- Just ahead on "Leadership Lessons for Home, Work, and Life," we take a look at leadership then and now.

Tonight's critical conversation brings discussion from four more great central Illinois leaders and it all starts right now.

(inspiring music) (inspiring music continues) Good evening, thanks so much for joining us.

I'm Amy Burkett.

This is part two of our leadership series.

If you've been a leader for more than a decade, you've seen some huge shifts from command and control leadership, to these days, employees often don't wanna be managed at all.

Today's leaders have a brand new set of expectations in the way they motivate and want to be motivated and the way they work and problem solve.

Forbes Magazine recently stated, "Good enough doesn't even come close anymore."

We have an enormous number of choices, less tolerance, more self-interest, and a dramatically different definition of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

So let's meet two more of "Peoria Magazine's" 40 Leaders Under Forty and jump right into our conversation.

Shelley Sharp is an accounting manager with Risinger Brothers and Heather Bean Oyler is the fund development chair with Junior League of Peoria.

Ladies, thank you so much for being with us.

Let's talk a little bit.

We're gonna start, Shelley, with you then and now.

What have you seen as one of the biggest changes in leading a younger workforce?

- You kind of hit it right on point with your summary there where the younger generation doesn't like to be told what to do.

Even, I mean, in general, I don't like to be told what to do.

Just being able to be a good listener to the younger generation and kind of hear what they want, hear their ideas.

They wanna work from home more, they want more flexibility, but we also, as leaders, need them to get their work done.

So just overall being able to work together and grow with that younger generation has been key for me.

- Great, Heather, talk to us a little bit.

What have you seen as the changes in leading this younger workforce?

- I definitely have seen the transition to wanting to do so many more things virtual so their location can be very fluid.

I know when I first entered the workforce, we were doing everything around a table.

Everyone was working together and now you can have one person on one side of the country, another person on the other side of the country, and then a few people may be in the same city, just everyone's behind a screen.

- But that creates some challenges for those of us who really love team building.

I don't know, Shelley, if you have any strategies for that team building feeling when people are isolated all over the place.

- For my team, we don't have a ton of that.

I guess we do have somewhat of a satellite office in Florida and a few people working from home, not necessarily directly with me, but I know I've heard some people do trivia games with their team over Zoom or whatever means they're using, or they do maybe get together once a year in person so they can kind of get that feeling of community back again.

- And the fun, it seems like.

It seems like the younger employees want to make sure that they're having fun on their jobs.

Have you seen that as well?

- Yes.

In my office, yeah, we do have a lot of people located in Morton and in person, so we do try to do little fun giveaways.

You know, we give away cups, cards, tickets, and you have to do a little game in order to win those or something like that.

So yes, definitely, we see people...

I mean, of course, yeah, everyone wants to enjoy their job.

- Heather, talk to us a little bit.

Do you see any difference between for-profit and nonprofits in leading a younger workforce?

- I definitely do.

With nonprofits, it's been interesting, because you're having less young people who are wanting to get engaged necessarily in the organized groups, who are wanting to become members of something where there could be rules, where they could be required to be somewhere.

The older group, and I kind of fit somewhere in the middle, which is very interesting, because I definitely see both sides, but the older group, they're very much, "Okay, I have a meeting.

I need to be at the meeting."

It means that I'm going to make sure that I'm available.

A lot of the younger groups, it's whatever they wanna do whenever they're available.

Something better could easily come along and that's what they're gonna choose to do instead.

And it's definitely been very interesting, because it's the commitment level, I would say.

- Heather, I just wanna stay there for a minute, because as a, I'll call myself a more experienced leader, those rules have really been what I've lived by for so long.

It's hard for me to have a younger employee like, "Eh, I'm not gonna make it because this came up."

You said you're somewhere in between.

Help us kind of navigate that a little bit and give some advice to those of us who've been leading longer that are really struggling with this transition of being able to recognize, "What do you mean they're not gonna come to the meeting that we set?"

- I personally am very much a rule-follower.

I feel like they were put there and they help the organization succeed.

When I see some of both sides, it's that a lot of people, especially I'm in my late 30s, and then a lot of the younger generation, they have a lot of things that they need to do.

They focus on their mental health.

If they feel stressed, they're not gonna necessarily do something.

And I think that's one thing that the older generation needs to understand when they're dealing with the younger generation is that you have to understand that everybody has needs.

It's not as it was, even when I first entered the workforce, whether it's you have to do it, so you have to do it.

The younger generation definitely focuses on more balance, which is very good, but also it seems to easily affect their jobs or their community work in a negative way sometimes, because if they choose to do something, they choose to do it.

If they don't, they don't.

