But You're So Young! A Cultural, Historical Narrative Inquiry Study on How Young Senior Leaders in Traditional Industries Have Learned to Lead
Open Access DepositedThe in-progress retirement of the expansive Baby Boom generation, decreasing birth rates, rising levels of youth unemployment, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic combine to put critical demographic pressures on the organization and its leaders in particular. People are experiencing work in a new way, driving company leaders to adapt to a different means of leading. For this reason, and more than ever at this present moment, finding and developing leaders who can meet organizational needs is critically important. And yet, organizations struggle to find and develop leaders in this post-pandemic environment. Because of this, leadership scholars agree that certain variables must be re-examined to meet the unique challenges of this era.This research positions age as that missing variable where young professionals are seen as an available and credible talent pool from which to fill the supply and demand gap at the very top. While in some emergent industries young leaders are already in play, in traditional industries like Construction, Mining, Agriculture, and Manufacturing, this path to becoming a leader is less clear, and the stakes are higher. Historically, traditional industries have leveraged their seasoned personnel to fill senior roles (i.e., Director, Vice President, President, or Executive), equating age and experience with effectiveness. Such a viewpoint puts these organizations at greater risk and disadvantage as the working world continues to evolve into a more connected and interdependent way of working. By studying the young professionals who have made this transition to a senior leadership role at an earlier age in a traditional industry, this research provides the unique opportunity to explore how their learning from formal leadership training and informal life lessons has prepared them for their current role and how others might follow their lead. Thus, this research offers a fresh perspective on the nature of learning and development across one’s lifespan and its implications for leadership development and talent management. The purpose of this qualitative study is therefore to explore how young senior leaders (YSLs) in traditional industries have learned to lead. For this reason, the following research question was applied: How have young senior leaders in traditional industries learned to lead? Study participants included seven young, senior leaders, ages 25 to 34 years old, and three seasoned senior leaders, 45 years old and older. Collectively, they represent traditional industries within the United States. The results of this study suggest that a leader learns to lead by following their past learning forward into their present role, allowing them to effectively respond to the complex and challenging situations senior leaders face in organizations. They follow this learning forward by first acquiring leadership capacities (skills, values, and dispositions), learning to use that capacity in relationship with more knowledgeable others and then weaving multiple capacities together to generate a learning pathway in order to respond to increasingly complex social contexts. Lastly, these leaders combine multiple pathways to craft a throughline so as to respond to their current, complex social context as a YSL. From these results, three conclusions were drawn. First, the ability to follow learning forward (learning to lead across the lifespan) hinges on the leader’s ability to internalize leadership capacities. Secondly, following learning forward is a highly individualized process embedded in and entangled with the cultural and social practice of leadership. And lastly, as a result of their learning across the lifespan, the YSL develops a leader identity. These conclusions serve to underscore the ability and credibility of the YSL in leading within organizations.
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