Managing Millennials For Dummies

Overview

Everything you need to harness Millennial potential

Managing Millennials For Dummies is the field guide to people-management in the modern workplace. Packed with insight, advice, personal anecdotes, and practical guidance, this book shows you how to manage your Millennial workers and teach them how to manage themselves. You'll learn just what makes them tick—they're definitely not the workers of yesteryear—and how to uncover the deeply inspirational talent they have hiding not far below the surface. Best practices and proven strategies from Google, Netflix, LinkedIn, and other top employers provide real-world models for effective management, and new research on first-wave versus second-wave Millennials helps you parse the difference between your new hires and more experienced workers. You'll learn why flex time, social media, dress code, and organizational structure are shifting, and answer the all-important question: why won't they use the phone?

Millennials are the product of a different time, with

different values, different motivations, and different wants—and in the U.S., they now make up the majority of the workforce. This book shows you how to bring out their best and discover just how much they're really capable of.

  • Learn how Millennials are changing the way work gets done
  • Understand new motivations, attitudes, values, and drive
  • Recruit, motivate, engage, and retain incredible emerging talent
  • Discover the keys to optimal Millennial management

The pop culture narrative would have us believe that Millennials are entitled, lazy, spoiled brats—but the that couldn't be further from the truth. They are the generation of change: highly adaptive, bright, and quick to take on a challenge. Like any generation of workers, performance lies in management—if you're not getting what you need from your Millennials, it's time to learn how to lead them the way they need to be led. Managing Millennials For Dummies is your handbook for allowing them to exceed your expectations.

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About The Author

Hannah L. Ubl is the Research Director at BridgeWorks and transforms data into stories for the masses. Lisa X. Walden is the Communications Director at BridgeWorks where she delivers compelling, breakthrough generational content. Debra Arbit is CEO of BridgeWorks: a generational consulting company (www.generations.com).

Sample Chapters

managing millennials for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

Whatever your opinion on Millennials, there is one fact that stands unchallenged: they are now the largest generation in the work force. Even though they make up such a huge percentage of the workplace, Millennials are still stumping experienced managers on the best way to lead and manage them.Whether you work with a 35-year-old or 25-year-old Millennial, you are bound to be grappling with questions like: What is the best way to motivate them?