Not everyone is like that, but I definitely have seen the change happening with the 20s-ish crowd.

It's very interesting on how they make their choices and what they're going to spend their time doing or not, verse the older crowd who makes the commitment and they stick with it and they're going to continue it because they made the commitment.

So it's just interesting with retention, I think, too, across from the non-profit and for-profit world.

- Such great insight.

Thank you so much.

Shelley, we wanna go back to you a little bit and talk about that.

I love, and I go back to a Mr.

Incredible movie that Disney has, and we talk about Mrs.

Incredible being flexible.

I feel like that's how I think of leadership these days.

I have to do back handsprings and be able to stretch myself further than before, and really it is about me being even more flexible as a leader for this next generation of younger employees.

How do you manage that flexibility?

- I would say, again, kind of goes back to what I said at the beginning, just being able to be a good listener and hearing what everyone has to say and not just kind of making a decision that you think is right.

Kind of being open to new things as well.

I know our office didn't start off being really interested in people working from home, but now we've kind of had to do that.

- I was just gonna say, it's required.

Few people will take jobs that don't have that, at least a partial-remote opportunity.

- Exactly, and it really started with COVID.

That kind of forced us to have to work from home, but then we got a lot of feedback that people were saying, "Oh, we actually really liked working from home," and we're like, "Okay, we can work with you here," and now we've started doing some of that.

And yeah, just overall, as leaders, we are the ones making the decisions and being able to have the most information from whatever sources we have, if it's our employees, if it's the news, what's going on in the economy, just gathering all that and collaborating with everybody to make the right decisions for our company, and part of that is being flexible, like you mentioned.

- Thanks, Shelley.

Heather, back to you.

Let's talk a little bit about COVID.

The world changed because of COVID and that's really the pivot that I've seen in this younger employees that I had, even pre-COVID, their styles changed post-COVID.

Help us understand what other changes have you seen because of COVID?

- Definitely the use of technology within work and being able to work from anywhere.

I think it, you know, it's wonderful.

You can go ahead and you can work from home if you need to.

You have a sick child, maybe you don't need to take the day off of work anymore.

Maybe you have the ability to have them nap next to you and for you to work from home.

I would definitely say, though, that it's a blessing and a curse, because it also makes it so you have very little black and white between work and your work life and home life.

It's one of those things where you can be out of town, possibly on a vacation, and there's a meeting that you really need to do and your boss says to you, "I understand that you're on vacation, but I really need you to go ahead and call into this meeting and virtually join us," and I feel like it's made it very easy for employers to be able to ask that, as well as it's made it for employees to go ahead and do that.

Now on the flip side of it, I have friends who have gone on vacations and continue to work while they're there and their boss doesn't even know that they're enjoying time out with their family or hitting the beach, because in a lot of positions, you can work literally from anywhere now.

And so I feel like that's the biggest change, and it also, I feel like, has affected people's focus, because when you're at home, you can easily be working from your computer, but then also you can be, if you're just virtually in and they can't see you on the screen, you can be making macaroni and cheese for your child, you can be cleaning your home, you can be folding laundry, you can be laying on a beach.

You can really be anywhere, and so how are you fully, genuinely engaged in what you're doing for work if you're doing all these other things in the background?

- Ladies, we're almost running out of time.

I wanna talk about productivity, since we've spent a lot of this of leadership then and now, that remote seems to be a big thing that the younger workforce wants.

Have you seen any changes in productivity?

And we're gonna start with you, Heather.

- I definitely think I have, from things that I've seen go on with my friends, from things that I've done myself.

I've always been someone who works better when I'm in my office and necessarily working with a group.

I focus on a meeting so much better when I'm sitting around a board table with a group of individuals.

For me, I would say it has affected mine in the sense of what I said previously about if I'm on my computer doing a Zoom meeting, it's so easy for me to be doing other things.

You can have dual screens up, you can be working on one thing on a screen and you can have your Zoom on the other, and sometimes it makes it difficult to stay focused, to be honest with you.

And I think it definitely affects a lot of productivity, because if you're doing all these other things, you may not be getting all of your items that you need for work done.

But I do think that employers are expecting less sometimes from their employees, because now everyone's all over the place and they also can't keep track of what they're doing.

It's not that they're seeing them talk on their phone at their desk all day, it's not that they're seeing them up walking around talking to people.

They may be doing the same amount of work they were doing before, but they're less productive, because they're not there physically sitting in their seat, in my opinion.

- We're running outta time a little bit, but Shelley, I want you to share a little bit about that productivity standpoint.

How do you see it impacting?

- Yeah, Heather hit all the major points there, but I would say as leaders, it's our job to maybe try to push a little bit further with our teams and whatever boards were on.

