Young Leaders, Take Note!

You interact with a lot of leaders and aspiring leaders through your group Upward, what are some of the biggest leadership mistakes you find yourself coaching young leaders about most often?

Well, I think young leaders are wonderfully eager and excited to make a difference and very passionate. I think what is a discouragement for them is that when they go into a company that is either prone to the status quo, that is not engaging them in a way that they think benefits the company, or takes advantage of their skill sets, they get discouraged. And I've seen lots and lots of young up-and-coming leaders get discouraged because they didn't have support. They thought they were getting a company that ended up being a different company when they actually got there, and that the comfort zone actually ended up being a much stronger part of the culture than innovation or experimentation or reinventing yourselves, any of those things. And young people come in with that kind of ambition, they come in with that kind of energy. I think companies should capture that energy, put them on things that will use their skill set and help them feel a sense of contribution. They're early in their career so they're not senior. They don't have that stature, but they can have impact stature, but you have to put them on the right things and support them, and a lot of companies donÕt do that. So the biggest thing is just keeping them focused, especially women, this is a time when women decide that it's too hard in some cases, and they decide to step off the career ladder for some time or to do something else. And so you want to keep them in the game, you want to keep them encouraged and hopeful because it's very easy for that spirit to be crushed in a corporate environment. And so I spent a lot of time with women on that, finding other ways to express their energy if they're running into a hurdle, or helping them navigate around obstacles in their project or their ambition.