Episode 5: The Courage to Light Another Torch

Sep 22

Welcome to the That Took Courage Podcast where we slow clap for courage, provide commentary and offer recommendations around communication challenges.

We have lost some seriously powerhouse women this past month. A world without Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem? What do you even mean????

When someone of consequence passes away, we are left to think about what they did with their lifetime. In the case of Gloria Steinem in particular, I felt particularly mournful about a timeline in need of her particular brand of leadership.

I’ll come back to her leadership style, and why I think she is a person of courage, but I want to jump to “why” I think we will miss it dearly in this time.

You see, our leaders are leading well beyond the age we might expect there to be transition. Congress is an easy data source for this so we’ll start there and then look at business transition data.

If you look at what many see as a reasonable retirement age of sixty-five, 194 members or 36% are 65 years old and older. If you break it down by chamber, 56% of Senators are 65 and older and 31.4% of members of the house are 65 and older.

So, if we look at both chambers of congress, 36% are above age 65. The numbers get bigger when we start looking at leadership in both houses - especially in the Senate where 65% of committee chairs are over 65-years-old and 66.7% of elected-party leadership is over 65-years-old.

It’s important to me that we stop and establish one thing at this point: I don’t think it is a bad thing for a person over 65-years-old to serve in Congress. This exercise is simply to establish some baseline facts around who is leading our country.

Now, let’s zoom out a bit and look at what we know about the age of the workforce in the United States. The summary is really that participation rates in the 55+ share of the workforce roughly doubled, from 12% to nearly 25%, over 30 years even as the youngest cohort's share shrank by a third.

Just like the numbers we looked at in the United States Congress, leadership in the private sector skews older with the average age of CEOs now at 61 which is up a full decade since 2000. The average age at appointment has risen from 48 in 2000 to 55 today. 42% of U.S. CEOs are now over 60, and only about 15% are under 50.

So, what does all of this mean and why does it matter?

Let’s go back to Gloria Steinem here.

For many, Gloria Steinem was the face of what we call “2nd Wave Feminism.” She was often asked about succession planning and, specifically, who she would pass the torch to. She famously responded to this question by saying, "At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I'm 'passing the torch.' I explain that I'm keeping my torch, thank you very much—and I'm using it to light the torches of others."

This quote, and the spirit behind it, was the inspiration behind this podcast episode. Steinem observes, quite rightly, that we tend towards hierarchical thinking - preferring as humans to establish WHO is in charge. She rejected this. And this takes alot of courage. We just spent alot of time together looking at public and private sector workforce and leadership in the United States. We are seeing that there is a whole generation of leaders who have declined to pass the torch. And, this is the prerogative of every person - I am not here to say that we need to have torches passed immediately.

What I am saying is that what Gloria Steinem gifted us in her statement is an idea. An idea around shared leadership and the responsibility of people who are in leadership positions to take great care and intention to light the torch of the next generation of leaders.

I hope that what you take from today is information. I hope that you begin to think about how we share power and make space for the inevitable: a world where we are no longer the ones in charge.

Our nation is facing unprecedented challenges in the next few years with a shuddering economy, an international community that has lost trust in us, shocking income disparity, worsening health incomes and the list goes on. Our country will rise at the pace of our leaders – and I am not referring to the net worth of our leaders. I am referring to what we used to take for granted: integrity, courage, moral fortitude, sacrifice and overall human decency.

Keep your torch, but do not ignore the next generation of torch-bearers. Lighting another torch takes great courage because it requires humility and acceptance of the future as it is: in other words, there will be a day when you are not in the board room. There will be a day when someone else leads your organization. To prepare someone else to sit in your seat takes tremendous wisdom and fortitude and it is the responsibility of our leaders not to imagine that they are indispensable but to imagine that someone else is capable and ready to bring new ideas.

Rest in Peace, Gloria Steinem. Your wisdom will help guide us to a better future. May we remember and may we pay our respect by lighting other torches.

If you have a communications related question or a scenario you want broken down, get in touch by visiting thattookcourage.com

Sources:

Erin Vincent

Episode 5: The Courage to Light Another Torch

Episode 4: The Courage to be Helped

that took courage