Every academic quarter for the past few years, a good colleague has invited me to be a guest speaker in her  senior-level college management class and talk about leadership.  I’m on the schedule tonight and I love this experience.

It’s great to have to stand in front of a group of early-career professionals and go through the humbling experience of recognizing that you are talking based on the road traveled and their view is on the uncharted horizons in front of them. Talk about different perspectives!  You have to try and look backwards over their horizon to understand what they are looking at.  Fail this and you will fail to relate.

You have to work hard to not come off like some dinosaur pontificating on your incredible body of experience. Remember, all that this audience cares about is “How can this ancient 40-something help me?”

The world that these young professionals are entering is very different than the world that many of us experienced.  From technology to time and the nature of work (how, where and what), everything is different.  It’s essential and a bit frightening to try and look through the eyes of a twenty-something at a world filled with an incredible array of technologies and opportunities, all cast against the backdrop of a world on watch for terror.

This college speaking experience always serves to remind me of how smart and worldly young professionals truly are.  During the session, I provide them with a case that tends to befuddle most experienced managers.  The crisp and correct answers that are communicated in this session showcase what its like for people to make decisions completely unbiased by corporate politics and all of the other barriers that we create for ourselves as we gain experience.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

As indicated, my principal topic tonight is leadership and while everything in our world is different than when we were starting out, some things are the same.  The attributes and approaches that make a leader great still apply. Credibility, the ability to articulate a vision, ensuring that your words match your actions, delivering timely feedback and offering constant coaching are timeless practices of the best leaders of every generation.

Of course, we all know as well that you cannot teach people how to be leaders in a course or workshop or in a book.  The best I can hope for is to plant some seeds on the commitment and hard work that it takes to be an effective leader and how all of us have to take responsibility for our own career and professional development. Come to think of it, these are good lessons for anyone of any age.

I look forward to feeling younger and smarter after my session tonight.  I always do.