I had the most pleasurable experience (insert sarcasm here) of buying a car this weekend. This process as most of us know is NOT fun, it is long and tiring and frankly why can’t this process be better? However, I did get to buy the car from my son, which was an amazing experience!
My son is 19 going on 20 and has found a passion selling cars. This child has strong leadership gifts. He often is the one taking charge and leading others. However, as we all know simply having leadership gifts does not make us leaders! We need to invest in our up and coming leaders and help them to grow!
Saturday I got to meet the people who are doing just that! (Shameless plug coming up!!) The team at Fair Oaks Ford in Naperville has seen potential in this 19yo kid and are investing in him! From the GM to the Finance guy, they all made a point to talk to us about our son. I got the chance to meet his manager and I like him! He isn’t going to go easy on my kid and he even said that he will get on him at times! However, the way he does it shows that he understands the potential and is willing to put in the effort.
Now, if my amazing, wonderful child screws up well he’s going to have to deal with the consequenes and this isn’t an easy path, however if he’s willing to stick with it he could have an amazing career!
This whole experience made me start thinking about how are we investing in that next generation. For many of us, we are Generation X we graduated in the 80’s and 90’s we didn’t grow up with cell phones and technology. We are now leading a generation that doesn’t know rotary dial phones or manually changing a channel on the TV! However we want to lead them like they did!
We simply cannot lead this way, we have to figure out how to connect with this generation and we have to invest in them! They are the next generation of leadership and it is our job to raise them up! We have to learn to speak their language via social media, text messaging and others.
This week think about how you are leading up the next generation. Talk with your team of leaders and talk about how you as a team can lead this next generation!
And for all of you here is a picture taken 2 years ago of my son coaching! For you who are parents, encourage your kids to take those leadership opportunities on!!
Leadership Simplified 