Working with Millennials

The millennials joining your workforce now are employees born between 1980 and 2000 and they come with a fresh mindset, can-do attitude and seek leadership, friendship and feedback within their work places.

Read these 10 tips By Susan M. Heathfield (Human Resources Expert) on how to manage millennials:

(Amusing video on how to deal with Millennials)

Provide structure. Reports have monthly due dates. Jobs have fairly regular hours. Certain activities are scheduled every day. Meetings have agendas and minutes. Goals are clearly stated and progress is assessed. Define assignments and success factors.

Provide leadership and guidance. Millennials want to look up to you, learn from you, and receive daily feedback from you. They want “in” on the whole picture and to know the scoop. Plan to spend a lot of time teaching and coaching and be aware of this commitment to millennials when you hire them. They deserve and want your very best investment of time in their success.

Encourage the millennial's self-assuredness, "can-do" attitude, and positive personal self-image. Millennials are ready to take on the world. Their parents told them they can do it - they can. Encourage - don't squash them or contain them.

Take advantage of the millennial's comfort level with teams. Encourage them to join. They are used to working in groups and teams. In contrast to the lone ranger attitude of earlier generations, millennials actually believe a team can accomplish more and better - they've experienced team success.

Not just related to age, watch who joins the volleyball match at the company picnic. Millennials gather in groups and play on teams; you can also mentor, coach, and train your millennials as a team.

Listen to the millennial employee. Your millennial employees are used to loving parents who have scheduled their lives around the activities and events of their children. These young adults have ideas and opinions, and don't take kindly to having their thoughts ignored. After all, they had the best listening, most child-centric audience in history.

Millennial employees are up for a challenge and change. Boring is bad. They seek ever-changing tasks within their work. What’s happening next is their mantra. Don’t bore them, ignore them, or trivialize their contribution.

Millennial employees are multi-taskers on a scale you’ve never seen before. Multiple tasks don’t phaze them. Talk on the phone while doing email and answering multiple instant messages – yes! This is a way of life. In fact, without many different tasks and goals to pursue within the week, the millennials will likely experience boredom.

Take advantage of your millennial employee’s computer, cell phone, and electronic literacy Are you a Boomer or even an early Gen-Xer? The electronic capabilities of these employees are amazing. You have a salesman in China? How’s the trip going? Old timers call and leave a message in his hotel room. Or, you can have your millennial text message him in his meeting for an immediate response. The world is wide, if not yet deep, for your millennial employees.

Capitalize on the millennial’s affinity for networking. Not just comfortable with teams and group activities, your millennial employee likes to network around the world electronically. Keep this in mind because they are able to post their resume electronically as well on Web job boards viewed by millions of employers. Sought after employees, they are loyal, but they keep their options open – always.

Provide a life-work balanced workplace.Your millennials are used to cramming their lives with multiple activities. They may play on sports teams, walk for multiple causes, spend time as fans at company sports leagues, and spend lots of time with family and friends.

They work hard, but they are not into the sixty hour work weeks defined by the Baby Boomers. Home, family, spending time with the children and families, are priorities. Don’t lose sight of this. Balance and multiple activities are important to these millennial employees. Ignore this to your peril.

As always, when I characterize a group of employees based on age, or any other characteristic, some employees will fit this description; some employees will fit part of this description; some employees will not fit this description.

Yet, I believe that, if you heed these tips, you will steer your organization forward, more times than not, with a positive approach to managing your millennial employees.

5 qualities of effective leaders

There are plenty of articles and books that have been published, telling you what it takes to become a highly effective leader. Many people would say you need specific skills and abilities; some say it lies all in the personality of the individual. Despite all of the ambiguity, people know effective leadership when they see it. It is essentially a blend of personality and skills that encompasses an individual.

Good leaders are always there to motivate their team and achieve the highest levels of performance and outstanding organisation in the process. It takes more than a day to become a leader but with the five steps below, you can make a start on becoming a better one today.

1. Honesty – “Honesty is the best policy” is a quote often heard and it is true.  Your business and its employees are a reflection of yourself.  One of the many missed opportunities of displaying honesty is when handling a mistake. Many leaders will avoid failure to the extent that they won’t admit when their ideas did not work. Being honest in your actions and words ensures that employees will have little doubt in your integrity as an effective leader. If you uphold honesty and sincerity, your fellow teammates will follow suit.

