I was speaking to a business owner this past week and he said something that many of you reading this may have said, or most definitely have heard. “You don’t understand, Coach, this younger generation…” You can all fill in the blanks after that. We’ve all heard it. Many of us have actually said it. Well, I’ll share something with you. For the last couple of hundred years, every generation has been saying, “The younger generation…”
However, here’s something to think about. If you’re an owner of an organization, a leader, an entrepreneur, if you have a team, if you’re a parent, have children, or you have younger generation people working for you, your job is simple. You are a leader and a leader’s job is to build other leaders. We need to find what makes them tick. We need to ask them questions about what they want out of life, what they want out of working in that organization, and where they want to be three, five, or ten years from now. And if they don’t have an answer, ask them, “If you could be something or somewhere three, five, ten years from now, where would it be? If there were no limits, what would you go for?” We’re leaders. Our job is to coach them up.
Think about this; the words we use creates the reality. So, if you, as a leader of an organization or a parent, are walking around and saying, “This younger generation…” you are actually taking that energy and suppressing them to fulfill whatever thoughts you have about them. In my book, Knock It Out of the Park Leadership, one of my favorite phrases is, “Treat your team like they make a difference and they will.”
Think about football teams or any sport team at that. Most of the players on football teams are young kids. Whether you’re the pop-warner, college, or the pros, you have kids with some coaches being 40, 50, 60, or 70-year-olds coaching up the younger generation to be their best, to work together as a team, to fulfill the vision of being great. That’s how these teams become champions because the older have been able to coach up the younger.
So, be careful of using these phrases and realize that one day years ago, you were the younger generation waiting for someone to hopefully coach you up, so you can move forward and grow. You’re a leader. Your job is to build other leaders. Lead by coaching the younger generation! Now, go out there and coach them up!
COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud Action Coach Franchise partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com