e-Tips

“Mobile, flexible, agile, engaged” are not only descriptors of our elite athletes and our smartphones, but also the workplace cultures most desired by the most sought after talent. We’re going to see more frequent leadership changes at various levels, role shifts and non-traditional reporting relationships brought on by external forces and internal impatience.

What does this mean for future leaders their training and how teams will operate?

Social Media – it’s much more than Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, and even Foursquare, Pinterest, Tumblr, blogs, podcasts – it seems new platforms are created every hour wherever sharing is happening. Not only is the accelerating use of these outlets affecting our behavior and use of time, but also social media are influencing behavior of the different generations – and vice versa.

Lloyd’s ranked talent and skills shortages the #2 risk facing businesses as of 2011, up from #22 in 2009 according to a Human Resource Executive magazine editorial. This was a finding of a study of 500 C-suite and board level executives, which also found that “talent and skill shortages” was one of only two risks that “respondents felt insufficiently prepared for.”

Though aspersions are most often cast at the youngest generations – Gen Y/Millennials now and Gen Xers before them – entitlement attitudes are found in all generations. Whitney Johnson, a founding partner of Rose Park Advisors, wrote on a Harvard Business Review blog “Entitlement is pervasive in American culture.”

I’ve been thinking about what teamwork and teammates mean today, and how meanings and perceptions have changed.  Often I look to baseball, a passion of mine, as some of you know. As a New Yorker and a Mets fan (an atypical conversion from the rabid Yankees fan I was through college days), some of these thoughts have been brought to mind by the departure of Jose Reyes, David Wright’s gracious remarks about it, Albert Pujols’ flight for even more money, the state of free agency, rampant in the workplace as well, and observations on generational differences.

One thing I believe all generations are aiming for is a reputation of professionalism. It’s a hot issue in some workplaces. In a recent program I led for the new Gen XtraordinarY group of the HR/NY chapter of the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), I presented some highlights from Practice Development Counsel’s recent ‘Professionalism through Generational Lenses Survey.” There were some surprises or ironies, but in general we collected a lot of data that reinforced the issues and challenges we hear about.

Lately I find myself engaged in conversations, mostly raised by Boomers and the older half of Gen Xers about what might be called the intersection of gender and generations issues. Several women expressed the strong belief that women have actually made little or no progress in attaining leadership and management positions in the last 10 years except in their own businesses.

One workplace reporting relationship that used to be fairly rare is older workers reporting to younger managers. This is a growing phenomenon and will become more prevalent at least until the younger Boomers stop working in any form. As Boomers transition from leader and top expert roles to new roles that allow the next generations to move up the ladder, we will see what traditionally have been unconventional structures.