It’s easy for those of us who count our career in decades to discount how well attuned our youngest workers are to what defines good leadership and good business practices. To do so, is a mistake.

Long-time readers know that I maintain a regimen of consulting/training by day and occasional teaching by night. I’ve discovered that the best way for me to keep learning is to put myself in front of smart people with fresh perspectives as often as possible. The insights I gain from working with younger professionals are both fascinating and encouraging.

Business owners, hiring managers and senior leaders will be will served to tap into the energy, ideas and insights of this next class of employees in the workforce.

7 Reasons to Be Excited About the Potential of Your Youngest Workers:

1. Values and Character. The need for character-based, values-driven leadership is crystal clear and nicely articulated by many early career professionals. My observation is that these students/young professionals come to their studies with a well-established perspective on the importance of character and values in developing and serving is a leader. I suspect this view is in part an outcome of growing up in an era where executive misdeeds and leaders in handcuffs have been recurring themes.

2. Cultural Intelligence. Perhaps it’s the urban-setting and wonderfully diverse classroom at this particular institution, but working and communicating and engaging across cultures is already part of their everyday lives.  I’ll give this early career group a higher score on Cultural Intelligence than I would the more experienced groups I see in many corporate settings.

3. Global interconnectedness. Let’s face it, if you’re older than 50, you still remember a different world of business…one that was less global. The pace, scale, opportunities and risks are still exciting to us. For those soon to enter the workforce, this is the norm and just part of the fabric of society. It’s not change, it just is.

4. Team orientation. This newest to the workforce group has grown up participating on teams since they could walk. Coming together with strangers to pursue an objective is second nature. They are well-suited to project work in a world where projects are how we get stuff done.

5. Work ethic. Whether it’s the undergraduates working one or more jobs while completing their studies or the graduate students managing full-time work and insane schedules while balancing school, I’ve yet to be anything other than impressed with the work and dedication of these early career students/professionals.

6. Personal Accountability. While sadly few know who Peter Drucker was (until my class), they seem to naturally grasp his message of self-development and personal accountability from the classic article, “Managing Oneself.”

7. Hunger and Dreams. Perhaps the most exciting undercurrent that I catch from working with these young professionals is a fierce desire to do something that makes a different. I sense a desire to make meaning and fix and improve more than a pure focus on making money. This alone is enough to earn my vote.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Values, character, a keen sense of strategy, globally and culturally aware, a good work ethic, a team orientation and personally hungry to make a difference. Sounds like rocket fuel for business performance. What’s your strategy for tapping into the potential of your youngest workers?

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Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.  Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at https://artpetty.com

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]