Effect of the Pandemic on Younger Workers and on their Leadership Opportunities

I was early to a video call this past week and thought I’d be there by myself for four or five minutes. As soon as I had started the call, one of the several people that I was supposed to be meeting with jumped on as well. It was just the two of us. She happens to be a little bit younger and without as much experience in the professional world. We got to talking, about really nothing at all when she posed an interesting question. “What do you think the pandemic will do for leadership for younger people like myself?” Before I could answer, other people had joined the call, and I never really got to respond. In retrospect, I’m kind of glad that I didn’t.

One thing that the pandemic has done has caused a great deal of self-evaluation, and in some ways and overindulgence with self, most of the time for basic survival. People’s professional lives have been upended. People’s family lives are different. People’s children’s school lives aren’t the same. People’s financial positions changed. And through all that, we sometimes naturally matriculate to thinking of ourselves more often than we do others. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just human nature.

I certainly will count myself as one of those people who is concentrating more than he used to on himself and his family and the daily challenges that happen.

My client’s question made me realize I had not really thought much about it. How would, could, should younger people be affected by the pandemic from a future leadership perspective?

Maybe just a couple of thoughts, but they seem reasonable to me.

The first is that they’ll probably deal with stressful situations in a better way at a younger age. It’s not that any of us had “no stress,” but if you’re a 20 something-year-old starting your professional career, or at least in the first decade of it, you’re dealing with the worst of the worst. The unknown. Skills learned in how to adjust in these difficult times could be incredibly valuable later on in their career. 

There’s also the element of communication. They probably have had to receive and give bad news much more so than I did early on in my career. They probably also have had to demonstrate legitimate empathy at a much younger age. People’s lives have been upended and there’s bad news. And nowhere to run. Younger people probably have a much better sense of that than I ever did 20 years ago.

And with the component of communication, they’ve also have had to use their entire arsenal of options to keep in touch with people. Frankly, their upbringing may have built them in a way that makes them more able to utilize technology. Some of us old dogs, like me, have had to make massive adjustments in a very short time frame.

I’m not here to say that being more senior or newer in your professional life is a plus or a minus during the pandemic. But it’s an interesting question to consider about what it will mean for deeper, more resilient, and stronger leadership skills for younger people who have dealt with the pandemic in their own way.