“How do you manage these millennials?”

Questions about leading millennials in the workplace are rarely asked without a tone of frustration. Established leaders are frustrated with the perceived lack of strong work ethic in the post-collegiate labor pool. The approach to work ethic for baby boomers is vastly different from the approach of millennials and the emerging ‘iY’ generation (those born after 1990). That much is obvious. The frustration of some of the established leaders I work with is both understandable and unproductive. You will not resolve your frustration with repeated attempts to impose your work ethic.

For the sake of future generations of leadership, we have to recover an inheritance mindset that has been largely lost among baby boomers. How do we get that ground back? We’re going to have to do an uncomfortable thing with our young prospective leaders: understand the world from their perspective and encourage their growth into effective leadership.

Lower the Employee Bar

I realize that this heading just offended many sensibilities. Let me explain. As a young parent, I often found myself frustrated with my children because their behavior didn’t meet my expectations. I confided in a close friend. His recommendation was immediate and simple, “Your children are infants, not toddlers. You need to lower your expectations.” If I had worn my Captain Obvious outfit, I might have seen this for myself. I expected too much of my kids for their level of development. There is a place where you maintain hope, but lower initial expectations.

Millennials and the iY Generation Aren’t Like Us

This is not an indictment, simply an observation. If we are going to be effective at leading millennials in the workplace, we are going to have to set aside our unspoken demand for perfect imitation. We assume that the emerging generation of prospective leaders comes to the table with the same emotional resource we showed up with at their age. This is a bad assumption. A recurrent phrase referring to the IY generation is, ’26 is the new 18.’ Multiple economic and social factors have contributed to the shift. There is evidence of this reality even at a bureaucratic level; recent restructuring of health care underscored the shift of the traditional mark of independent adulthood from 21 to 26.

To be clear, this statement has little to do with technical chops. This group of ‘kids’ has greater technical skill and access to the technical resource than we could have imagined at their age. The statement is reflective of the level of emotional intelligence they have attained at market entry age. (Tim Elmore is doing some excellent research and writing about this shift.)

Millennial Employees are Not Lazy

One of the main issues for the established generation of leadership is the seeming unwillingness of the emerging generation to put in more than 40 hours per week. This is not primarily because they are lazy. Partial responsibility for this lies with established leaders. There are a couple of critical factors. We have created and gifted them with the technology that puts the world at their fingers in seconds rather than weeks. They understand that what is required, in terms of information, is instantly accessible. The iY generation doesn’t expect to need as much time to research and produce results as earlier generations, and rightly so.

Furthermore, we have slowly moved away from our conviction that we are responsible to build for future generations. As a result, the concept of long-term vision development has eroded in the pursuit of quick gains. Those gains often come at the cost of developing the patience and wisdom necessary to build for successive generations.

I don’t despise the technology or the gains. However, I do think the rent is too high. It has been said that the baby boomer generation will, as a group, be the first to spend all that we inherit. That is an obvious indictment against our ability to envision the future beyond our term, especially as it pertains to the mindset of inheritance.

What Can We Do to Lead Millennials in the Workplace?

1. Invite millennials to envision legacy.

   Make room for conversation with the next generation(s) of leadership in your organization. Include emerging voices in the vision casting process. They have great ideas and need your wisdom to employ patience in growing an organization that will outlive you, and them. Ask them the question, “What will our business look like in twenty-five years?” This may not become your goal, but it will give you insight into where emerging leaders are regarding their ability to envision the future. A healthy dose of empathy in your leadership will be necessary for these conversations.

2. Identify your successor(s).

   Adopt the mindset that you are always training your replacement(s). This may be one of the most effective strategies for restoring a legacy/inheritance model and leading millennials in the workplace.

3. Sacrifice.

   The time necessary to coach and develop emerging talent is going to be a greater sacrifice for us than it was for earlier generations of leadership. You will have to continually adjust your growth strategy. The reality is that mentoring and talent development will probably usurp more billable hours than you are comfortable with. They have the technical chops and resource to exceed our wildest imagination. They need our wisdom to build well. Transferring wisdom requires the investment of time.

4. Clarify your team or organization’s ‘why’.

   “Why do we exist?”  This is foundational to the development of organizational health and vision. We have to help emerging leaders develop the ‘why’ that will sustain their ‘what’ and ‘how’. This pursuit will expose fault lines in thought processes where inheritance/legacy is concerned. (For added insight on the value of this process, read Start with Why by Simon Sinek.)

   “Leading millennials in the workplace doesn’t have to be a source of frustration for established leaders.”

In conclusion, millennials and successive generations are looking to us for vision and wisdom. Leading millennials in the workplace does not have to be a source of frustration for established leaders. Let the challenge provoke you to change and grow. We have to adapt our approach in terms of legacy and inheritance in our building strategies. The idea of creating an enduring, growing organization requires that we envision a future filled with competent, compassionate, seasoned leaders. Realizing that future demands patience and wisdom to develop them.

 

What about you? What have your experiences been when managing the next generations of promising leaders in your company? Let us know what’s working, and what’s not, in the comments.

 

Listen and lead well,

 

Bill