Growing Up Globally Aware in America-A Key to Your Children’s Future Success
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading the Generations, Life and Business, Social Commentary, Values
Note from Art: I don’t often write about parenting, but it is most definitely leadership…and you/we are most definitely responsible for raising tomorrow’s leaders. It’s time we stepped up our game a bit on diversity and global education.
As if parenting isn’t challenging enough for most of us, there’s another task to add to a list that doesn’t seem to lack for things to do. This one may require foregoing a few soccer games, conducting some more of those “talks” and putting the effort forth to create new educational opportunities and family experiences
I’m talking about ensuring that our future generations of leaders grow up globally aware and highly familiar with the rich and complicated level of diversity, customs, practices and subtle and significant variations across cultures, countries and religions.
Six Reasons Why this is Really Important?
- The last time I looked, everything that we understood as children of the 70’s and as parents of the 90’s children has changed. Our context is steeped in the world of our parents and of our youth. Tomorrow on this pale blue dot called earth does not look like yesterday.
- The global economy is more interconnected and infinitely more complex to navigate and compete in than ever before.
- The stakes for jobs, careers and even the prosperity of countries and regions are now very, very real.
- The world of work involves collaborating and cooperating and building bridges with people across cultures, religions and geographies. You must be a boundary and culture spanner to survive and succeed.
- The people your children will be both collaborating with and competing against are well-steeped in languages, cultural issues and understanding and they are most definitely aware of the opportunities. They are also aware of the relative ignorance of their American counterparts on these issues.
- The world of work involves identifying and successfully competing in far away places that don’t look like Most Towns, U.S.A. This requires insight, knowledge, context and skills that our parents would not understand.
The Problem: We Don’t Think Globally
Most of us…and especially our children have no context for where things come from…how they got there and what the implications are for the entire value chain backwards from the retailers to somewhere in the world where the materials and labor came together. We buy and consume mindless and heedless of our connection to a complex global economic value chain and ecosystem.
My observation is that there is a naïve idealism born of parental sheltering in some of our youth that life unfolds easily and predictably. You go to school, a good job waits for you on the other end and you exceed the life achievements of your parents. For a reality check, see also the note that everything changed.
An initial instinct is to point at our education system and wonder what they can do to solve this issue. School is an important part of the opportunity to improve, but the primary responsibilities for adding a global dimension to our children’s life experiences is ours as parents. Easy words, I know.
Seven Ideas for Helping Improve Your Child’s Global and Cultural I.Q.
1. Make a conscious effort to teach your children about the broader world at an early age. This transcends looking at maps and involves actually spending time studying different cultures and creating related experiences including trips to libraries, restaurants, museums and different types of cultural events. And yes, this means you might be challenged to learn yourself. Remember, you just need to stay one lesson ahead of your child.
2. Teach your children about economics and politics and help them stay abreast of current global events. Discuss these at the dinner table.
3. Encourage reading activities or create reading lists that draw on global authors and sources. Your librarian will be happy to help you with this.
4. Increase the emphasis on learning foreign languages (plural) at a young age. Don’t wait for 7th grade Spanish. There are resources available on the web or via other service providers and tutors. Yeah, this takes money and time. So do soccer, hockey, football, dance, music lessons etc.
5. If your financial conditions allow, skip the third trip to Disney and go somewhere that requires travelling over an ocean. Spend time reading and preparing for the visit and try to build an itinerary that includes something other than the usual tourist stops.
6. Host an exchange student. Better yet, do this several times.
7. At the right age, encourage your children to become exchange students or to take advantage of study abroad programs.
The Bottom-Line for Now
It’s easy to get lost in this big country and in our daily family lives in our communities and lose track of the world around us. It’s more important than ever to create a broader global consciousness in the minds of our children or they are in for a rough wake-up call. The distance from soccer field in Sometown, U.S.A. to expectant job seeker and erstwhile professional is very short, and global preparation is now a prerequisite for survival and success.
Make Meaning as a Leader
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leading Change, Life and Business, Organizational Transformation, Performance
Guy Kawasaki’s “Make Meaning” encouragement for entrepreneurs described in his book, The Art of the Start, and here by Guy himself in this brief video clip, has always resonated with me as a rallying cry for leaders hoping in their own way to make a difference.
Kawasaki suggests that the most successful start-ups aren’t preoccupied on making money, but rather they are focused on changing the world in some unique way…fundamentally on making the world a better place. While he describes his belief as perhaps naïve and romantic, in my opinion, the most successful firms and leaders incorporate a hefty dose of big dreaming as rocket fuel for their efforts.
Dream big and the nature of work changes to the art and thrill of creation. Fail to identify a dream to chase and work becomes a series of endless tasks without meaning.
The best leaders that I know are driven by an internal belief and desire to create something good and significant through their leadership efforts. They are egotistical enough to understand that they want to pursue greatness in some terms, and they are humble enough to know that none of this is about them, but rather it is for and with and by others that this something can be achieved.
They also are confident enough to recognize that the big dream might just be in the mind of a soft-spoken team member or in the collective consciousness of a team that has long wrestled with serving customers. Their job is not fundamentally to create the dream, but rather to extract and form it and make it tangible. Their job is to give meaning to a dream.
Kawasaki offers three suggestions for “making meaning” on a societal scale as an entrepreneur:
- Increase the quality of life
- Right a wrong
- Prevent the end of something good
While the scale may shrink a bit depending upon your leadership view, you will be well served to operate with a “make meaning” mindset and to help your team frame and chase a dream. The alternative is that all of this is just work.
