On Friday, 28 September, the inaugural conference of the GFKM Leadership Conference series was held at Olivia Business Centre, the leading theme of which was “The Game of Generations” – i.e. intergenerational management. The aim of the conference was to develop common answers to questions about cooperation between different generations in the company, ways of effective leadership and management in generationally diverse teams, as well as an attempt to recognize how this topic will evolve in the future.
The conference was opened by the President of GFKM, Andrzej Popadiuk, and chaired by Piotr Świąc. He was the first to perform Prof. Piotr Płoszajski from the Warsaw School of Economics, who referred to intergenerational communication in the context of the avalanche of technological and civilizational changes. Next, Anna Dziarkowska-Stępniak, HR Director at ENERGA-Obrót S.A., presented the concept of the Leadership Performance Pipeline, i.e. “Results-oriented leadership”, successfully implemented in the company she represents. The message of the speech of the third speaker, Tomasz Owczarek from GFKM, was the motto “healthy leadership connects generations”. After the lunch break, Cameron Beazley, an expert in the field of deep learning and advanced statistical analysis methods, presented the results of research describing 30 specially selected personality traits that distinguish good leaders and the correlation of these traits with the effectiveness of leaders. Next, the conclusions of GFKM’s original research “Competences of the Manager of the Future” were presented by Tomasz Harackiewicz, GFKM consultant. The last of the presenters was a special guest of the conference, Prof. Eric Cornuel, Director General of EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development), who took up the topic of “Technology, Business Schools and Society”.
At the end of the conference, Andrzej Popadiuk led a panel with practitioners of intergenerational management: Konrad Lipski – experienced HR director and promoter of the Leadership Performance Pipeline, Anna Macnar – CEO at HRM Institute, Marta Moksa – Managing Director of O4 coworking in Olivia Business Centre and Kamil Sokolowski – top manager in the area of marketing and sales, expert in the field of young generations.
At this point, it is worth quoting the statement of the director of O4, Marta Moxa, summarizing the debate: “From my point of view, this closing discussion was extremely interesting. Without repeating trivial clichés about generational differences, without complaining about young people, without stereotypical thinking. For me, the most important takeaway from our discussion about managing age-diverse teams is that most of the changes are generally due to the development of managerial thought or the expansion of knowledge about human motivation rather than the fanciful needs of “millennials”. Equally valuable was the conversation about guidelines for effective collaboration, in which all discussants agreed that the key to success is to be aware of the goals of everyone in the team and address the tasks accordingly. That’s it and that’s it. No one is “the bad guy” in this story. Everyone has their own interests – and these can be reconciled!”
Małgorzata Gwozdz, Director of Corporate Affairs, commented on the conference in an interesting way. personnel in Olivia Business Centre: “In the discussion about the generation gap, I think it’s important to bridge these boundaries by understanding that in every community – small as a family and as big as a company – each member brings something interesting to the table. We would like the younger generations not to repeat our mistakes from the past and we pay attention to this instead of recognizing what interesting ideas and opinions they bring. We encourage them to make the decisions that we would make, rather than supporting them in making decisions that are consistent with their beliefs. What we know, e.g. business models, as stated by Prof. Płoszajski, they are leaving and must be replaced by new ones, created by generations entering the market. Let’s foster the exchange of views and promote their meetings – just like we do in Olivia”
Fig. Grzegorz Pachla
