Eat Our Young

It was the 1990’s.

After volunteering to facilitate some internal workshops and receiving requests to run similar sessions elsewhere, I discovered to my delight, that ‘adult education’ was becoming a thing.

Excitedly, I thought to myself, "I believe I've found my happy place" - a profession that I could wholeheartedly embrace, with the hope of becoming a great educator one day.

So, I took the initiative to reinvent myself as a HR professional in Learning & Development (L&D).

After six years of dedicating weekends and evenings to University, engaging in part-time contract teaching at TAFE, building 'stage presence’, all the while working full-time... I secured a position with a large healthcare provider overseeing their L&D. Woohoo!

Now I was “Happy Scared”.

Happy to escape from my previous job, which was rife with dysfunction, I was thrilled to secure my first full-time professional 'grown-up' role in the L&D space.

Scared because I was grappling with having no experience in healthcare that subsequently triggered many 'Imposter Syndrome Moments’.

A few weeks into my new role, I attended my first monthly meeting with all the Directors of Nursing and various team leaders.

The tension in the room was palpable. The meeting quickly deteriorated into a toxic sideshow, with people making cynical and snide comments. In some cases, the more established senior managers were overtly shaming the younger leaders!

Turning to my new colleague I whispered, "What is going on?" She replied, "This is what we do around here." While still confused, she continued, "Oh Richard, we are in health. We Eat Our Young."

Twelve months later, we persuaded the Executive to run some workshops from a company that many health people were raving about - Proteus Leadership. The founder Des Penny, agreed to deliver some sessions aimed at helping us transform our culture and improve our leadership behaviours.

I vividly remember the day when Des walked into our training room (The Viper’s Den) and went about knocking his presentation out of the park. He had us captivated, whilst maintaining his composure in a very tense environment, sharing insights into what great workplaces could be, and should be.

Throughout the session he fearlessly called out any cynical comments, even when they came from our most cynical senior leaders. Amazing!

Des challenged us by stating, "People only do what they do because we let them", emphasising the importance of not condoning or 'walking past' bad behaviour.

Now it’s the 2020’s.

Thank goodness for the positive changes over the past thirty years.

Smart and insightful people now swiftly call this stuff out or opt to leave and seek out more functional workplaces with better leaders.

We've reached a point where we no longer tolerate the ritualised bullying of our emerging talent. The days of feeling threatened, scared and "eating our young" are behind us. Well, I truly hope they are.

People now realise that there is a better way. We nurture and develop our less experienced people and emerging leaders because they represent our future… and because it’s the right thing to do.

Serving Our Young

As I often say, our primary role is to serve. To serve our people, our clients and the greater cause. The focus is not on ‘eating our young’ to preserve our positional power but by Serving Our Young to create great future leaders.

This can only happen when we take care of each other. We need to build up our less experienced colleagues, especially those embarking on their careers, whilst fostering a collegial and collaborative environment. This will then cultivate outstanding leadership and build workplaces that are truly committed to providing exceptional service.

After all, that's what we are paid to do.

Have a wonderful week, be kind and please… no eating your young at work!

Richard Dore
CEO - Director Of Partnerships
Proteus Leadership