The Art and Science of Millennial Leadership

With over 55 million millennials currently in the workforce, more millennials are being promoted or seeking positions to become a leader making bigger impacts in their careers. While this is great news for the generation overall, it comes with one big problem: many of us have experienced a top-down approach to leadership that may have (barely) worked in the past and may be the learned style for millennials moving into leadership positions now.

Unfortunately, studies show this archaic top-down approach isn’t how the workforce wants to be led now. Younger millennials and Gen Zers new to the workforce are overwhelmingly looking for leaders who value autonomy, collaboration, equity, psychological safety, empowerment, authority to make important decisions, more professional development, and so much more.

Why is it important?

There is both an art and a science to being an effective leader, but it can be hard to find leaders who display both skills. It’s probably most common to find people who are well versed in the “science,” but lack the “art” to engage and motivate teams. These are the managers who are so smart that they seem border line genius, but still have a hard time connecting with their team and producing results collaboratively. Can you think of someone you’ve worked with who resembles this description? Think about their dynamic within a team and how you adapted to work with them. Likely, you had to adapt a lot.

This is why it’s so important to also develop your “art,” so that you aren’t just a strong individual contributor, but also strong leader. So, where do you start your journey of becoming a strong leader: the art or the science? In my experience, science makes up 20% of being a good leader, while the other 80% is art. (Not a scientific breakdown, but developed from my personal experiences.) The science will provide you with a strong foundation of habits, while the art will enable you to use the scientific tools in ways that best fit your organization and profession. With a little bit of practice and patience, you can learn how to leverage both.

Learn the Science

First, let’s define what the science means: think hard skills, tools, and teachable tactics. A scientific approach to leadership can include using data to make decisions, bringing a process and structure to your work (such as roadmaps, agendas, leader standard work, project plans, and gantt charts), having strong organization and time management skills, setting clear goals, and much more. These types of skills are typically learned through formal education or on-the-job development and training.

Let’s dive deeper into “using data to make decisions” as a scientific approach. When you are faced with solving a complex problem, best practices say to first have a good understanding of the current state; one way to better understand the current state is to examine available data. A highly effective leadership skill is the ability to manipulate raw data to tell a story. This can look like building run charts, pareto charts,heatmaps, pivot tables, pie charts, and more, to better understand the severity of a problem. Then, once you have a grasp on the severity, you will have clarity on where you should focus your efforts to solve the problem. Once you have started to practice and get more comfortable with using the hard, “scientific” leadership skills, it’s time to focus on your “art,” or in other words, how you will engage and motivate your team.

Lead with the Art

Lead the people you work with by bringing your unique art. In my experience, your art is defined by how you uniquely implement the science. In effective leadership examples, the art can take many forms: coaching your team to be better problem solvers; creating an environment of psychological safety; encouraging autonomy; rewarding creativity and experimentation, appropriately challenging; building trust; creating a culture of continuous improvement; using situational leadership tactics; and much more.

Let’s build on the example from above of using data to solve complex problems. Once you have defined the severity of the problem using data, you could take two approaches: solve it yourself, or tap your best untapped resource to help you, your team.

In typical top-down leadership styles, the “top of the pyramid” – usually a leader, manager, or director – is responsible for solving the most complex problems. One of the best things you can do as a new leader is to ditch that outdated approach and, instead, engage and coach your team to become stronger problem solvers. Not only does that free up your capacity to work on other things (HUGE BONUS), but it also creates learning opportunities for your team and develops their skills.

This experience can encourage them to think deeply about root causes before jumping to solutions, empower them to develop an experimentation mindset so that they can learn what works and what doesn’t work, and normalize failure as part of the process. They are the subject matter experts, have a ton of technical expertise, and have a better “in the weeds” view of the problem. Your team is your best asset in solving complex problems.

Conclusion

Start with the science to develop your hard leadership skills then employ your unique art as you start to gain more experience. This is a win-win: you get to lead a high-performing team, while maintaining your own unique style and personality.

I hope now that you’ve gotten a chance to reflect on why a conscious focus on the art and science of leadership is so important to carry out in your role. You can do some great things with your team when applying these tactics. Of course, these are not the only tactics that will help you in your journey of becoming a strong leader but they are a great starting point.

As a next step, I recommend you assessing your competency with the skills listed above. Increase your competency by learning about these tools and keeping up to update on the podcasts page. Learn by doing, get creative in your work, and experiment with different ways to practice these skills.

I will continue to go more in depth on the tools and skills listed above, stay tuned and check back soon for more content. Happy learning and leading.