By Jack Cumming
Recently, on a videocast, Sean Kelly, a senior living executive whom I greatly admire, shared a reality that reflected a consensus within the industry. A group of leaders, he told us, agreed that “we have a dearth of leaders in the sector right now.” In the conversation, he shares the need for more programs to attract future leaders into senior living.
Visionary Actors
When we contemplate the future, it seems likely that we will need leaders who are able to think beyond convention and to foresee new opportunities. A student contemplating college today can look forward to fifty or sixty years of productive service. What can we offer to make the opportunities we have sound exciting for a new generation?
Finding top talent means identifying individuals who are thinking ahead to 2075 or even beyond. In the interim, the baby boomers will be followed by a baby bust; medical advances will make old age more vital; technology will be beyond what we can now conceive. We will need people educated to adapt and unafraid to face down risk and do what will be needed.
Why Aging Studies?
People like that are on college campuses today, but they’re unlikely to be thinking of majoring in aging studies. Not only that, but aging in the future may not be as distinct from adult living as it appears today. The future will need leaders who think outside the box. While vocational majors can hit the ground running, they are more likely to administer the legacy instead of leading the adaptation to changing cultural and economic norms.
Every industry is looking for the most talented people from the rising generation to fill the future leadership spots needed for business to thrive and grow. Senior living is not high on the aspirational dashboard for those looking for something more than a job. To find the adaptive leadership for an industry with promise requires offering young people something that gets their attention and brings them on board. That starts before they reach college.
Human resources departments (HR) like the superficiality of job descriptions and hiring specs that look for college majors that match the description specifications. Recently, I met a Parks and Recreation Commissioner, and I asked him what attracted him to the job. He responded, “I majored in Parks and Recreation in college.”
Skills For the Future
The top-ranked, most selective colleges don’t offer majors like that, nor should they. Instead, they teach thinking, skepticism, and imagination, plus skills of reading, listening, analyzing, challenging, rethinking, writing, and speaking. These are people skills. They are the core of the humanities. People industries need people-trained leaders. They’re not found in textbooks.
Those skills lend themselves to the future, not to what passes for authority in the here and now. Of course, you don’t need college to master those skills. Many of the most highly qualified people I’ve known never went to college and have been self-educated. Moreover, historical giants like Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, and, more recently, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have been largely self-educated.
For senior living, or its near relative, better living, to find the talent needed for the future, it needs to attract individuals with people understanding. The military does this well. The Navy notably offers full-ride scholarships to the best colleges for qualifying students, provided that they give five years of service after graduation. That’s a great deal. The other service branches have similar programs.
Providing a Path
Imagine if LeadingAge, or ACTS Retirement-Life Communities, or other providers, were to offer full-ride competitive scholarships to promising high school students heading toward college. Like those military offers, they might require five years of service after college. A more straightforward approach would require recipients to work for the enterprise after college until the no-interest advance is repaid.
Just as the military requires completion of ROTC training to prepare enrollees for later service, a senior living scholarship program could require summer employment and completion of senior living training. LeadingAge decided not to continue the content-rich Certified Aging Services Professional (CASP) program, but the Certified Senior Advisor (CSA) program is relevant and is more robust than others. Other much-touted programs limit eligibility in ways that exclude college-level aspirants.
The solution to a perception that there is a dearth of future leaders is to demonstrate that leadership matters. Let’s make the people industry — senior living and its relatives — the source that other industries look to when they need talent. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a protégé succeed.
