Five Ideas to Strike a Balance Between Guidance and Control
I usually offer leadership tips for your workplace in articles like this. Today, I offer ideas that could help you lead both your young employees and your young adult children. My words today are both personal and professional.
A growing body of research reveals young professionals, those who’ve already entered adulthood and careers, are putting up boundaries with their parents. In other words, they feel their moms and dads have remained in the role of director, wanting to provide too much input for how their adult children live—and they don’t like it. They want to limit the role older generations play in their choices. Those same young professionals enter their careers with a tangible distrust of authority, which may also include their bosses. I know young professionals who’ve put up boundaries with their managers.
Unfortunately, parents and older authorities find it difficult to adapt to current realities. We want to lead the way we did in times gone by. I understand this. My wife and I have two children, both in their thirties. We’ve seen them make decisions we know will come back to bite them, and we hurt for them. Why wouldn’t we want to furnish some wisdom?
Our Culture is a Response to Our Leadership
We live in strange times that often feel unexplainable. Yet, context explains conduct. Too many of us are living out our unlived lives through our children. We push our kids to achieve something we failed to do, but if we’re honest, it’s about our emotional deficits. In addition, we can be guilty of “sharenting” which describes parents oversharing about their kids on social media, regardless of their age. A young woman recently told me, “My mom ruined my life.” When I asked how, she replied, “When she finally let me get on Instagram, I discovered she’d posted hundreds of photos of me throughout my childhood, revealing information I wished she’d never shared with the public. But now, it’s out there. I get chided all the time.”
Millions of young adults love their parents, and appreciate their managers, but don’t want to be like us. In fact, their rebellion is a reaction. Have you heard the new addition to our vernacular: “conscious unbossing”? The term refers to a growing cohort of young people in the workplace who refuse to climb the management ladder, seemingly content to shun promotion. James Moore writes, “In the glossary of trendy new workplace terms, you’ll find “conscious unbossing” filed alongside “quiet quitting” (when an employee leaves a job emotionally before physically informing their employer they’re on the way out), “bare-minimum Mondays” (doing the least amount required, in a bid to restore one’s work/life balance) and “resenteeism”(when employees actively dislike their job but stay in it anyway).” According to a new survey, some 52 percent of Generation Zers admit to not wanting to advance into management roles.
So, how do we respond to these realities? How do we influence in a healthy way?
Five Ideas to Strike a Balance Between Guidance and Control
We must move from supervisor to consultant.
As our children move away from home, we must make a move as well. We are no longer a supervisor (unless they ask us to be one). We are now consultants, who advise only as we are invited to do so. This metaphor has helped me to reframe my role in their lives. My son and daughter have different temperaments; one is far more welcoming of our input than the other. While I respond accordingly, I assume they’ll ask me if they want my input.
We must gain permission to provide guidance.
Since healthy leaders and parents don’t seek control, they expand their influence with younger generations because they didn’t seek it. They consciously move from a pursuit of control to one of guidance, where influence is earned through relationship and trust. I find myself asking for permission to offer an idea when I see them confused or in question. Just asking for permission to talk has been a stunning open door to interact and provide input.
We must lead with questions.
As both children and staff mature, leaders must move from “telling” to “asking questions.” Why? Because a young staff person feels I’m condescending when I continue to tell them something they should know. When I lead with questions, I allow them to draw conclusions and even remind themselves of insights they may have forgotten. They maintain an internal locus of control and own the answer. Good leaders ask great questions.
We must let them build their own “fences.”
This image has helped me. Every good parent erects “fences” to protect their kids and offer boundaries. They are values. As kids mature, they must tear down those fences and build their own. It grieves parents to see this happen, but young adults must own their own lives. Parents, of course, hope kids build their fences extremely close to their own. It’s tempting for parents to confuse their fences with God’s fences, yet we must let them be owners.
We must keep the welcome mat out and our mouths shut.
This simple but profound statement was inspired by Jim Burns, who authored a book about doing life with adult children. I learned how powerful it is to be welcoming to an emerging generation without strings attached; without a hidden agenda that desires to control their lives and decisions. Older generations should not be front and center, but we should invest in younger generations. There’s a time to be visible and a time to be invisible.
We are guides, not gods. We must step aside but not step away.
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