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As with any generation, Millennials are saddled with certain misconceptions. Some of these include expectations regarding Millennial personalities and work ethic. Here’s a few you can ignore. Millennials hate face-to-face communication The assumption that Millennials don’t like face-to-face communication is understandable.
Millennials represent a significant portion of the workforce right now. If you are in a managerial position, you will inevitably find yourself in charge of a Millennial. Here are some tips for refining your approach. Individualize your approach with each millennial Some managers tend to take a “same equals fair” approach with their management style, which can backfire with Millennials who have been raised in a world that celebrated the individual.
Training Millennials can be tricky. How do you train a generation that wants to do almost everything as a group? Obviously all-group all-the-time isn’t feasible. In many cases, employees are not hired together like a graduating team of first-years, but individually. Therefore, here are seven strategies of training that appeal to that desire to collaborate with those around them and render your training more effective: Mix the formal with the informal.
In the case of blue collar versus white collar, you have two potentially disparate types of work. White-collar workers are depicted as spending “normal” 9–5 work hours in an office or cubicle, whereas blue-collar workers may hold a graveyard shift and are typically on location, either in their specified field or an industrial location.
Millennials are so heavily stereotyped that it's almost painful to read through the endless articles, headlines, and news features that dismiss them as lazy, narcissistic, overly sensitive, entitled, and generally the worst thing to happen to the modern working world. To be an effective leader, manager, and colleague, do Millennials a favor and don't take this click-bait at face value.
As Millennials were growing up, one of the constants in an ever-changing world was the rate of change itself. While previous generations have experienced impressive technological innovations (for example, radio and television), Millennials were teens during some of the fastest evolutions in technology the world has seen to date.
Millennials can bring many positive traits to the floor. It is your job as a manager to recognize what these are and how to apply them in the workplace. Take a look at these positive traits. Taking advantage of the tech-innate If you say to non-Millennials that Millennials are tech-innate, you’re likely to get one of two responses: “Duh, everyone knows that!
The self-esteem movement is directly responsible for what many see as some of the more unsavory traits of the Millennial generation, especially the older, leading edge Millennials. That seventh-place ribbon in the jump-rope contest (when there were only seven contestants)? A direct result of the self-esteem movement.
Millennials are a hot topic. Google the word “Millennial” and 12 articles will pop up from the past hour — or at least it’ll feel like it. The challenge is that the media hasn’t really decided how it feels about Millennials. Does it hate them? Love them? Think they’re the corporate plague? Or the corporate miracle?
Perhaps you’ve had the experience of managing Millennials who are so dedicated to doing something flawlessly that it appears they can’t do anything by themselves. They ask numerous questions and prefer to be shown every single step in the process before they attempt it. While to some this may feel like hand-holding or needy, the Millennials in question are simply attempting to avoid making a mistake.
Millennial Martyrs often get lost in the shuffle of work-life. They’re probably too busy to notice just how crazed they are and feel too guilty to call attention to it even if they are aware. Before exploring this segment any further, it’s important to understand that every generation has this segment of folks; it just manifests in different ways.
With a fresh new wave of leadership comes a brand new set of leadership skills. Millennials, like any generation, have many natural talents, some innate and some as a result of the conditions they grew up in. Unsurprisingly, they’ll be bringing their generational traits with them as captains of leadership. To get a grasp on where to focus your efforts as you groom the next batch of leaders, it’s helpful to understand the areas where they’ll knock it out of the park, where they’ll do just okay, and where they may fall short without your training and assistance.
When managing Millennials, you should establish mentorship guidelines to ensure success. As you’re reading this, you may be thinking to yourself, “Awesome — check! We totally have a mentorship program. It says so on our website. Done and done.” Wait a second, though. It’s one thing to say you have a mentoring program, but another thing entirely to actually have one that people use and appreciate.
Millennials can’t be corralled into a single group without distinctions. At the risk of giving a history lesson about the American dream, you might want to think about how you’ve seen it change over time. How are your grandparents’ stories different from your own? How have motivations changed over time?While achieving the American dream used to look like getting married, owning a beautiful home with a white picket fence, and having lots of children’s mouths to feed, now it can look like some version of that or the equally accepted tiny home or apartment dwelling, with no additional mouths to feed.
In the exploration of Millennial personas, you’ll likely come across a whole swath of research about Millennials who work from coffee shops, aren’t married, live in the city, regularly use social media, stay in a company for only two to three years, and seek to change everything the moment they start their jobs.
This Millennial persona is the one that other generations love to hate. It’s who the media depicts in nearly all of its headlined articles, like “Why Millennials hate fabric softener” and “Top gifts this season: The best beard gadgets for your Millennial nephew” or “Thanks to Millennials, home-brewing is the new book club.
Millennials dads are a large part of today’s workplace. In recent years, very pro-woman and pro-man movements have coincided with gender-equality initiatives and the movement to redefine what it means to “be a man.”On one hand, this has put Millennial men in a place of confusion — when the labor economy changed to a service economy, the physical strength and resulting demeanor that had played a heavy hand in other men’s successes no longer mattered.
This Millennial persona has become all too common. Their uniting thread? Because they’re actually good employees, they don’t think that they belong to the Millennial generation. They are the “I’m-Not-a-Millennial” Millennials. You can file them next to jumbo shrimp, paid volunteers, and other oxymorons.Their reasoning is this: Millennials embody all the stereotypes that others generations love to hate.
Have you ever managed Millennials and thought, “Wow, one of these things is not like the other!”? If so, welcome to the club of Millennial segmentation. Millennials can be divided into two respective groups that share many traits and qualities but are separated by a few key events and conditions. To do this, we’ll look at the older Millennials and juxtapose their experiences to the younger Millennials.
When new employees join your ranks, getting them up to speed and ready for the task is a huge part of their manager’s job. This process, known as onboarding, isn’t a one-day or even a one-week task. Often, it can take several months before a new hire is fully onboarded, and collaboration can be key to a manager’s success.
