Next Generation Leadership: Jingoism Vs. Kool-Aid-ism
At Competitive Futures, we’re thinking long and hard these days about what the next generation of leadership will need to look like. 2009 will feature a variety of new events, services, and dialogues around what we need to do to thrive in the face of all of these crises.
Just found a great way to describe the leadership mindsets of the different generations via Jessica Margolis, a futures-oriented thinker on this subject, and wanted to post her insights in their entirety. Go check out the whole thing.
As we transition to a kind of leadership that is equal to our challenges, we will need to enter into many such deep philosophical discussions.
KOOL-AID-ISM
Baby Boomers had Jingoism, and Generation X has Kool-Aid-ism. For the Boomers, Viet Nam was the question: Would you go? Would you NOT go? If you didn’t go, would you protest? Leave the country? What is a hero? Where are your national duties? You may have relatives who served or even died during World War II; how can you oppose your government’s call to duty?
Generation X has had a similar pivotal issue: Will you go to work in corporation? Will you refuse? If you don’t go, will you start your own business? How should you support yourself; what role should your livelihood play in your life? What about your family? Where are your obligations? How should you effect change?
“Drinking the Corporate Kool-Aid” is an expression often used to mean the degree to which an employee buys into the goals and objectives as stated by the executives in the firm they work.
The degree to which (US-raised) Generation Xers bought into to the framework of unfettered capitalism is as much a litmus test as the degree to which Boomers bought into the framework of unfettered nationalism. It even has the same polarizing issues: If you’re going to do it, do it right! (Be much more aggressive in Viet Nam; make a LOT of money in the corporate world.) If you object to the powerful treating you badly, then you’d better not do the same thing yourself (“Make love not war”; “First, do no evil”).
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