“Generational Leadership”

Yuichiro Miura Scales Mt. Everest at 80

 

Who sets your standards?

If you serve to lead at a high level, you’re envisioning futures that others can’t yet see–or that they simply believe can’t be brought to life.

You’re challenging the received wisdom. You’re challenging reality as most perceive it.  You’re challenging all those who have a stake in preserving the status quo.

What about your own life and work? Who sets your standards? Are you limiting yourself to what most people assume to be reasonable? Are your standards set by voices from your past–voices that may well be submerged and hard to identify with the passage of time?

Are you attempting to set standards of your own? Whether you’re doing this for yourself as an individual, or for an organization, or a larger group of any kind, who are you looking to for guidance? What’s the line between aspirational and delusional? How do you make that judgment?

This plays out in many situations. A recurring one today is how older people set new standards for how to live and work. This is a situation that will play out for years to come.

There is no precedent for the immense numbers of healthy older people worldwide. They are, necessarily, pioneers. They are exploring unfamiliar terrain.

Mick Jagger in Sixth Decade on Tour

If the specific issues they face are new, the kinds of thinking they are applying is quite familiar to all who serve to lead.

Perhaps Yuichiro Miura, Mick Jagger, and Geraldo Rivera can shed some light.

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