first decade in the workforce (1970-80)
was spent alongside people in their 50s
and 60s who had fought in the second
world war, and been interned in Changi
prison. They had faced and survived
horrors we can only imagine. They
are labelled the silent generation, yet
I remember only colourful characters
loyal to their employer who reinforced
progress. I found the most inspiring
leaders drove me to open the cracks
between my reasons, my competencies
and my actions and challenge the status
quo in me and in where I directed my
work. So now, I challenge the concept
of leadership by generational category
believing, as I do, the characteristics of
each category are not dependent on age.
LEADERSHIP WITH GENERATIONAL
LABELS IS A DISTRACTION. LEADERSHIP
CREATES BELIEFS AND COMMITMENT
TO THINGS NOT SEEN AS POSSIBLE,
TRANSCENDING ARTIFICIAL AGE
in me the mantra of my grandfather,
that “if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth
doing right.”
Not surprisingly, I started life as a
loyalist for one company. But that
changed in 1980 when loyalty failed to
work in both directions. I’ve since been
a military man, a scientist, a strategist,
and a general manager in a global
corporation. I now help leaders live with
complexity to build the competencies
and controls they need to create the
future outcomes they want.
I learned from my mentors that the
cracks between our thinking and our
doing create our biggest problems and
yet offer the biggest opportunity for
Today, we all need resilience in
navigating change, and to be adept
at global inclusion and team-centric
behaviours (hello Gen-Y). We all
need to question authority, develop
balance in work and life, be competent
in a technical skill, able to work
independently, adaptive always to job
instability (g’day Gen-X). We still like
to win big and that ‘boomer’ trait is
strong with many. So too, the drive
they held for individual rights and their
distrust of large systems.
Yet, as large systems today become
more complex, more adaptive and selforganising, leaders need to progress
with perspective on the outcomes they
are driving towards and bring the right
GLOSS JULY 2015
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