But yeah, I definitely agree with everything she said about you don't have your eyes on your staff 24/7 when they're working from home, so that does definitely make it difficult.

But I think in most roles, there are ways to kind of gauge the productivity and which tasks have been completed for the day, but I can definitely see both sides where it is getting difficult.

- Feels a little like the wild West, ladies.

Thank you so much for all the great information you shared with us.

Well, Forbes.com has these tips to help leaders develop the skillsets necessary for today's guide and inspire environment.

(chill music) We begin continual learning and unlearning.

Every job these days is continually evolving, so great leaders are constantly learning, broadening their perspectives.

Today's leaders are highly observant and flexible.

Problem solving.

The days of taking names and kicking butt are a thing of the past.

Today's leader considers current issues from the perspective of making things better versus blaming.

The final tip is developing self-awareness.

Great leaders today have the ability to admit mistakes and learn from them.

They realize that what got them to where they are won't carry them to continued success.

(chill music) Let's continue our conversation with two more great panelists.

Welcome, Dr. Ashley Whitlatch, an advanced practice nurse at OSF Healthcare, and Kendra Belk, access service coordinator at Illinois Central College.

Ladies, thank you so much for being with us to continue to talk about leadership then and now.

Dr. Whitlatch, let's start with you.

What are you seeing from a medical standpoint?

Are you seeing changes in the workforce?

- Absolutely.

Healthcare is a forever-changing workforce, so leadership, when you come in and you start in the healthcare, you have new nurses, you have new patient care technician, new residents, new medical students, so leadership looks a little different when you initially start within healthcare.

So you know, as time progresses and you may get a new position, a new promotion, you graduate, so you start to look at leadership at different perspectives.

- What's the biggest tip that you would have for someone?

Because it's not our father's leadership anymore.

There is no command and control.

- Absolutely, so the biggest tip that I would give is to understand your leadership style or the leaders around you, their leadership style, because it will make the process a lot smoother.

- Great advice.

Kendra, talk to us a little bit.

What is the number one thing that you had seen in transitioning from a leadership from maybe when you were new on the job to the fact that now you're leading newer employees?

- It's definitely different.

I think that the way leadership is set up now, especially in higher education, we still do have, I guess, that hierarchy because we have our president and then all the VPs and it trickles down, but for me, coming from just being an everyday employee and reporting to someone, and now having people report to me, I have to be more mindful of what my leadership style is, and it's something that I hadn't considered before in my employment role.

Moreso out in the community when I'm doing things, but not at work.

So I just am very cognizant of how I am leading people and am I being clear and concise and setting expectations for the people that do work under me?

- So these days the world has just changed.

I mean, I've been doing this for a long time and what I see in younger employees often is the fact that they want those promotions really fast, and some of us who've been around a while, it may have taken us a lot longer to get there.

Dr. Whitlatch, what do you see and how do you help young people have the right expectation that perhaps they can't go from an entry-level position to president of a hospital in (snaps) six months?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

So I think it's very important to set a clear expectation right off the bat and just educate them on the importance of the experience that it takes to become a leader.

There are different ways to be a leader, but when you think about running a healthcare organization, that takes a lot more skills that you develop over time.

So I think that it's important to set clear expectations and to let them know what they are up against and what they will go through and what they will experience so that they can become a leader also.

- And we truly are talking life and death in your situation, which a lot of other industries don't have to worry about.

Does that add a level of complexity as well?

- So that can be different, because you have different people who specialize in different areas.

So you have people who are around death all the time and they specialize in, like cardiac ICU, things like that, versus you have some people that just work outpatient.

So that can vary depending on the level, but either way, I think whatever experience you have, it will give you the qualities and the characteristics that you need to become a leader.

- Thank you.

Kendra, talk to me more.

What have you seen not work in leading this current generation of younger employees?

- Things that don't work are micromanagement.

They do not like micromanagement at all.

And I think even me, so being a millennial, that's just something that my generation does not really care for, 'cause the expectation is that if you're being micromanaged, then you're not doing something right, and so they really like the idea of autonomy and being able to take the lead on things.

So they do like being in a leadership role, they just kinda need the leadership skills nurtured in order to do it effectively.

- But how can every...

If everyone is a leader, and we always are.

The hardest person we will ever have to lead is ourselves, so we're all leaders, but do we see the hierarchy sometimes being a challenge?

If someone is leading a position but they have to report up to other people, have you seen challenges there?

- Definitely.

Anytime I do see that challenge though, say it's somebody reporting to me, I like to do it more of a collaboration versus a dictatorship where I'm telling you to do something.

I wanna know what you're good at.

