The Fish Rots from the Head Down

Phrase of the day: Employee Engagement.  My metaphor: The Fish Rots from the Head Down. If you, a Baby Boomer (1946-1964), at the senior leader to C-level, have stinkin’ thinkin’, the rest of your organization will rot from under you.

Many high-level Baby Boomers think of the younger set of GenXers (born late 70s – early 80s) and Millenials (1982-2000) like this: “These entitled, spoiled kids who graduated with honors think they’re going to be VP right out of the gate!” I had to work my way up the ladder and prove myself, and they have to bite the bullet and do the same.”

Research now tells us of many reasons employees leave their companies.  Some of these include:  a lack of belief in senior leadership, lack of enthusiasm or clarity about the company’s mission and poor communication with direct managers. So leaders cannot risk leading with the mindset of ‘pain leads to gain.’

In fact, GenXers and Millenials don’t appreciate the sentiment. Whether empowered from early on by us, their Baby Boomer parents, or that there is significance to being born at the start of the Age of Aquarius, they are impatient to get to the top, to make a stamp on the world. Why? Because they grew up watching a young generation of talented grads become techie multimillionaires and they have been preparing to make their mark too. We Baby Boomers didn’t have those types of super-hero young, role models. Our role models were ‘The Establishment’. We’d never seen anything like what’s happening in the last two decades. We were ambitious, but we believed we had to work our way up in a linear, long-road haul to the top, as our Veteran parents and bosses (pre-1945) did.

My not-so-humble opinion on the matter: Stop rotting. If you haven’t moved beyond the 1980s work ethic and are holding young employees to these old standards, you are creating dysfunction in your company.

As challenging as this may be, it’s about becoming flexible. Here’s how to stop your head from spoiling the rest of the company:

1. Encourage employees to spend a small percentage of their time – on your watch – creating projects they feel passionate about. Give them ownership of something meaningful to them, as long as it is in line with your company’s mission. Hey, it could open up possibilities for your business you had never anticipated!
2. Don’t embarrass young employees for trying to bring new ideas to you. You’ll make them feel important if they feel heard.  This can encourage commitment and loyalty.
3. Set boundaries, just make sure they are fair to all. Never play favorites.
4. Keep cultivating your own skills. And although we can never evolve certain parts of the brain, parts that want what’s comfortable, we can build new neural pathways that can open-up our thinking and beliefs to embrace the NOW.
5. Do what you can to learn about GenXers and Millenials. Understand their socioeconomic, psychological and cultural experiences. Become interested and make their life experiences matter to you.
6. Be compassionate towards yourself. Everyone talks about managing others through change, but who manages you through this change (at this third quadrant of your career)? Fortunately, or unfortunately, you have to do it. (You can always hire a coach.:))

With Empathy,

Jackie

Copyright, PointMaker Communications, Inc., 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Kellso and PointMaker Communications, Inc., with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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The Entrepreneur’s Fight to Survive As an Army of One

Hello You Army of One.

This morning I found this post on a Business Women’s Facebook page: “Feeling a bit overwhelmed, like I’m an island out in the middle of the ocean all by my self. Trying hard to get some momentum but feel like I’m on a hamster wheel…” –K.

I am relating. I am a savvy, hard-working, devoted entrepreneur using Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, etc…to market myself using social media; promote my unique value proposition, evaluate the results of my marketing, analyze what’s working, what’s not, and reaching out to existing contacts, asking clients for referrals — consistently looking to build a smart, large network of potential connections that will lead to new business.

We ‘Armies of One’ are the CEOs, the executive assistants, the PR people, marketing directors, blog writers, visionaries and designers of products/services; delivering goods to customers in-between all of the other duties that should be delegated to an entire team. And then there’s the networking, networking, networking.

It’s exhausting. Then we see these articles from the rich ‘success’ stories plastered all over the walls of Linked IN with advice on how we too can get rich.  How they did it through passion, belief in themselves, being an expert, having a superior product/service, working and obsessing 30 hours a day 8 days a week.  If only they could tell us what makes us any different. Well, they can’t.

Then we have the specialists for hire who have built their own businesses targeting YOU.  They promise to help you build an audience, generate leads, connect you…people who know how to do all of this better, quicker.  Well, it takes money to hire help. And with so many, whom do you trust with your precious few dollars?

The principles of advertising are to spend in order to generate revenue.  Yeah, take out a second mortgage?  Not eat?  It’s not enough that you are a skilled veteran of knowledge and experience with a phenomenal C.V. and so much value that you can be the go-to-expert of many, if they’d just find you and hire you!

I want proof that I’m on a trajectory that will reach my long-term financial goals and help me see that I am not on a hamster wheel, even if it’s a slow progression.  If only the ebbs were few and the flows were the norm!

An option is to view the bigger picture as a spiritual journey.  We are discovering patience, the limits of our comfort zones and frankly, how much we can tolerate being in a sea of thousands of other entrepreneurs who do what we do, and for those of us who are not Millenials, to progess with technology.   We must still have the courage to believe that abundance is available to all – no one can eclipse us, we will get ours anyway! This isn’t as comforting as we’d like it to feel. We are still overwhelmed, experiencing the agony of possible defeat, isolated and unsure of when the wheel of fortune will bless us because we’ve worked hard enough.

Today I couldn’t think of anything else to write.  I just wanted to talk to you, dear army of one, to say I’m in it too and if in the bigger picture of my life that this moment teaches me that I can get through the day, focus on something productive, breathe, go to the gym, count my blessings, and remain staunchly hopeful, then I am doing what I’ve hired myself to do.

Marching onward,

Jackie

Copyright, PointMaker Communications, Inc., 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Kellso and PointMaker Communications, Inc., with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.