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I have one of those rare stories in leadership. I went straight from being a frontline individual contributor to managing an entire eastern seaboard of resources. Needless to say, I was both excited about the challenge of taking on such an enormous responsibility and nervous. My track record showed I had what it took to win. I had demonstrated the ability to achieve consistently high results. Though I had earned an MBA from University of Massachusetts, I had also learned from the mistakes and failures of other managers. I knew I was ready to build a team of my own though I had my share of doubters and naysayers. The opportunity was with a new company and I initially inherited an existing staff, the majority of which were older than me. I’m proud to say 3 years later we have achieved our best financial results in our region’s history. Under my leadership our team is on track to double our revenue to $20M by year-end.

There are tons of resources available giving advice on how to motivate older team members. My goal is not to be another talking head in this space. Honestly, I didn’t use any of those resources to get my team’s buy-in and achieve my success. It wasn’t because I didn’t believe the information was valuable. I actually agree with many of the various “Top Keys” lists on influencing older staff that have been published. The issue for me was that many of the resources were externally focused on how young leaders should behave towards older team members to better relate to them. I realized very quickly in my role that in order to have positive impact I had to first be inwardly focused. I know the quality of my influence and my team’s ability to achieve such lofty goals was a direct result of my mindset not towards my team… but towards me. I was fighting opposition on every front. My former company literally told me, “You’re not ready.” My new team members respected the company’s decision to hire me but were definitely skeptical. Not to mention the darts coming to my own mind, “Gigi, you talked a good game but is this too much responsibility?” “Was this too big of a leap?” I had too much internal noise that threatened to jeopardize my impact. Against popular thought, I didn’t start with trying to win over my team members. Instead, there were 3 internal shifts I had to adopt to quiet the noise and position myself to be an effective leader:

1. Settle the fact that you belong in the position. Though I was younger and had less industry experience than my team members I had to remain extremely confident that I had the insight necessary to guide our team to unprecedented success. It was a little intimidating to know that I had team members who were literally old enough to be my parents and who even had training materials older than me. I had to quiet the noise that tried to creep up and say I had little to teach them. I was in the position neither to compete nor to tussle with egos. I was in the position to help us win. I had to be comfortable with both respecting my team members’ experiences and standing secure knowing that I belonged in the leadership position. My unique experiences gave me a perspective that they did not have and I had the vision that was needed to exceed our goals.
2. You don’t need to know everything to be an effective leader. You will definitely need to be extremely comfortable with not knowing all of the answers. You are not the leader because you know everything. You are the leader to bring out the best in your team. I’ve seen young, extremely smart and talented leaders crash and burn because of their insecurities. They allowed their need to be right to limit idea meritocracy (the best idea wins regardless of the person’s title or rank) which caused not only their teams to underperform but also caused higher turnover due to employee dissatisfaction.
3. Your leadership effectiveness is not in your title but is found in the condition of your heart. I’ve worked with some really good leaders; however, the best in my entire career is a leader that I’ve actually not worked with in 15 years! His name is Walt Sykes. Though Walt is extremely smart and talented he is not my best leader because he knows the most. Walt is my best because he had a heart to serve his team. Walt was not only focused on exceeding our business goals, he cared about Gigi’s success. He didn’t lead with the title of “manager.” He led with a heart to meet the needs of his team. He was the ultimate example of servant leadership for me. Yes, our team was ambitious and had our own motivations to win but, frankly, we also pushed ourselves because we didn’t want to let Walt down. Our respect for him extended beyond his title because we knew he simply cared about us as human beings. He didn’t direct us to perform better he inspired us to perform better and we ultimately exceeded our goals. To this day, Walt is still my mentor, sounding board and one of my biggest cheerleaders. On the flip side, it’s very off-putting for your team to use them as just another rung on the ladder to your own career success. Trust me, they can tell the difference if you really care about them or not and the quality of the relationship as well as the work product will show. Before you take on the responsibility of leading a staff whether as an entrepreneur or department leader, ask yourself this one question, “What type of impact do I want to make in the lives of my team members?” Writing down the answers will be an enlightening experience, especially if you’ve primarily been business-focused. I adopted a heart to be a servant leader first and it paid off. In fact, organizations are statistically more successful with servant leaders. In a national Jason’s Deli, food chain study, restaurants with servant leaders performed 6% better, had an 8% increase in customer ratings and 50% higher staff retention rate. Remember you are just as much a people builder as you are a business builder.

Listen, the popular business advice articles will tell you how to better relate to your older team members by finding ways to bridge the gap. Just know that if you start there you may be putting the cart before the horse. I truly believe leadership starts with you and before you can effectively motivate the older generations on your team your leadership posture in terms of mindset and emotional maturity must first be secure.