathize emotionally in this way and also have no feeling for the relationships develop between the actors. In our view, this leads to the knowing doing gap widening. Graduates of business schools have theoretical knowledge of how to act as leaders, but in a real-life situation they often cannot use this knowledge effectively. 

Motivation to acquire leadership skills

It is important to us to give our students a motivation boost at an early stage so that during the course of the MBA they invest enough time and effort to develop leadership skills and absorb the teaching content even more effectively. We would therefore like to make it clear to our students from the start how difficult it is to acquire leadership skills and what knowledge they still lack with regard to the teaching content of the MBA program.

Raising awareness of social responsibility 

Given that business leaders in many companies nowadays make morally and ethically wrong decisions on a regular basis, we have chosen a sustainable, effective approach to give our students a sense of social responsibility.

Implications for the Development of Future Leaders

The focus on change as a key tenet of leadership theory is not at the expense of the principles of the other leadership theories. In order for the leadership of change to be effective, leaders must know themselves, understand the application of different leadership styles to various circumstances and use the essential concepts of transactional and transformational theories. If these fundamentals are not considered, then it may be difficult to provide effective leadership to develop and sustain the required change initiatives. As with transformational leadership, leaders of change can occur at any level of the organization.

Do Generations Differ in What They Look for in Leadership?

So to what extent do the different generations vary in their expectations of leaders and how might any differences here be impacting on performance at work? To date, the set of attributes that people most admire in leaders has remained relatively stable from generation to generation. The effective leadership style that hold good for all it seems including honest, forward‐looking, inspiring, intelligent, supportive, ambitious, courageous, loyal, self‐controlled, and so on.   While the set has not changed much, there have been some shifts in the strength of ranking of certain attributes and the findings from this research further inform how gaps between the generations may be widening. Data from our study has enabled us to create an initial impression of how the expectations or prototypes for leadership might compare across the generations in Singapore (see Figure 4). However as the sample size was small, particularly for Boomers, no firm conclusions can be reached at this stage of the research. However, even this small investigation shows a fair degree of agreement between the generations to support the previous findings but with a few exceptions.

Table 1

Mindsets are leaders’ mental lenses that dictate what information they take in and use to make sense of and navigate the situations they encounter. Simply, mindsets drive what leaders do and why. For example, they explain why two different leaders might encounter the same situation (e.g., a subordinate disagreement) and process and respond to it very differently. One leader might see the situation as a threat that hinders their authority; another as an opportunity to learn and further develop. When leadership development efforts ignore mindsets, they ignore how leaders see and interpret problems and opportunities like this one.

You may wonder: if mindsets are so important, which ones should you help your leaders develop? In our recent work, we broadly scoured research across the social sciences to understand the various mindsets that individuals may possess. In doing so, we identified four distinct sets of mindsets that have been found to affect leaders’ ability to engage with others, navigate change more successfully, and perform in their leadership roles more effectively.

Growth and Fixed Mind sets.

A growth mindset is a belief that people, including oneself, can change their talents, abilities, and intelligence. Conversely, those with a fixed mindset do not believe that people can change their talents abilities and intelligence. Decades of research have found that those with a growth mindset are more mentally primed to approach and take on challenges, take advantage of feedback, adopt the most effective problem-solving strategies, provide developmental feedback to subordinates, and be effortful and persistent in seeking to accomplish goals.

Learning and Performance Mind sets. 

A learning mindset involves being motivated toward increasing one’s competence and mastering something new. A performance mindset involves being motivated toward gaining favorable judgements (or avoiding negative judgements) about one’s competence. Leaders with a learning mindset, compared to those with a performance mindset, are more mentally primed to increase their competence, engage in deep-level learning strategies, seek out feedback, and exert more of an effort. They are also persistent, adaptable, willing to cooperate, and tend to perform at a higher level.

Deliberative and Implemental Mind sets. 

Leaders with a deliberative mindset have a heightened receptiveness to all kinds of information as a way to ensure that they think and act as optimally as possible. Leaders with an implemental mindset, as the name suggests, are more focused on implementing decisions, which closes them off to new and different ideas and information. Comparing the two, leaders with deliberative mindsets tend to make better decisions because they are more impartial, more accurate, and less biased in their processing and decision making.

Promotion and Prevention Mind sets. 

Leaders with a promotion mindset are focused on winning and gains. They identify a specific purpose, goal, or destination and prioritize making progress toward it. Leaders with a prevention mindset, however, are focused on avoiding losses and preventing problems at all costs. Research has found that those with a promotion mindset are more prone to positive thinking, more open to change, more likely to persist despite challenges and setbacks, and demonstrate higher levels of task performance and innovative behaviors compared to leaders with a prevention mindset. 11 Once you have a better understanding of these mindsets, you can tailor your leadership training programs to unlock most effective ones in your managers. A great example of an organization that leveraged the power of mindsets in this way is Microsoft. From 2001-2014, Microsoft’s marketcapitalization and stock price largely stayed the same. But, in 2014, when SatyaNadella took over, he made it his mission to revamp the leadership and the culture at Microsoft. In his book, Hit Refresh, Nadella

Explains that mindsets

particularly growth mindsets– were his primary focus when revamping Microsoft. With this leadership, the company’s market capitalization and stock price has more than tripled.This is just one example that shows that if organizations want their investment in leadership development to more fully pay off, it is essential that they prioritize mind set development — specifically by targeting growth, learning, deliberative, and promotion mind sets. As leaders cultivate each, their thinking, learning, and behaviours will naturally improve because they are seeing and interpreting their situations more effectively. 12