If asked, “What’s today’s biggest threat to industry, even to society?” it would seem perfectly natural, eighteen months into the pandemic, to respond, “COVID, of course, and particularly the Delta variant.”
But I believe the biggest peril we face is losing the positive engagement of the next generation of leaders. I’m talking about the biggest generational cohort, U.S. millennials, and now also their younger peers, Gen Z, who are navigating unprecedented global challenges—from a pandemic to a global recession to climate change—during their formative years.
The very future of leadership itself is at stake, as the previously considered guarantee of a successful and happy future becomes increasingly tenuous. Survey data tells us that younger Americans are less optimistic about the future and more skeptical about how the system might deliver on their dreams, and that the pandemic and other events have eroded some potential young leaders’ trust in governments and electoral systems.
If nothing is done to address this, a generation or more could be lost. Their skepticism, creeping toward cynicism—regardless of how understandable it may be—could have a corrosive and long-lasting effect on how future leaders think and behave.
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