Interestingly enough, I ruffled some feathers over at Recruiting.com with my post about the lack of leaders in Generation Y. John Sumser’s post didn’t make a whole lot of sense, so I posted a reply. Replies on Recruiting.com are moderated, apparently. And, surprise! My reply has not been posted – 24 hours after it was submitted.
Normally, I would give the benefit of the doubt – maybe they’re really backed up, and haven’t gotten to their moderation dashboard. But, that’s not it, since there are several other comments that have been posted since I submitted mine. So, I have to wonder…
Was my reply not posted because it made sense? I’ll let you be the judge… Here’s my reply to Sumser’s argument:
Collaboration is essential to the success of organizations in the 21st Century. I’m not questioning that. It’s exciting to see the unique and innovative solutions that vibrant communities can achieve. But, at the end of the day, everyone on the team needs to know where they’re headed, and it takes a leader to point the team in the right direction. A team without direction doesn’t make a whole lot of progress.
If you read my entire post, you will realize that my point is that we are not actively encouraging the development of leadership qualities in our young people. Even natural leaders must be nurtured in order to achieve their full potential. We’re simply not doing that effectively.
John, you’re saying that new types of leaders are required. I am saying that we’re not building and encouraging leaders like we used to. These aren’t mutually exclusive concepts. We still need leaders, even if they lead in a different way.
Regardless of how your enterprise is organized or how flexible its workforce may be, someone still needs to provide leadership at various levels.
Have a great weekend!
-Katie
November 30, 2007 at 2:21 pm
What you have run into is the egalitarian Left. Everything must be collaboration and consensus; nothing can be done through actually leadership because that implies that one person might be better at something than someone else is.
I’m sorry for your experience
November 30, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Thanks, Jonolan.
While I don’t necessarily agree that we can chalk the whole thing up to politics, I do think that there is a definite unwillingness to reward individual accomplishment in today’s society, and that has led us to ignore the tremendous potential in today’s youth. I’d like to stop ignoring and start encouraging!
November 30, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Not politics, societal beliefs. It’s an ideology these days.
December 28, 2007 at 6:45 am
Katie I suspect John did only read the first part of your post, and missed the point. Great guy but has done that to me a few times over the years, pre his involvement in recruiting.com.
Coming back to your post, agree we need to develop our leaders. This is no different from the issues face by us X’s, boomers and before, the difference is we need to approach the problem in a slightly different way. It is the approach that is the hard part
. You might find this NY Post article interesting http://www.nypost.com/seven/11042007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_kids_are_alright_517790.htm?page=0,
BTW I found that article via my mate Shannon Seery Gude on Twitter http://twitter.com/seerysm/statuses/538540352)