DE PERE (NBC 26) — Business leaders and employees from around the Green Bay area joined at St. Norbert College on Monday evening for a leadership workshop.
The college's Center for Exceptional Leadership hosted New York Times bestselling author John Bacon to discuss leadership tools as well as how to recruit and retain young employees.
Bacon is most well known for his book "Let Them Lead," in which he talks about how he helped change the worst high school hockey team in the country into a winning team.
He talked about how leadership comes from a strong culture.
"One is very high standards for behavior, and two is we let them lead. I gave them the keys to the car and they proved amazingly good at leading themselves," said Bacon.
Bacon said that as a leader in business or sports, it can be hard to balance being too controlling and also giving enough freedom to give up control and let young adults lead themselves even if that means failing and facing setbacks.
"So the unusual thing here is the ones who've got the guts to have high standards usually are control freaks who don't want to give off control. The ones who're willing to give up control usually are laissez-faire and don't have very high standards. It's the combination that's so unusual," said Bacon.
When it comes to bridging the gap between different generations in the workplace, Bacon said achieving goals requires communication about how to achieve those goals.
"How little the two generations seem to understand each other, they're both scared of each other by the way. They don't admit that they're both mystified by each other and it's not that crazy. Sit down and talk to each other and you probably want the same things," said Bacon.
