Generational Change in Your Organization: Vision, Trust, Awareness

By Robby Rodriguez

It was 1980 and a bunch of twenty- and thirty-somethings started an organization with a vision of achieving social justice. They were idealistic young activists who had cut their teeth in the civil rights, antiwar, women’s and power identity movements. With Ronald Reagan ushering in a tide of conservatism, they built a strong a organization to maintain and move forward the gains of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Fast forward twenty-five years. It’s 2005 and there I was the newly appointed executive director of the SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP). Life got very interesting.

In this column I want to highlight three themes from our book, Working Across Generations: Defining the Future of Nonprofit Leadership that are important to understanding generational change on the individual and organizational level: Vision, Trust and Awareness.

Five years ago I was twenty eight years old, and taking over a twenty-five year old social justice organization with deep roots in the community and a long record of accomplishment. I was also taking over from two mentors—one a founder and the other a staffer of seventeen years.

This leadership transition also represented a generational shift. Not only were my mentors of a different generation but half the staff were under 30 while all the board members were over 50. I was mentored to someday take over the organization. They trusted me. But, with my mentors gone, I learned this trust did not transfer to some of the board members and other long time members of the organization as well as organizational allies and funders.

It didn’t take long before I felt micromanaged. Questions were asked of me that were never asked of my predecessors. I couldn’t understand why. I took things personally. I became defensive. We struggled with each other–and it wasn’t pretty. We engaged in power struggles and drew artificial lines in the sand. A difficult situation got a lot harder.

Vision
When I took over the organization the board, staff and members of the organization were not on the same page. We had different notions of the type of change we thought possible. Many of the older members of the organization had experienced the tidal wave of change of the 60’s and 70’s and the subsequent conservative backlash. They saw our role as digging in and acting as a watchdog organization. I, along with other and mostly younger members of the organization saw our role as building power to achieve our mission. Not being on the same page in terms of the vision led to disagreements about strategy.

Trust
But it wasn’t just that we didn’t share the same vision for the organization. We didn’t trust each other. Members of the organization who were of different generations didn’t have a history of working together.

Building trust took time, patience and opportunity for us to work together and to get to know each other. We couldn’t rely on our memories from the good ol’ days because we hadn’t created any together. People from different generations aren’t going to have the types of bonds that lead to trust right off the bat. So we need to be deliberate about developing them.

Awareness
In my experience at SWOP, we needed the help of a “bridge builder”—a baby boom generation staffer who had the trust of both generations to help us achieve a shared vision and build experiences together, someone who was able to both support the younger generation leaders in the organization while at the same time challenging some of the older generation leaders assumptions about the past and present in a way that I couldn’t do.

In hindsight we learned the importance of sharing a vision of the change we thought possible in the world and what that meant for the organization’s work. We learned we needed to build trust among one another and we learned we had to develop an awareness about the role we play in an organizational structure that relates to our life cycle and generation.

About the Author
Robby Rodriguez is the Executive Director of the SouthWest Organizing Project, a social justice community organizing group founded in 1980 and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  He recently co-authored, along with Frances Kunreuther and Helen Kim, a book entitled Working Across Generations:  Defining the Future of Nonprofit Leadership released in October 2008.  Currently, he is a team member of the Building Movement Project and chair of the Pushback Network. 

About the Book
The authors provide a range of ideas on how to approach generational shifts in leadership so that the contributions of long-time leaders are valued, new and younger leaders’ talent is recognized, and groups are better prepared to work across generational divides. Giving context to these differences, they explore the current assumptions about the upcoming transition between generations in the social sector; introduce new ideas or frames for thinking about generational leadership change; and examine how this change poses individual, organizational, and systemic challenges for those in the social sector. In addition, they provide numerous examples and practical exercises to show how to address these issues. The book concludes with critical advice on how to communicate across generations and key recommendations for future research and action.

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