Gen X Leaders & Gen X Leadership Styles

There are four large generations in the workplace simultaneously, with different values, strengths, and needs. This makes it challenging for every employer to find a coherent culture and employee offer to make their Future of Work work.

On this journey, much has been said about the Baby Boomers, Millennials, and Gen Z. Very little, vanishingly little, has been said about Gen X, the generation I and many of my clients coming for transformational leadership development are part of.

I have long placed my hope in Gen X for a better world and for surviving the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—climate change, inequality, political instability, and post-industrial ill health.

I will explain why.

Coming of age in the 80s and 90s, through waves of cultural revolution that stretched from Punk to Rave, many Gen Xers are likely to have lost it in a mosh pit or got lost at a festival, like Glastonbury or Burning Man, talent a gap year to volunteer, backpacked around South America or travelled to isolated places in Thailand or Sub-Saharan Africa. Most Gen X-ers will have experienced psychotherapy, counseling, coaching, yoga, or mindfulness and the humbling and leveling effects of mental health and existential challenges.

Experiences of dancing, metaphorically or literally, in the sea of common humanity, which became far more common for Gen Xers than previous generations, gave us deeply held values of equity, inclusivity, and human-centric management without the need for radical and righteous political movements.

This does not mean we are boring, vanilla-beige centrists, though.

Schooled on The Goonies, The Breakfast Club, and Dazed and Confused, we GenX-ers tend to understand the political and cultural sensibilities that our Millennial and Gen Z cousins are inspired by, but we don’t wholly define ourselves by them.

This means many of us, particularly those in professional roles, are indeed awake but we don’t feel the need to cancel anybody in wokeness. We honor JK Rowling for her contribution without feeling the need to slam her for opinions we may not share.

This means we can share commonalities with departing Baby Boomers (our parents’ generation) and Gen Y/Z (our kids’ generation) alike. We are cultural translators, workplaces Hermes, helping the younger generations embody the values of hard work, meritocracy, and rigor and helping the older generations get the importance of purpose, in-it-togetherness, and authentic (because it costs the bottom line), wellbeing, inclusion, leadership development, and sustainability activities.

Gen Xers are being offered the keys to the kingdom of our businesses and societies. Tens of thousands of late 40s to late 50s VPs and SVPs are rising to the C-Suite. This is Gen X’s historic moment.

Even though I know that such broad generational insights are as much marketing narrative as evidential truths, it really is down to Gen X to take the leadership position for our era of climate change and revived right-wing populism and make the tough choices needed by bringing together their twin impulses for radical change and progressive, evolutionary continuity.

Gen X—named as such as we resisted being named or had too nebulous features to be pigeon-holed—is being invited to step up. We can now define what the X has meant all along. X for Transformation, Adaptation, and Regeneration.

To seize the moment, we must remember our deep, heartfelt desire for a better world, which saw us campaigning for change, dreaming up utopias in pubs/pubs, connecting with other ethnicities and races while on adventures, and hugging random revelers in clubs… and then connecting that to our lauded qualities of seriousness, stability, effectiveness, business acumen, and grit.

This will require us to give up some of the comforts and conveniences of age and personal prosperity that the Boomers arguably struggled to do as they shifted from the hippy generation to the wealthy one. This is what I have called elsewhere the “purpose premium.”

What we get in return, the “purpose dividend,” is a deeply meaningful role in shaping a better, more equal, and regenerative future. We can look at our Gen Z and Alpha kids and grandkids that are still a twinkle, squarely in the eye knowing that we wielded power with purpose, values, and integrity.

To be successful, we must reassure Boomers and Millennials/Zers alike that we understand their concerns and fears for the future and keep them as safe as we can during turmoil and turbulence as we lead our organizations and nations through much-needed, existentially necessary, adaption and transformation.

Now is the time to push forward toward the more sustainable, equitable, and regenerative future we can envision in our hearts and minds. We have to lead our companies on the journey of transformation and make what comes next work for as many as possible.

Thankfully, our daily leadership practices and engaged parenting commitments—our openness to therapy and coaching and empathy from dancing and traveling—can keep us grounded, caring, learning, and resilient in the micro-moments where all leadership plays out.

Now is the time for our generation to step up, rise to the very real challenges we face, and make a difference using all the experiences, insights, and wisdom we have gathered on our journey from Fight Club and Fat Boy Slim to today.

Onwards and upwards, Gen X leaders.

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