Whether you’re a veteran leader or a millennial recently promoted into a leadership role, leading your younger team members can feel like an endless struggle.
Why don’t they understand?
Why aren’t they motivated?
Why won’t they put in the time?
To make it worse, instead of making life easier, much of the advice you get from generational “experts” can actually make the situation worse.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Your younger team members can be an incredible source of talent, energy, and productivity. I joined up with internationally recognized leadership experts, David Dye and Michael Teoh to share perspectives and insights on getting the most from your millennial team members.
We discussed:
What you really need to know to develop your millennial talent
How ordinary people have transformed their lives to achieve success
Keys to cultivate motivated, energized teams that get more done, solve problems on their own, and make everyone around them better.
The Great Millennial Hoax is the first of a series of collaborative events with Michael.
So please let us know your questions and ideas for future topics!
Michael Teoh(Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) is the Founder of Thriving Talents, a ‘Millennials-focused’ Talent Development company which delivers training and consultancy for Fortune 500 companies across 39 countries, in the areas of Attracting, Managing, Retaining & Motivating Millennials. He has shared the stage with other notable business icons like Sir Richard Branson, Sir Bob Geldof and even presented a workshop in the presence of President Barack Obama. His new book is The Potential Matrix.
Karin Hurt (Baltimore, MD) is a top leadership consultant, keynote speaker, and CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders. A former Verizon Wireless executive, she was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of great leadership speakers.
David Dye (Denver, CO) is a leadership keynote speaker, former nonprofit executive, elected official, award-winning author, and president of Trailblaze, Inc., a leadership training and consulting firm. Karin and David co-authored Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results Without Losing Your Soul.
The Winning Well Southeast Asia Tour
If you’re a manager in Southeast Asia and are interested in bringing Winning Well to your organization this spring or attending our summit in Malaysia please let us know.
You’ve seen them, you’ve heard of them, and some of you may even be working with them. These them I’m referring to is the Gen-Ys. Regardless of what you may currently think of them, the presence of these young individuals have definitely changed the realities of workplace dynamics, especially now that Gen-Ys are slowly being reviewed to fill in managerial positions.
More and more organizations are beginning to tear down walls (both metaphorically and literally) to keep up to date with the current trends of building up great young leaders who will one day assume more responsibilities. However are these young people in your organization ready to make the hard decisions and lead a team?
Step 1: Understanding The Way They Work
For years experts have been trying to understand millennials, to find out what makes them tick, and what drives them to want to do great work. And after all that research and with all the different clashing views, the general consensus to this finding is that this generation of young people is unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Team Dynamics
In the work setting, Gen-Ys are vastly different from the generation before them. Although they seem to be confident and want to stand out from the crowd, they actually value the opinions of their peers especially when it comes to making decisions. They aren’t shy about getting opinions be it about work or other personal related matters from their peers and are more likely to take their peers advice more seriously than those higher up in authority.
Roles in Leadership
The Gen-Ys today do not place a very high importance on leadership as they believe that they do not need to be placed in roles of authority to lead. They prefer to work in a group in a democratic setting where the decisions made are derivative of the values added by each person member of the group.
Step 2: Providing A Clear Purpose
Unlike the other generations, the Gen-Ys are no longer only motivated by monetary incentives or added perks and benefits that an organization provides them, rather they need to be intrinsically motivated to want to perform at their very best.
Organizations need to give the Millennials a reason to want to be involved, to want to commit their time effort and energy. One of the best ways to sustain their dedication is to provide them a greater purpose to the tasks they are currently doing. Make them part of something so much bigger than themselves and keep them inspired as well as motivated by telling them of the impact that their work creates for the people outside your organization.
Step 3: Provide Them With Avenues To Grow
The Gen-Ys are painfully aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, they may seem like they are unaffected by their shortcomings, but growing up in an environment where they are so used to having their actions and ideas being validated can cause distress whenever they are faced with a problem they aren’t able to get over.
Organizations need to build an environment in which these Gen-Ys are given the chance to work on their strengths and learn to cope with their weaknesses. Provide them with a support structure in which they are allowed to continuously work on themselves as they become more invested in your organization.
Empower them with the necessary skills and training that will lead them to make better decisions. Allow them to test their limits, set them up for defeat in a safe environment through team building exercises and simulations for them to really know themselves and identify their leadership styles.
David Dye and I are partnering with Michael Teoh, Author of The Potential Matrix and Founder of Thriving Talents on a series of events in Malaysia and the United States, beginning with this FREE webinar– register here.
Whether you’re a veteran leader or a millennial recently promoted into a leadership role, leading your younger team members can feel like an endless struggle. Why don’t they understand? Why aren’t they motivated? Why won’t they put in the time?
To make it worse, instead of making life easier, much of the advice you get from generational “experts” can actually make the situation worse. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Your younger team members can be an incredible source of talent, energy, and productivity.
