How to Herd Cats – Leading Generation X
In the third chapter of PostMission: World mission by a postmodern generation, Peter Stephenson picks up the learnings from the PostMission gathering at Holy Island in 2001. Peter cut his teeth in cross-cultural mission in Spain, and now is living in Exeter running a web site design service.
I wonder if there’s a reference here to Warren Bennis’ 1997 book, “Managing people is like herding cats: Warren Bennis on Leadership“. Or to the EDS television commercial, “Cat Herders“, 2000.
Stephenson explains that members of his generation do not have an automatic respect for their elders and betters. Foolish leaders become known as untrustworthy. Abusive leaders are regarded as ‘manipulative control freaks’. Leaders who use Scriptures to justify wrongful attitudes are seen as religious hypocrites. Agencies that expect young missionaries to submit unconditionally to such leaders are tarred with the same brushes.
Stephenson invites mission leaders to consider new ways of motivating Xers. They respond to influence rather than control, and become disillusioned when treated as idiots that have nothing to teach. Xers, Stephenson says, are fed up with being rubbished, sidelined and misunderstood, and as a result are leaving the mission field in droves.
The values and principles of effective leadership, as identified by the Holy Island Roundtable, are friendship (warmth and time commitment), respect shown in two-way learning, integrity, openness and vulnerability, team leadership (decisions made and followed through by team), boldness and faith.
What I find helpful here is Stephenson’s call for leadership with a learning posture. Emerging generations have experiences and perspectives that older generations can only read about. I’ve heard Leonard Sweet say, “If you are born before 1962, you are an immigrant. If you are born after 1962, you are a native.” Sweet explains that it is not necessarily linked to age. Postmodern natives can be 70 years old while ‘immigrants’ can be starting to explore postmodern perspectives at 20 years of age. However, it is obvious that our assumptions are shaped by the environment we have grown up in, particularly our education system.
Those trained in adult education know they need to start with the acknowledgment that participants have prior experience and quick access to information. What is needed is two-way, three-way, or four-way conversation in which wisdom is developed by teams rather than passed on by individuals.