How often do you judge people by their age? We all do it. I do. But to simply cut someone out because of their age is risky.

Sports has a natural progression or at least it used to. Rookies come in, learn the ropes and after a few years the contend but those in their prime rule the roost. It seems that model is changing. Trevor Bayne won the Daytona 500 this year at age 21. Rory McIlory led the Masters for 63 holes this week at age 21. The winner, Charl Schwartzel is 26. Justin Day came in second at age 24 and so it goes.

Now look at your leadership team AND at the next generation of leaders. Generally we make the youth pay their dues or we make them wait until the old guys go away. In sports there is no such accommodation. You produce or you retire. In business we tolerate and overlook declining or poor performance and we downplay the abilities of the new wave of leaders. In doing this we miss the opportunity to create new and outstanding leaders.

The military puts young men and women right into the fire and they develop. They are highly sought after when they leave active duty. Business. Well, not so much…..

You may have the next business leadership champion working in your organization. They simply need coaching and an opportunity. Both of these you must provide. We should do more than admire the sporting achievements of these twenty-somethings. We should emulate them. We should create young guns like them.

It will take some work but the payoff is a good one.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 11th, 2011 at 12:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.