All too often we hear stories about managers being put into positions with no training, no opportunity for mentorship, no upskilling; just expectations to lead teams of upwards of 10 - 15 people solely because they were “really good at their job.” Because of this, organizations are seeing retention and employee engagement at lower rates than ever because their managers were not adequately trained or supported. 

Transparently, this was me in my first time managing a team.

I had good intentions to be a great manager, but I didn’t understand that managing people is a new skill set that needs to be learned. Just because I was good at project management, community engagement, and inclusion by design DID NOT mean I was even close to being a great manager of people and leading teams to reach goals.

Pssssssst.

Your aversion to being consistent is eroding the trust you desperately want your members to have in you. 

Recently I've had several conversations with leaders across organization types and one of the key throughlines across all of those different people was consistency is the only way they could build true teams built on trust and dependence on one another.

“Our members just don’t want to sit in a room for even 45 minutes and listen to a speaker. We pull teeth to get them in there.” 

I’ve heard this sentiment from student leaders several times over the past 6 months (you may have even thought this recently), and honestly I have many thoughts.

So let’s start here. Are traditional, 60 minute keynotes dead in the water for the current generation of college students?