Jim Bouchard argues organizations must invest in emerging leaders despite fears of losing them. He shares his own story of dropping out and battling addiction before turning his life around, then describes three leadership development tracks, including work with incarcerated youth who can become community assets instead of burdens.
One of our clients here is very big on emerging leaders. They are developing leaders internally, and I know you're very passionate about young people and bringing them into leadership. Tell— you can, you know, say something about why we need to train and work with emerging leaders.
Yeah, well, yet again, that's a problem we hear all over the world, right? I'll flip the question over to you. What's going to happen if we don't, right? Who's going to be there? And it's interesting, who's going to be there after we're gone? Who's going to be there, right? And that's something that needs to be paid attention to. Unfortunately, a lot of times that gets left to a second priority, and it really shouldn't be. And I understand why. There are rational reasons. Whenever we find difficulties in this process, there are sometimes very rational reasons for it. And I'll hit a couple of the big ones that we hear in this area. First of all, a lot of people feel very challenged. Why should I train somebody to take my job, right? Now, that's a rational perspective. You know, some people feel threatened if I'm— well, what I You can tell I'm not a lollipops and puppy dogs kind of guy, but it's— when I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting into it with people, I say this: if you're in that type of organization where you're training people to do their best and that threatens your job, you may be in the wrong organization, right? Because as your skills, your experience, your wisdom develops, there should be bigger and better things for you to do too, right? And sometimes that means going sideways, and sometimes that's desirable. Particularly we're seeing now, you know, again, all over the world where as managers get older, their greatest value may be in exactly doing what you said, training that next generation of leaders, you see. And that's huge. Even people that have retired now are coming back as consultants to do just that. That's a really neat process. But yes, we have to continually develop that next generation of leaders and we can't start too early. You know, I know we've shared this with you. We work with incarcerated youth. And some people say, "Well, what are you bothering with them for?" Well, come on, if we can help them see their leadership potential, wow, right? Instead of being a burden on the community, they're going to be a great asset to the community. They're going to come out, they're going to get responsible jobs, they're going to have families, they're going to run businesses, and some of them are really going to become great leaders too. We know that. We know that, right? Some great leaders come from really poor circumstances. I mean, spirit of full disclosure, you know my history. I was a dropout and a drug addict. And now I feel proud about doing this work, but that took a lot of effort. And so I see that if I can do it, anyone can. I'm a person who can genuinely say that. So yeah, I should have been dead or in jail many times, so I mean that from the heart. If I can do it, anyone can. So it's about us looking— again, we're back to the fundamentals— looking at each other as people. What do we see in the human potential? Of anyone that we serve. And organizations need to be proactive in that effort, need to formalize that. You know, we have 3 distinct tracks. We have one for aspiring emerging leaders, one for leaders that are already somewhere along their career track, and one for exclusively the C-suite, sensei in the C-suite. I'm going just next week to do one of those workshops. They all tie together though, and we want everybody communicating across these, right? But we do focus on the needs, specific needs in each of those areas. And yeah, the aspiring emerging leaders is huge. But let's just wrap it up with that question, right? Get back to what I just asked. What happens if you don't train them? Oh my God.
And they—
I don't want to think about that possibility. So let's just do it, right? Let's just do it.
Fantastic. So Jim, you inspire me. I read your story and for sure I thought if Jim could pull himself from the bottom of the rock to become who he is, I can do it. Anybody can do it.
We can, we can all do it.
I am so looking forward to you coming into Nairobi at the end of this year and, you know, creating a platform of learning and sharing ideas and ideals, which is what Branding Beyond Borders is all about, you know, connecting minds globally, you know, learning from one one another. So I look forward, we look forward to hosting you in Nairobi.
Hey, thank you so much. And you know, this, this is probably the, the best way I could wrap it up. Where did you— we asked about and we talked about human-centric leadership. Where did it all start? Where did humanity start? In Kenya, in Africa, right? So, so I'm thrilled to— I'm thrilled to— in a lot of ways, um, and I, I'm getting emotional about it, but to me It feels to me like coming home. And having met you and gotten to know you, and you're so welcoming and so open, it feels like coming home. So I can't tell you how excited I am to visit Kenya.
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