2. Confidence – When things are spiralling down the wrong direction or your business encounters a setback, you need stay confident and maintain the morale of the team to ensure things get back on track. Good leaders need to maintain their confidence level and assure everyone else that setbacks are natural and we can learn from our mistakes so it does not happen again. If the leader radiates confidence, his or her team is bound to be confident too. You know what they say, "confidence is contagious".

3. Communication – In team-oriented activities and games, communication is one of the main keys to success and this goes the same for business. Good leaders also ensure that information is up-to-date and complete for every employee, so that there can be no confusion.  Leaders should develop clear and concise communication between themselves and their employees - this will help in relating your vision to your team so everyone will be working towards the same goal.

4. Being decisive – Many leaders will come across situations where they have to be decisive; where making decisions in a split second is second nature to them.  Once you make a decision, stick with it unless you have a compelling reason to change it. These decisions should be firm and authoritative despite knowing not everyone will like it because a good leader acts on what is best for the organisation. When you make a mistake, go back to number 1. and be sure that the learning is known.

5. Ability to inspire – At the end of the day, many leaders are seen as truly inspiring people that communicate clearly and motivate everyone to do their best all the time. Inspirational leaders clear the organisational roadblocks that hold back the natural creativity and positive energy of their employees, building a clearer pathway to success for employees and the organisation.  A great example of inspiration is when Steve Jobs stole a CEO from Pepsi with one question, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to change the world?”  Being inspiring also means showing people the big picture and dissolving the narrow focus that limits the potential of an individual.

No matter what kind of organisation or association you are in, there will be a leader to take control and lead the team. So be sure to review on these 5 qualities whenever you're unsure or need to push your team into new challenges.

Managing vs. Leading - Finding a Balance

There are important differences between managing your team and leading them.  Leading includes the ability to develop, motivate and challenge the group while trusting their ability and working along them side-by-side.  Managing on the other hand includes maintaining group dynamics, operations and all necessary delegation, and whilst it doesn’t touch on the ‘inspiring’ side of working with others it relates to the necessary ‘getting things done’ aspect of work life.

The following suggestions can help you become an effective ‘Leading Manager’

Share your vision

Make it a frequent habit to tell your team how their contributions and performance align with the organisation’s goals. Invest in learning about what your team would like to achieve in their career and current role. Link this information to current challenges and tasks they are responsible for. Offer them the chance to step-up and exceed expectations for the benefit of the company but more importantly, themselves. This won’t only benefit their motivation to align their interests with yours but will give you a team that is more focused on achieving long term goals.

DON’T FORGET: Be honest, staff can sniff out when you’re pretending to care about their goals from a mile away. If your immediate needs don’t relate to them straight away, be sure that it is going somewhere in the long run and communicate the process clearly to your team, and don’t remove yourself from the discussion or the process itself.

Delegate to develop

Allow your team the freedom to prove themselves by delegating challenging tasks and responsibilities.  Clearly state the goal of the task and trust that they will deliver. While monitoring your team’s progress is important, avoid micromanaging as this will not contribute to their overall development. It is important that you remain open for questions and lead by example. Ensure that the area you are developing them in is consistent with the company’s long term goals.

DON’T FORGET: Team differently experienced staff members in similar roles together for new projects. This will give more experienced staff a chance to learn effective delegation and communication, whilst less experienced staff have a chance to learn alongside those who are in positions they would like to reach. Give them clear goals that they should achieve with the other, and a chance to create their own objectives.

Empower and Reward

As your staff become more adept at certain tasks they should also become more responsible for the task’s development, improvement and management. If you can motivate your staff to ‘take control’ of their own performance in certain areas they will feel more confident in creating and measuring their outcomes to report back to you. This also gives them the feeling that they should be learning new ideas and techniques that add value to the task, their expertise and of course your business.

Reward plays an important part in empowering staff. If staff exceeded expectations, let them know that this could lead to new tasks and responsibilities for them, and explain how this impacts the company's opportunities as a whole. Make sure all staff are aware of the achievements and are all a part of the success.

Remember, operationalising and delegating tasks are important practices to grasp for any leader. You can’t always be the ‘good guy,’ but you definitely can add leadership strategies into everything you do to make sure you, the team and the business can continuously head in the right direction!