Millennials can make effective managers. Imagine that you are a 55-year-old employee named Michael. You have been working at your organization for 25 years. You are loyal, ambitious, and content with your career. You’ve got a few plaques for achieving great things and proudly wear a company T-shirt when you go out.
Don’t think that because Millennials prefer informal dress, the best course of action is to throw out all your company standards and give them free reign to show up in their ripped denim and graphic tees. Instead, consider how you can move the needle and adapt what you already do in a way that doesn’t sacrifice your company’s culture.
Generational theory can help you learn more about the millennials you are managing. As you discover more about generations, you’ll apply more to your life. And you’ll also realize that you’re becoming an even better leader and manager. Part of being a great leader is acknowledging that one generation is not better than another.
Your job of managing Millennials could be easier if you keep your eyes on the trends. As you explore the world of the future unknown, certain factors will remain unpredictable but entertaining to think about. Back in the day (choose your time period), technology was rapidly changing, the economy was at a high or a low, and some cutting-edge trends emerged; vague statements these may be, but the way society finishes the story behind these statements defines a generation.
Whatever your opinion on Millennials, there is one fact that stands unchallenged: they are now the largest generation in the work force. Even though they make up such a huge percentage of the workplace, Millennials are still stumping experienced managers on the best way to lead and manage them.Whether you work with a 35-year-old or 25-year-old Millennial, you are bound to be grappling with questions like: What is the best way to motivate them?
One of the major goals in trying to break into the Millennial mind by a scan of the major events and conditions is to try to understand them better and break down the disconnect between the Millennial persona and the harmful stereotypes. Let’s debunk some of these more common Millennial stereotypes by using the understanding of the formative years.
It’s understandable if you are toying with the idea of reassessing your organizational structure but feel hesitant. Frankly, it would be odd to have a mind free of doubt, especially if you work remotely or in an office so traditional that it has an uncanny way of transporting people back to 1960, or if your structure is so devoid of actual structure that an outsider can make no sense of it.
One of the values Millennials see in a networked organization structure is transparency. A network calls for a fluid exchange of information shared across the organization, whereas in a tiered hierarchy, it’s pretty clear that all the information lies at the top and is trickled down as necessary to the other rungs of the ladder.
The events and conditions that formed Millennial traits also led to a unique set of shared generational values. These values are central to the Millennial persona, and Millennials will apply these perceptions to every facet of the workplace. This table examines four core values, where they come from, how those values might prove to be assets, and where they might cause some friction.
If you're a manager, it helps to know about some of the general characteristics of the different generations working in your company. It's impossible to learn about any generation in a vacuum. For example, if you want to know how to be a better manager for Millennials, it's important to know a little bit about the generations before and after them.
When Boomers manage Millennials, they can easily fall into the grooves of a parent/child relationship. This isn’t meant in a condescending way, but it’s a good idea to recognize Boomers’ natural ability to identify with the Millennials they manage because many of them have raised Millennials of their own. For Boomers, Millennials are not “agent unknown.
There are countless approaches to help you better engage with this young generation of workers, but all that information can start to feel overwhelming. Keep it simple, and use these tips for managing Millennials as a starting place: Giving feedback: Step up accomplishment — not participation — recognition. Believe it or not, Millennials don't want a reward for just doing their job.
The Millennial generation, just like Boomers and Xers, has a long list of traits associated with them. If you are managing individual or a group of millennials, you will want to associate yourself with their most common traits. In the nature of KISS (keep it simple, stupid), these are the traits most commonly associated with the generation born between 1980 and 1995.
Even if you don’t understand millennials, you may know that they are extremely reliant on technology. If the power were to go off in your workplace for more than a few hours, continuing the workday would seem ridiculous. No lights, no phones … what’s the point of being at work? Electricity is not an amenity to the workplace.
When Millennials were in their formative years, there was a perfect storm of messaging that drilled this idea: “Teamwork makes the dream work.” Collaboration was held up as an ideal. Every adult in Millennials’ lives encouraged them to put their heads together and tap into the power of the collective. Millennials collaborate in the classroom In school, Millennials learned that the best results were achieved not when they did solo work, but when they were part of a team of collaborators.
Millennials may get a bad rap, but what managers are finding out is that they are actually a huge benefit and even a boon to the workplace in many ways. It’s true! Hey, maybe you’re one of those people who’s thinking, “Gosh, you know what, I have so much respect for the Millennials I manage.” If you are one of those people, you may be in the minority, but you should speak up.
When you think about Millennials and their desire to collaborate, what comes to mind? There are definitely those who paint quite the picture in their head. Xers may think that Millennials just want to sit around a campfire and hold hands, singing in unison and swaying back and forth. Others envision a room of Millennials sipping on IPAs and shouting out ideas during a brainstorm, with those thoughts all written in colorful dry-erase pens on a massive whiteboard.
Are you sitting down? Here’s some big news … sometimes, Millennials aren’t good employees. Just like every other generation, there are good eggs and rotten ones, but the challenge at times can be separating your own bias and stereotyping from the truth about the Millennial employee whom you work alongside. If you answer yes to two or more of the following questions, there’s a good chance that you are dealing with a bad employee, not just a Millennial: Yes/No Do you keep making excuses to keep him there?
If differences in generational perspectives create hardships in the workplace, then surely a Millennial managing a fellow Millennial should be a pretty carefree working relationship, void of misalignments that commonly occur when a different generation manages a Millennial. In some ways, it’s kind of a twin thing.
On paper, it seems like Xers should have a pretty easy time managing Millennials. Both generations grew up around technology, both are relatively young, and both know the difference between an emoji, a meme, and a gif (or at least most of them do). In reality, we’ve found that these two generations have some of the biggest workplace clashes.
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