Educational Leadership: The Millennial Hold Card

Beyond the hallowed halls of academia, educational leadership is a motivational leadership style that can open doors of opportunity for professional advancement, development, and growth—and these are keys to finding and keeping up-and-coming millennials in the workplace.

Tomorrow’s CEO is today’s millennial who is probably more interested in social responsibility than in becoming a corporate bigwig. Their passion to become an expert and influencer in their field is driven more by a fervent zeal to make a difference in the world than a craving for wealth, accolades, and personal gratification.

Their definition of personal fulfillment is spoken in a different language. The yardstick with which they measure professional success isn’t longer or shorter; it’s based on an entirely different metric. At the end of the day, among these bright young things, theirs is most definitely not your grandfather’s American dream.

Even your most aggressive, ambitious, type-A female millennial may be handicapped because there are so very few corporate superstar women in whose footsteps she can walk. The absence of such role models is a void that can be filled with well-planned mentoring policies and solid enrichment options.

This may challenge your more seasoned executives to become less territorial and self-advancement focused, and recognize their responsibility to groom their replacements. Of course, this may seem counterintuitive, especially in the cutthroat competitive world of corporate America.

But the generational and cultural bottom line attached to every company’s fiscal bottom line is that corporate America is changing—morphing, as it were, into a world where cutthroat schemes and plots may cut the throat of the company itself, and leave the whole staff out in the cold.

Millennials are redefining the American dream and the nature of corporate America and that can be a good thing. Wise, enlightened, and unthreatened leaders will seize this new day and blaze a path toward success by surrendering to the challenge of redefining their own leadership styles–customizing them to be more sensitive and open to this new crop of executives-in-the-making. Educational leadership is the new clarion call in corporate headquarters across the country. Don’t close your ears to it.

Grooming young executives from within the ranks is simply smart business sense today. And giving millennials a reason to stay with the company that helped to cultivate their skills and talents will eventually mean more dollars and cents in the long run.

Educational leadership of millennials in the workplace is an opportunity to facilitate both their professional and personal growth. By providing professional development training and support, you will help to nurture their aspirations to be better people and that will make them better and more loyal employees.