Page 12 - GBC Spring 2023 Eng

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Golf Business Canada
within and is driven from the center. Leading with awareness begins by recognizing you don’t have all the answers and don’t know what it’s like to work for you.
As I shared in my opening keynote for the Golf Business Canada Conference & Tradeshow, when a snowstorm hit the University of Kentucky campus, students went online to share their snow stories, and Devan Dannelly decided to see if he could get out of class the next day.
He tweeted to the university president, Michael Benson, offering a deal. If the dean would come and dig out his driveway, Devan would go to class. If you are the president of a large university and one of your students tweets this to you, what do you do? You could undoubtedly ignore him, or maybe you have an automated reply for all tweets to you, something like, “Thank you for reaching out. Please call the Office of the President at....” Well, Michael Benson decided to go a different way. He replied that Devan had a deal and asked for his address,
promptly shovelling the driveway and posing for a photo with Devan’s mom and dog. Not only did Devan get to class promptly from then on, but the pictures and story also went viral. We absolutely love this story.
We love it because President Benson is fun and kind and takes the time to connect with his students. We love it because he uses his students’ communication tools (in this case, Twitter) to reply and show Devan that he is valued as part of the college community and as a person. This wasn’t a community-building campaign or a one-time thing; Mr. Benson’s Twitter feed is full of amazing photos of him with happy students excited to meet him. The best part of the story is how it inspired others to connect and help one another.
Many of you likely have young employees like Devan, who often work on your business’s front lines. How you treat them is reflected in their work - often the most impactful customer interaction at your company. What we see today is a workplace that is more varied
by age. With older workers staying on longer and younger workers coming in to join them, age is increasingly a factor.
One of the most significant issues in workplaces that stems from a lack of awareness is tension around age gaps. As leaders, what we mean when we say “GenZ” or “Millennials” is “people younger than us, and we don’t like them because they’re younger than us....” For years, the internet has been full of shocking articles like “Gen Z Doesn’t Like Meetings!” Who the heck likes meetings?
No generation in history enjoys going into a boardroom, listening to people throw others under the bus, talking about ideas that have been said before, and walking out dumber than when you walked in. Some younger workers are just naïve enough to think they have a choice to attend and have never been asked why they don’t want to. They say younger generations want to change the world; well, good, because the world needs some changing and let’s be honest, so do meetings.