The Care and Feeding of a Legacy

This summer I spent countless hours trapped in a car with my son while we drove thousands of miles to tour the colleges and universities to which he plans to apply. As a rising senior in high school, he has reached the point in life of deciding what mark he will choose to make on the world and where he will build the foundation to do it. Those of you who share a special relationship with a teen may shudder with trepidation at the thought of spending days chauffeuring a young person that is wired to an iPod or texting with friends. It’s not fun to contemplate long, boring hours spent in silence, or writhe with frustration when you’re asked to turn down the volume on the car radio because it’s interfering with the music blasting out of said teen’s headphones. Conversation in these situations is usually limited to monosyllabic responses to the questions you pose, until you give up on the possibility of conversing at all. I know. It happened to me. Yet, I can’t help but laugh at the irony of it all. When my son was 3, my husband and I would bribe him with a dollar for just a minute of silence. At 16, we’d give a hundred dollars for a moment of real conversation.

Something shifted, though, about 1500 miles into our journey. My son began describing his hopes and dreams. He shared the fact that he wants to be a leader in this world and imagines so many possibilities for how he might apply his talents. To my delight, my son presented a cogent analysis of our country’s political climate, finding today’s political discourse to be unnervingly similar to that of ancient Rome. As a history buff, he has learned to look for patterns and to analyze critically– and here it was, all coming together as we sped down interstate 95. Our conversation expanded broadly- from thoughts on needed improvements in the education system in America, to the steps business leaders must take in order to build an engaged work force.

The trip was a transformative experience. My son instilled confidence in me that the next generation of leaders entering the workforce will be caring people of substance, who hold themselves accountable to leave the world a better place than they found it. This is a passionate, thinking generation that is hungry to make a difference. Our challenge as leaders will be to encourage that passion and leverage the substantial skills and talents of this remarkable group of young people. To do so we must open doors, expose their bright young minds to possibility and nurture their curiosity. We must leave room in the way in which we lead for both learning and for mistakes. At the same time, we must be willing to face our own shortcomings as mentors and commit to ongoing personal growth.

Make no mistake. Today’s emerging young leaders will challenge us. They will break molds. They will color outside of the lines. They will not accept life at face value; instead, they will look for evidence to support their observations. They will take risks. They will fall down, dust themselves off and get back up again. Mentoring these young people will require a willingness on our part to live out on the edge. Some seasoned leaders might find this generation to be threatening or perhaps a bit intimidating; but indeed we should be grateful that they are the individuals to whom we’ll entrust our legacy.

My only hope is that, collectively, we are up to the task.

Alaina Love is a speaker, an author and president of Purpose Linked Consulting, an international leadership development company. Since 1994 she has conducted research on leadership purpose and passion and has found that individual fulfillment and inspirational leadership are the keys to employee engagement, outstanding business results and a sustained competitive advantage. 

Love is co-author with Marc Cugnon of The Purpose Linked Organization: How Passionate Leaders Inspire Winning Teams and Great Results (McGraw-Hill). The book identifies and explores the impact of the ‘Passion Archetypes’ of great leaders, provides a process for leaders to maximize the individual passions on their teams, and offers an access code to The Passion Profiler™ online tool, where readers can discover their top three passions and how to apply them to their roles at work.

Follow Alaina on Twitter@workwithpassion. Contact her at info@thepurposelink.com and learn more about purpose and passion at work at www.thepurposelink.com