At HarvardBusiness.org, Tammy Erickson writes,

Future leaders in all spheres will have to contend with a world with finite limits, no easy answers, and the sobering realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts. Perhaps the biggest change from the past: leaders will have to listen and respond to diverse points of view. There will be no dominant voice.

In this context, I’m convinced that Gen X’ers will be the leaders we need. The experiences that shaped those of you who were teens in the late ’70s and ’80s, as I’ve outlined in past posts, translate into valuable contemporary traits and perspectives.

After some reflection it seems obvious — and there’s maybe some insight into the philosophy of history here: there’s a kind of symbiosis that occurs as we grow up: the world forms around us while we form within the world.

The challenges and opportunities we face now are not spontaneous accidents, they developed over the course of decades. Likewise, people’s competences, attitudes, values, and habits have developed over a long course of time and it seems only natural that generational characteristics will correspond with dominant challenges at their moment of full maturity.

There might be some further psychological or sociological insight here as well: as we grow up, how much are we affected by novel, incongruous, and emergent features of the world, which our elders (whose faculties of perception were already fixed by their upbringing) fail to notice — or notice in any generative way?

Still further, I’d guess that some people tend to notice novelty and incongruity more than others; how much does that affect which individuals eventually emerge as leaders?…

This isn’t to take anything away from Erickson’s work. If these suggestions have merit, we’d still have to go on and investigate and articulate exactly what features and characteristics are becoming dominant — which is precisely what Erickson has done for her forthcoming book.

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