So we all come in with these duties and responsibilities and responsibilities as assigned, but that doesn't always mean that that might be your niche, and so if I'm getting to know you and I'm wanting to really nurture the leadership skills that you do have, then I only wanna give you tasks that I feel like you're gonna be able to succeed at.

- So good.

Dr. Whitlatch, let's talk about that.

- It's wonderful.

- It takes some time to get to know each employee and finding where their strengths, and I always hate to say weaknesses.

I like to say growth opportunities.

People have growth opportunities in certain areas sometimes.

- Absolutely.

- How do you find the time to find those answers?

- Well, I think that comes with your day-to-day work.

So whoever you're working with at that time, you kinda pick up on their strengths and their weaknesses.

There's been times where I have pulled people to the side and say, "Hey, maybe next time we can focus on this."

It's all about uplifting and encouraging, and to be a leader, you have be able to make another leader, so being able to guide and direct and just give positive feedback that is accepted by that person.

- Focusing on the positive is always great, but sometimes negative things happen and they do need to be addressed.

So Kendra, how do you deal with that?

When there is a negative situation that needs to be addressed, what strategies do you use?

- So part of my job, even before I became access services coordinator, is that I'm a licensed therapist, and so I'm really big on having those difficult conversations and using those coping skills and communication skills.

So really just sitting down with that individual and talking to them about what they're doing right, so you know, "X, Y, and Z did really, really well.

How can we fix this problem area?

And what do you feel like was a challenge for you?"

And so seeing from their perspective what they felt was challenging, not necessarily what I felt, because perception is different for everybody.

- And that's such a coaching strategy, asking questions so that they can come up with the answers as opposed to us saying, "This was wrong."

Dr. Whitlatch, talk to us a little bit.

There's so many responsibilities in leadership these days that we all are coaches as well.

How do you put that on top of being a doctor?

(both laughing softly) - So I think that in the position that I'm in, it is just a recognized leadership role.

So one good thing about my role is that I can help all of my staff.

I can guide, I can educate, so that is one thing that I try to do daily, is educate everyone around me to help them be a better individual, or better at their job, or just give a piece of positive feedback.

So I think it just kind of comes with it.

- Does it kinda go in there, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?

For a really old phrase.

I know I date myself with that, (laughs) but we don't want that vinegar to be out there, because it turns people off.

And then we've had so much turnover in the workforce.

- Yes.

- How, Kendra, have you been able to kinda stabilize and reduce that turnover in the employees that you work with?

- In my sector, because we're working with access services students, a lot of it is more like a specialized niche.

So I'll have students that may have a hearing disability, and so I'm working with interpreters, and so those are more contract positions versus them being internal employees, and so I think that makes it a little easier to have less turnover.

Sometimes students have worked with these individuals throughout their whole time growing up in the Peoria area, if they're from here.

And then as far as the employees that do work internally with me, to keep them, I like to do check-ins.

"What is working for you?

What isn't working for you?

ICC is so big.

Is there something else that you would like to be doing?"

There's always opportunity for them to have other leadership positions on different committees and things like that.

- Such great advice.

And Kendra, I just wanna congratulate you on the new role that you have as a full-time mom to that wonderful five-month-old child of yours.

Congratulations on transitioning into a new leadership responsibility that you have.

Dr. Whitlatch, that means I'm gonna give you the last word here.

When we're talking about trying to keep a workforce and not have perhaps as much turnover, strategies that you've seen that have been helpful?

- I think the most important one is just being transparent.

Transparent about what the vision is, about what what we would like for the future of this organization, being transparent about what is expected, the expectations, our goals, things like that.

So just being absolutely transparent about what is expected of that individual.

- I think the hardest thing for me in leadership sometimes is it's hard to say all the expectations up front.

Ladies, what do you see when you're trying to say, "Yes, we have this job description, it's written down on paper, but there's always those other duties as assigned, and life evolves."

How do we help when we see that an expectation has changed in a job.

How do we help help them navigate that?

- I think initially, like I said, healthcare is forever changing.

- Sure.

- So one thing that I always start off with is just saying that you have to be comfortable with change, and this change can happen at any time, especially during COVID.

Things were changing every five minutes, it seemed like.

But you know, just being upfront about being comfortable with change is so important.

And then when those changes do happen, do we need to provide education or other resources to help you maneuver through this?

- The phrase is, "Change is the only constant in life," right, ladies?

- Mm-hmm.

- Yes.

- Thank you so much.

We so appreciate your time and sharing your wisdom with us.

- Thank you.

- Well, thank you.

- That does it for this particular episode of "Leadership Lessons for Home, Work, and Life."

We appreciate your time and we look forward to seeing you back here again next time.

Goodnight, my friends.

(chill music)