March Leadership Development Carnival at Great Leadership
Filed under: Career, Current Affairs, Leadership, Leadership Carnivals, Leadership Skills, Life and Business, Professional Growth, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
I’m still chuckling over Dan McCarthy’s creativity with his Special Academy Awards Edition of the Leadership Development Carnival! In addition to great content from so many Red Carpet bloggers, Dan has me doing the opening musical and dance number. He clearly forgot to consult with my wife who would have informed him that I have two feet…both left, and my best songs are truly the ones that no one can hear outside of the range of my shower!
Thanks to Dan as always for doing a great job with the Carnival and for adding a fun twist to some great material! If you are looking to continue the festivities as you move through your work week, and you need a little inspiration along the way, the March Leadership Development Carnival is your ideal destination!
Friday Leadership Highs and Lows
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Skills, Life and Business, Professional Growth, Social Commentary, Values
The High with a Leadership Low: Leaders, Have You Seen Your Humility Lately?
One of the highlights for me of the past few academic years has been the invitation from Sarah Sullivan, a Lead Business Instructor at McHenry County College to guest speak in her Creative Leadership class. Sarah teaches this class in the school’s Academy for High Performance, and as the name implies, it is filled with highly motivated, experienced adults that are hungry to learn and not afraid to question.
What makes this guest speaking experience particularly enjoyable is the fact that Sarah has used my book (with Rich Petro), Practical Lessons in Leadership-A Guidebook for Aspiring and Experienced Leaders, as part of the class, so I’m on tap to both explain the genesis of the book and to support the premise that leadership is a profession and expand on the additional guidance that Rich and I serve up over our 200 pages.
This week’s session included two highlights. The first was the opportunity to re-engage with an outstanding group of professionals that survived my class in Global Business late last year. I’ve rarely encountered a sharper and more engaging group of adult learners!
The other highlight was a comment at the end of our session that should make all of us stop and pause. While I don’t remember the exact wording, this insightful individual offered that she understood the emphasis in leadership writing and speaking on great leaders as humble leaders fiercely committed to their firm’s success and the success of their team members, (think Jim Collins, Level 5), she found herself wondering where all of these leaders were. In her opinion and based on significant experience, she had observed that the oversized egos of most leaders get in the way of any genuine humility.
I suspect that her observation can serve as a safe generalization for the experiences of many individuals in the workforce. Sad but true.
How Low Can You Go: Milton Bradley (the baseball player, not the game company), Your External Locus of Control is Showing.
I tend not to comment on sports or athletes here for a number of good reasons, including the fact that almost everyone knows more about sports and current events in sports than I do. Nonetheless, the local Chicago television news this morning continues to trumpet a story on former Cub, Milton Bradley…a highly paid player that the Cubs brought to Chicago for a King’s Ransom of a salary, only to watch this player turn in a miserable year and earn the media label: Clubhouse Cancer. While I’ve not heard that phrase or label before, it doesn’t sound positive!
Now that he is no longer part of the Cubs, he has lashed out with a line of reasoning to the effect that he had been good in prior years, he did not do well in Chicago and therefore it must be Chicago’s fault.
Ponder.
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Enjoy your weekends! I’ve got to get a jump on next week’s Leadership Caffeine post. Monday is not far behind!
This Marine Fights-Life and Leadership Lessons from a Family Hero
A fair number of the people that follow this blog and my twitter feed are familiar with the events surrounding my father-in-law’s open heart surgery during the past week. Your many thoughts and prayers and the work of the skilled and dedicated medical professionals have all combined to give my father-in-law, Bob, a good chance of sharing his great stories and corny jokes and infectious belly laugh with us for years to come. Of course, continued good thoughts, prayers and karma are all appreciated as we move day by day to get Bob healthy and back on his feet. Thank you.
Bob is a true American classic, a U.S. Marine (retired, Korea) and the loving and heroic father of his daughters and of his 4 grandchildren and 1 great-grandson. He’s been a part of my life since I met his beautiful daughter 31 years ago in high school.
After 9 hours of open heart surgery on Monday, Bob started coming around in the past day and while he’s not himself yet, even the post surgery affects of anesthetic and the various drugs can’t keep him from rasping out a string of corny jokes and one-liners with surprising frequency. Like everyone else that this man touches, the medical staff adore Bob and they laugh with him as they help him through the early recovery process.
In fact, everywhere we go, we are discovering how deeply this kind, gentle giant of a Marine touches people. From his brothers to his good friends and neighbors to the service providers…bankers, doctors, restaurant managers that have learned that Bob is fighting, their concern is genuine and their thoughts immediately on their wishes for his recovery. His calling cards…an ever-present smile, good humor and his kind soul create friends everywhere.
Bob has a lot left to do. There’s the countless number of barbecues (he’ll be eating lean meats, chicken and vegetables); the marriage of his granddaughter next fall and the growth of my sons into young men that Bob must be around to observe and enjoy. And yes, he’s got people to meet and smiles to pass along and of course, those stories need to be heard many, many more times by all involved. I’ve not yet memorized the history of most of the twentieth century that Bob lived, and I remain his student.
I’ve learned much from Bob, but perhaps the most important reminder that he serves up is for us all to touch everyone that we come in contact with in a positive way. And while much of this blog focuses on dealing with the tough issues of leading and managing, even the tough issues offer opportunities for positive touches. Bob was a Marine Drill Instructor, and I’m fairly certain that there was nothing fun about the experience that he subjected his recruits to during basic training. However, even those tough touches were intended to help people fight and win and most of all, survive to pass the lessons along.
Bob’s in-process lesson for all of us is crystal clear: touch everyone that you come in contact with in a good way. And while the touch cannot always be with a joke or even a smile, you need to go out of your way to make that touch. You might save a life, impact a career or offer a fresh start to someone that needs it.
Keep fighting, Bob. We’ve got more to learn from you.
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