Advice for Emerging Leaders
My friends at the Work Research Institute in Canada recently posted a web symposium for young, emerging leaders. Here is the concept that the symposium addresses:
Some time ago, a friend in a world city told me that some of the people in their church who have the hardest time, vocationally speaking, are 28-year-olds working in big corporations. They are no longer novices. They are set on a career, but they don’t really have any significant institutional power yet. They are caught in middle positions where they work very hard, but they must conform very closely to institutional expectations if they want to keep their jobs and build their careers. They have limited opportunities to offer leadership or take initiative . . . and their dreams of changing the world—of making a difference—are turning a little stale.
That conversation inspired us to pull together a symposium of encouragement and advice for 28-year-olds who believe that they are called to live in the city—and who are doing so, but who are discouraged and confused by the challenges they and their cohort are experiencing—in corporate life, city administration or politics, education, film and other media, the arts, or whatever their areas of work.
I suggest that you read the resulting array of wisdom and good advice–some of the people who responded I have admired for some time, and some I have only come to know in the past year or so. Others, as you might expect, are new.
And by the way–one of the pieces is by a fellow I like to refer to as “ME.”