Your Kids Are Saying What Your Employees Won't

In 2019, I hosted my first Leadership in the Age of Personalization Summit. From the stage that morning, I made a declaration that drew more than a few raised eyebrows: the institution would no longer define the individual. The individual would increasingly define the institution, in search of a shared mission.

At lunch, five executives walked up to me together. They were friends, people I respected, and they came with good intentions.

“Glenn, we’re here to support you,” one of them said. “But you’re too talented to waste your time on this. You know how it works. We study the people who made it, we shape ourselves to fit, we catch a few breaks and build the right relationships, and we get there. That’s why we’re all doing well. We respect what you’re doing. We just don’t understand why.”

I asked if they would still be around late in the afternoon. They said they would.

A 14-year-old changed the conversation

The final speaker of the day was Brielle Lubin. She was 14, and I had known her since the day she was born. Her talk was about what it feels like to grow up being told that your ideas and ideals are frivolous. When that happens while you’re young, she said, you walk into every room already feeling like you’re losing.

When the session ended, the same five executives came back to find me.

“We understand now,” they said.

“What do you understand?” I asked.

They gave me two answers I have never forgotten.

The first answer: the dinner table

The first was about their own families. They finally understood, they said, why they didn’t have the relationships they wanted with their children. Their kids kept telling them that’s not the way things work anymore. And they kept answering the way they always had: if you want a life like this one, here is what you have to do.

Then one of them repeated what their kids had said back. What makes you think I like this life? And what makes you think I want to copy it?

That question stopped all five of them. They had assumed the path that worked for them was the path. Their children were telling them, as clearly as they knew how, that it might not be the path for them. I wrote about how often parents pass down the script they were handed in Parents Were Handed the Same Script. These executives were living it.

The second answer: the people they lead

The second answer was the one that made the room go quiet.

“If my own kids are challenging me like this,” one of them said, “imagine the people in my organization. Thousands of them. They’re never going to tell me. Most of them wouldn’t even know how to reach me. I can’t imagine how many of them are frustrated with me right now.”

That is the part every leader should sit with. Children push back because they feel safe enough to. They know they will still be loved at dinner. Employees rarely have that assurance. So the same frustration that a teenager says out loud at home sits silently inside an organization, in meetings where people nod, in surveys they answer carefully and in the resignation letter that finally arrives. I explored how long that silence can last in Why People Wait Until They Leave to Tell the Truth.

Pressure-test the way it has always been done

What struck me most was how quickly those leaders moved from certainty to curiosity once they heard a young person describe their reality. It isn’t until you start pressure-testing old standards that you see what they cost you: the ideas no one shared, the people who stopped trying and the chances to evolve that were traded for doing what you have always done.

There was plenty of pushback on these ideas in 2019. Then the pandemic arrived, and many of the old assumptions about how work and leadership should function stopped working almost overnight. The voices that had been ignored suddenly had something everyone needed: a different way to see the problem.

Listen to the people with nothing to lose by telling you

If you lead a team or an organization, try three things this month.

Ask your kids, nieces, nephews or the youngest people you know what they think of the life you’ve built. Then listen without defending it.

Find the version of that conversation at work. Ask newer employees what they would change if they ran the place, and make it safe to answer honestly.

Notice where you say “that’s how it works.” Each time, ask whether it still works, and for whom.

Your children are not being difficult when they question your path. They may be giving you the most honest feedback you will ever receive. The people you lead have the same questions. Most of them are just waiting to see whether you really want to hear the answers.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.