Join three internationally recognized leadership experts for a conversation that will answer your questions about getting the most from your millennial team members. You’ll walk away with:
What you really need to know to develop your millennial talent
How ordinary people have transformed their lives to achieve success
Keys to cultivate motivated, energized teams that get more done, solve problems on their own, and make everyone around them better.
And specific answers to your questions!
We are so excited about the opportunity to combines experience, wisdom, and perspectives from across generations – and across the world!
Register today and be sure to submit your question and get the answers you need!
A working student in my evening MBA program approached me to talk about a work situation that was driving her crazy.
She gave me the gory behind-the-scenes view: a few apathetic employees were fully taking advantage of a system that had let them get away with ridiculous performance for too long. She was a new supervisor and knew what was right. Apparently her instincts had been reinforced in our class that night. But the situation felt difficult to reverse. She shrugged and said, “It’s probably because they’re millennials.”
I laughed, “Uh…you do realize YOU are a millennial. right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she acknowledged, “but I’m a DIFFERENT kind of millennial.”
Of course she is. Every millennial is.
Whatever your generation, I’d bet money you don’t feel like you fully fit the stereotype.
Don’t let generational labels and stereotypes screw up your ability to build a winning team.
What Every Employee Needs
All this talk of the millennial situation is aggravating the perceived “generation gap.” It happens every time a new crop of growing leaders gains traction. The truth is, the problem she was describing was not generational. It was a hard-core, poster-child example of weak expectations, exacerbated by low-reinforcement and no consequences.
I had those same slippery characters working for me when I was 26. Oh sure their names and contexts were different, but I recognized the story. Back then, I was a gen-Xer trying to manage gen-Xers (I even had to take a course on managing gen-Xers before I could move into management). I recall telling the trainer I was a DIFFERENT kind of gen-Xer.
Yes, we need to understand and value the millennial generation. They bring insights and values we may not understand.
For example, I was all ears when my informal millennial coaches (employees in my organization at the front lines who I specifically put on my informal board of directors to tell me the truth) told me how to become more trusted and accessible to the front lines: Stop wearing a suit and heels to the call centers–it was too intimidating; bring my humor to the next corporate video; and for God’s sake watch some TV every now and then so I can chime in on the break room small talk. It worked. Sure there are few things you can do to be more relevant to the masses.
But the truth is, it didn’t work because they were millennial. It worked because it was a way to meet people where they are. That wisdom has worked for centuries.
Figure out the easy things you can change to connect better at a broad scale, but never forget that teams are built of unique human beings.
The next time you’re faced with a “millennial” problem, I encourage you to resist the label and dig deeper. What’s really going on at the individual level? Do they get the big picture, so they have the skills to do the job, are they confident and competent…? You get the picture.
Are you struggling with a difficult employee engagement scene? Please call me at 443 750-1249 for a free consultation.
A working student in my evening MBA program approached me to talk about a work situation that was driving her crazy.
She gave me the gory behind-the-scenes view: a few apathetic employees were fully taking advantage of a system that had let them get away with ridiculous performance for too long. She was a new supervisor and knew what was right. Apparently her instincts had been reinforced in our class that night. But the situation felt difficult to reverse. She shrugged and said, “It’s probably because they’re millennials.”
I laughed, “Uh…you do realize YOU are a millennial. right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she acknowledged, “but I’m a DIFFERENT kind of millennial.”
Of course she is. Every millennial is.
Whatever your generation, I’d bet money you don’t feel like you fully fit the stereotype.
Don’t let generational labels and stereotypes screw up your ability to build a winning team.
What Every Employee Needs
All this talk of the millennial situation is aggravating the perceived “generation gap.” It happens every time a new crop of growing leaders gains traction. The truth is, the problem she was describing was not generational. It was a hard-core, poster-child example of weak expectations, exacerbated by low-reinforcement and no consequences.
I had those same slippery characters working for me when I was 26. Oh sure their names and contexts were different, but I recognized the story. Back then, I was a gen-Xer trying to manage gen-Xers (I even had to take a course on managing gen-Xers before I could move into management). I recall telling the trainer I was a DIFFERENT kind of gen-Xer.
Yes, we need to understand and value the millennial generation. They bring insights and values we may not understand.
For example, I was all ears when my informal millennial coaches (employees in my organization at the front lines who I specifically put on my informal board of directors to tell me the truth) told me how to become more trusted and accessible to the front lines: Stop wearing a suit and heels to the call centers–it was too intimidating; bring my humor to the next corporate video; and for God’s sake watch some TV every now and then so I can chime in on the break room small talk. It worked. Sure there are few things you can do to be more relevant to the masses.
But the truth is, it didn’t work because they were millennial. It worked because it was a way to meet people where they are. That wisdom has worked for centuries.
Figure out the easy things you can change to connect better at a broad scale, but never forget that teams are built of unique human beings.
The next time you’re faced with a “millennial” problem, I encourage you to resist the label and dig deeper. What’s really going on at the individual level? Do they get the big picture, so they have the skills to do the job, are they confident and competent…? You get the picture.
Are you struggling with a difficult employee engagement scene? Please call me at 443 750-1249 for a free consultation.
