Move Over Millennials… Designing Leadership Development for the Next Generation

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Short Description

A new generation has emerged into young adulthood that will challenge the way we design and facilitate leadership development. Generation Z, born from 1995-2010, may look like Millennials, yet differ in their leadership beliefs and styles. Through reflection, dialogue, and action planning exercises, participants will explore how to best design leadership programs, courses, and experiences with Generation Z in mind.

Detailed Abstract

Description
Leadership educators grapple every day with how to best help students learn and develop their leadership capacity. But, our programs, curriculum, and practices were likely developed with previous generations in mind. This new cadre of Generation Z students will challenge us to re-conceptualize our approach to leadership education and development to ensure we are providing the most meaningful and effective experiences possible.

For more than a decade, a great focus has been placed on how to better understand and work with Millennials, those born from 1982 to 1994 (Strauss & Howe, 1990). But, a new generation has emerged into young adulthood that will challenge the way we have been designing and facilitating leadership development experiences for college students. Generation Z is comprised of those born from 1995-2010, and are determined, innovative, and responsible (Seemiller & Grace, 2016). Although some characteristics may look similar to the Millennial Generation, Generation Z possesses a whole new set of attributes and experiences that shape what they believe about leadership and how they want to engage in leadership development. How are we prepared to adapt to this changing demographic and reframe our programs, curriculum, and practice to effectively develop the leadership capacity of Generation Z students? This session will provide a space for participants to learn about emerging trends with this generational cohort and engage in discussion and action planning on how to create and adapt their leadership programs and opportunities to meet the needs of Generation Z.

Outline
This session will begin with a brief (20-minute) overview of Generation Z using findings from the 2014 Generation Z Goes to College study (1,143 participants), 2014 CIRP study disaggregated to only Generation Z students (150,171 participants), Northeastern University’s Innovation Imperative study on Generation Z (1,015 participants), market research, national polling data from organizations such as Pew, Gallup, and Census, adolescent social science data, and the 2017 Generation Z Stories Project.

After the overview, participants will have the opportunity to engage in self-led topical breakout discussions on issues they might be grappling with, unanswered questions, effective practices they might already be engaging in, and innovative ideas related to the topic. Topics are narrow enough to focus the conversation but wide enough to allow the conversation to address a variety of subtopics. Topical breakouts include (but could also be shaped by the participants’ interests):
• Recruiting students (marketing, outreach, parent involvement, etc.)
• Communication (technology use, social media, one on one communication, etc.)
• Designing co-curricular programs (structures, processes, etc.)
• Designing leadership courses (instructional design, assignments, etc.)
• Leadership content (topics covered in programs and/or courses)
• Civic engagement (service-learning, social change curriculum, etc.)
• Crafting leadership roles, opportunities, and experiences (duties, expectations, positions, etc.)
• Assessing learning and development (individual learning, program evaluation, etc.)
• Recognizing achievement (milestones, awards, recognition, etc.)
Topical breakout discussions will occur for 20 minutes. During that time, participants can move between groups or stay at one space for the entire 20 minutes.

The last 20 minutes of the workshop will be spent on action planning. This will involve applying ideas and practices learned from the session thus far into their own programs and courses. If they have come to the session with colleagues, they are encouraged to engage in this process together. The presenter will be available to help participants formulate ideas and plans for returning to their campuses and/or organizations.

Sub Unit

• Leadership Education

Presenter

• Corey Seemiller, Wright State University