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The Strengths, And Challenges, of Mid-Career Executives
I’ve just spent an unusual week, for me, working with classes of mid-career executives on their persuasiveness and influence as communicators. Unusual, because I’m more often working one-on-one with senior executives and professional speakers. But recently I taught in the Harvard executive education program and at a corporation on consecutive days.
First, let me acknowledge what fun it was and what a privilege to engage with smart and focused minds for an entire day at a time — in person. Second, I’m going to reflect on a few takeaways on the current state of this extraordinary group of leaders. With a caveat that this is hardly a statistically significant sample, let me make a few observations about the people I saw running a wide variety of global organizations today.
They need to check in with their workplaces regularly. If you want anecdotal evidence that the pace of work has accelerated, this level of worker provides it clearly enough in their need to dive into text messages, Slack, or email every couple of hours. Gone is the time when one could leave the workplace for a whole day and check in that evening or (gasp) the following morning.
They are settling into a hybrid workplace. These executives see the need for the occasional face-to-face meeting and the efficiency of video conferencing. No…
