I had forgotten how much fun working with children actually is until last week when I got the chance to work with a bunch of 12-year-olds.
And it was a random assortment of 12-year-olds as well. They were all from different schools (however it was mostly the same area), assembled together to learn about and interact with the ideas of responsibility and leadership. And as I have a solid history of talking about leadership with people in business these are topics that I was very happy to talk with 12-year-olds about.
I posed the question “what does leadership look like?” to these 12-year-olds and I naively thought that they would struggle to grasp the concept in a tangible way. Boy was I fucking wrong!
Not only were they able adequately describe what a leader was, they very clearly described what it is a leader should do and more importantly how leaders should interact with the world and the people in it.
Here are just some of their insightful answers:
“A leader should be kind”
The number one job of a leader is to work with people, and being kind can be such a radical act of strength. It should never be seen as weakness, because to be truly kind is often a tough gig. It may mean that you have to make unpopular decisions because you are trying to make things equal or fair or right for one party over another. At its very core, being kind is something a leader can do because they have the power and resources to make the determination on who to be kind to and in what way (Hint, it should be the people who are following you). If 12-year-olds can work out being kind is an asset to a team, then there is no reason why a CEO can't do it.
“A leader should look after people in their team”
Not just looking after some arbitrary deadlines or silly made-up rules but actually looking after, in a very holistic sense, the people that have entrusted/or being entrusted into their stewardship. Giving credit where it's due, highlighting the good work of others, protecting the team from the whims and debris of other executives is what good leaders should be doing in their workplace. Leaders are there to support, facilitate and uplift their teams and a good leader knows ‘there is no i in team’. In fact, highlighting the achievements of individuals within the team should be paramount, so much so a good leader will develop and promote good team members.
“Leaders are good at listening”
They sure should be. Leaders should aim to be deep listeners, to go that step further than just simple active listening, to really go in deep - seek to understand what people are saying and why they're saying it. The best of example of this comes from a workplace when new executives don't really say anything for the first three months, they listen they seek to understand, and they ultimately learn about the people who they are managing or working with. People that come into an organisation and do, do, do, clearly show that they haven't taken the time to listen. This group of 12-year-olds were deeply listening to each other throughout this session - so is this a habit that some senior leaders grow out of?
“They are compassionate”
Compassion is further than the simple step of being empathetic (for some people simply being empathetic is a bridge too far), being compassionate calls for action. Being compassionate asks us to act and try to relieve the suffering of others. Leading a team should be about making their work as easy as possible for them to complete, relieve their suffering, remove their roadblocks, get them resources, get Kathy from HR off their back, get Mike from IT to fix their computer. Help them. These are compassionate acts that help them excel at the job they have been hired to do. This is what true compassion in the workplace looks like.
“Leaders show people how to do things”
Leaders can be great role models for the people that they work with. Whether it's modelling behaviour, teaching skills, passing on knowledge or creating safe conditions where people can learn for themselves leaders need to do the things (or have previously done the things) that they're asking people to do. It should always be a case of do what I do not do what I say. 12-year-olds recognise the importance of modelling good behaviour, the same cannot be said of all senior executives who'd rather pass directives down from an ivory tower than muck in with the plebs in the mud.
The cynical among you will say well what do 12-year-olds know about the complexity or the reality of competing demands of the modern workplace? Whilst that might be a fair question, it's mostly just a question of time. They haven't had time to learn about how hard it is to operate a modern business.
But let's turn the question around: why have leaders in business forgotten the basic tenants of leadership? Why do managers rely on a position or title and not the attributes of leadership to try and lead teams? Why can't executive teams create conditions in which people thrive?
I think it's because they have forgotten what it's like to be 12. Perhaps they need to go back and sit with 12-year-olds to relearn what it is to be a leader.
Comments