Youth are key to making real social change. Here’s what they need to thrive in your organization.

This story is in partnership with RBC Future Launch, RBC’s $500 million commitment to help Canadian youth prepare for the jobs of today and tomorrow. 

History tells us that young people have always been at the forefront of social progress. But that’s most often been outside of institutions, through social movements, startups, and grassroots activism.

Meanwhile, young people’s lived experience tells us that they’re not always empowered to make similar change within and on behalf of institutions and organizations. That’s a huge missed opportunity.

The good news is there are organizations doing things differently, and young people leading the way from the inside. Future of Good, in partnership with RBC Future Launch and MENTOR Canada, hosted three such young leaders for a candid conversation about the future of youth working in social impact organizations. Here are the tips they had for social impact organizations sector-wide. 

 

Youth need sponsors and champions 

Young people thrive in organizations that “reward them for their work with more than just exposure,” said Malika Asthana, manager of strategy and public affairs at digital learning platform D2L.

Linxi Mytkolli, a senior program manager at the Mental Health Commission of Canada, agreed, but with a caveat. “At the same time, I think exposure and ownership are so critically important,” Mytkolli said. “If I think back to the most influential mentors or managers or leaders I’ve had, they’ve given me the space to take ownership of my work in a public way, not just privately. That has changed my self-confidence, my professional progression. I think it’s really important.”

It’s also important to actively and meaningfully listen to young people on your team, not just when it’s convenient — like when racial justice rises to mainstream conversation and only then do you consult the young, racialized team members — said Asthana. “Those are the times when intrapreneurship, you don’t necessarily feel that it is a safe space,” she said, “because the burden is placed on you as a community member to be doing that education for people. And even if you have been raising the issue for a number of years, you haven’t found the champions before.” 

Those in positions of power within organizations can do concrete things to empower younger team members.  “One thing that leaders with access to finances can do today,” is think about the pool of unspent funds you have for the remainder of this fiscal year and commit that…specifically [to] employee experiences.”

 

Create a culture of candor 

“You’re beyond just your worker self,” said Bruno Lam, a senior investment associate with the TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good. “Bringing your humanity includes your personal and professional ambitions as well as your wellbeing [to work.] So, how can a manager or any organizational leader support the entire self of a young professional?” he asked. Fostering youth leadership also means committing to understanding why it’s so hard for young people to make their way up the organizational ladder in the first place, Lam added. It means “giving that space for young people to describe the barriers they’re facing on a day to day basis.” 

Millennials and Generation Z are more comfortable talking about things like burnout and mental illness than their parents’ generation, so creating a culture of candor means creating space for these conversations. “I try to practice radical honesty as much as I can…and sometimes that radical honesty is saying, ‘No, I cannot take this on.’ And that doesn’t make me less of an employee, it doesn’t make me less successful, it doesn’t make me less of anything, it actually makes me stronger. I think to enable that safe space,” Mytkolli continued, “we need to lead by example. We need to see that our leaders are also saying no.”

Mark Beckles, vice president of social impact and innovation at RBC, spoke at the end of the conversation. He agreed on the point of radical candor — and described the type of leadership he wants to embody: “I, as a leader, [must give] a colleague of mine or a direct report of mine permission to provide me transparent feedback or to articulate to me how I am making them feel…I would then say the most progressive organizations, the most progressive leaders, [are those] who recognize the importance of giving their colleagues [this] permission.”

 

Lead with empathy 

“One of the things preventing organizations from moving forward is [the lack of] empathetic leadership, and understanding that empathy is so key to becoming a supervisor in a staff role,” said Asthana. “The best leaders I’ve had…are the ones who can notice when I’m not engaging as fully as I should be and pull me aside, even if it’s scheduling a Zoom call for the next day, and say, ‘Hey, what’s up with you? Is there anything I can do to support you?’” 

Asthana added that empathetic leadership — like the kind that colleague showed her — encourages youth to step into leadership, too. “That one moment makes you feel psychologically safe enough to want to propose more ideas.” 

Mytkolli made it clear, though, that managers should not be playing the role of therapist, and that boundaries are important. “If we practice care with each other, I think that can be great, but also depleting. We need to also practice just as much care with ourselves.”

 

Recognize all types of leadership 

Often within traditional organizational structures, leadership is defined by a person’s position in the hierarchy. That’s limiting, said Mytkolli. “I think we don’t give our colleagues enough credit for the leadership they exemplify every day. I’ve learned tonnes from my official managers, but I have learned just as much from my colleagues. They have mentored and coached me,” she said. “Those leaders deserve as much credit as our formal leaders do.” 

Mytkolli had a message directly for young leaders around this concept, too: “We owe it to ourselves to give ourselves permission to do great things and to step outside our defined responsibilities.”

 

Be intentional about feedback 

“It’s such a harsh transition from school to work, where you’re so used to putting in assignments and then getting grades, where your grades determine the entire course of your life,” said Asthana.

She also suggested senior colleagues act as guides for younger team members. “More time spent helping you chart your path through an organization. This is something I’ve really found challenging throughout the course of my career, where I don’t know what I need to be doing to move forward. It’s all so nebulous and I don’t know what’s going to stick to help me get to the next level.” 

 

Youth want flexibility, responsiveness, and individuality

Mytkolli added a reminder to the conversation, and a lens through which all the comments should be viewed, which is that youth are far from a monolith. “One thing that we need to recognize is that ‘youth’ is overgeneralized,” said Mytkolli. “You could be 19 or 29. You could be single or have multiple dependents. Those needs and what that lifestyle looks like are so different in that age range.” 

Mytkolli also said workplaces that are accommodating of different work preferences, styles, and the needs of those with disabilities and chronic illness are here to stay. “I promise that the accommodations that help me show up best to work will also help [others],” she said. “I really strongly believe that if we strive to make changes — not accommodations, accommodations implies that they’re temporary and you’re a special case — but if we make adaptations to our way of work to make it accessible for those at the margins, it will be so much better for everybody on the team.”

 

Watch the full recording here: