Geeks & Geezers: how era, values and defining moments shape leaders

Leaders share capacity to take risks and learn

I was standing on a bus recently when a young woman wearing a Walkman motioned to me to take a vacant seat. I was hurt.

Did the grey in my beard make me look more than my 52 years? To the world, am I an old geezer?

Perhaps in years, but according to Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas, that doesn't mean I'm over the hill. Their book, Geeks & Geezers, argues that people my age and older have a lot to teach that woman, and that we can learn a lot from her.

Bennis, an American university professor who writes extensively on leadership, and Thomas, a senior research fellow at Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change, have compiled a slim study of leadership based on interviews with men and women in two generational categories who have been successful in the U.S.: 18 so-called geeks under the age of 35 (ranging from a nurse to millionaire heads of dot-coms) and 25 geezers over the age of 70 (including a Motorola vice-chair who is the grandfather of one of the geeks).

As expected, each group had widely different goals, concerns and heroes based on their ages and experiences. Yet they had at least one thing in common -- they became leaders.

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In their quest to find out what makes head honchos, the authors conclude that there is an identifiable process that allows an individual to become equipped with the tools needed to lead. This could be valuable for those who looking for or looking to be leaders.

And what is this process? Everyone in the group had gone through an intense, transformational experience, from a death in the family to being mentored. They discovered that taking risks has enormous rewards. They are flexible. Failure didn't stunt their growth. They love learning.

None of this is new, but it's a more pleasant read than many other books on the topic. As for what your organization can learn about leadership making and spotting, remember this from the authors:

"In order to create more leaders, corporations have to conquer their fear that they will invest in leadership training only to lose their best people to competing organizations. They will. But they will also reap the benefits of having the best people for a time and a greater chance of bringing them back in the future."

By the way, I took that seat on the bus. My back was killing me.

--Howard Solomon

More about this book:

By Warren G. Benis and Robert J. Thomas, Harvard Press, $41.95,221 pages

Copyright Plesman Publications Ltd. Jan 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved