Managing Millennials

In my role, I frequently get to work with a diverse group of people. But mostly my team has comprised of Gen X individuals, we may report to a baby boomer age group, but mostly it has been a Gen X party. However recently I have been mentoring and training recent graduates into the consulting and testing roles, making a team of Gen Y or Millenials has taught me few lessons, and yes it has been a successful venture as I have learned as much from them as they hopefully have learned from me. Here are my 3 tips in managing this new and emerging workforce.

The Millenials have faced their fair share of criticisms on the social medial platforms and scholarly articles, it paints a picture of them being the entitled generation and I must confess I had developed a pre-conception that it is going to be a challenging task, but within a few months of managing this group, I have comfortably thrown most of this pessimistic view in the rubbish bin. Let me explain each tip with examples.

Firstly, when managing a millennial you must be ready to answer many questions, being a father to a 5-year-old had trained me well for this. What I have seen is that this group will ask far more questions before doing a task, while your Gen X will ask typical questions, Gen Y will ask "why do you think this is, why do we have to use a tool or a method when there is something better or easier, why do we have to conform to a certain method". While your Gen X will accept the status quo your Millenial colleague will question all these. This is ok as long as you are prepared for in-depth answers. So first tip, make time to teach! or better still, make time have a fruitful dialogue, converse like you are conversing to a friend rather then being a boss, my way or the highway method could be tolerated with Gen X, but millennials will get frustrated. You will have to explain the history behind each idea until they get to an aha moment. What I learned that by asking lots of unnecessary (some may say) questions, they are not challenging you or the system, they are simply learning about space they are in, they are trying to make sense of what situation they have been placed under and what they have got to work with.

Millennials are a digitally native generation, which means they probably grew up with devices and applications that did not come with an operating manual. Those of us who existed before the mobile phone know this well that any electronic device or any computer program, and yes we used to call it a computer program instead of an 'App', came with a small novel in multiple languages on how to operate this wonderful human to human talking machine. I had a situation where we had to quickly complete a task, by my traditional method it would have taken at least 4 to 8 hours. I handed the task to 2 of my millennial team members and advised them of the urgency of this task. They came back to me within 2 hours with completed work. When I asked how they did it, they casually said they applied a python script to re-arrange the data in the excel spreadsheet and they were able to complete the task easily. So my 2nd tip is, don't instruct, but inform! once you provide ownership and inform (in a nice manner) they feel they are in it too with you, the new generation will always have new ways of doing things, trust in that ability, you have nothing to lose, if the task was not successful it will be a good learning for your team dynamics. Remember the time when online purchasing was first introduced, how hesitant were we to give our credit card numbers over the internet or how skeptical we were to share our personal details on social media platforms when it was 1st introduced?, well Gen Y never had that hesitation, they have grown to trust the technology, let them use it to the advantage of your project.

Your millennial team member will have other interests than just the work you give them, while traditionally you come to work to do work, the millennials will bring their interests to work, and why not?. While Gen X and baby boomers have been taught to keep work and hobbies separate, Millenials feel entitled to bring their whole self to their work-place, this is a positive trait that needs to be admired and celebrated. I had some frowned faces by traditionalists when I gave space on my scrum board to my millennial team members to use it for making their drawings and to play some games while they were waiting on tasks. (Sometimes I joined in) and herein lies my 3rd tip, give space to Millenials to foster their interests, whatever it may be. Challenge the people who don't find this as professional conduct. Giving time and space to use your team member's right brain will drive creativity and innovation in your team and most importantly it gives them a timeout to relax their thoughts from the rigor of workplace pressure.

My last suggestion is, have fun, whether it is sharing silly jokes or watching funny videos with them, do it. It will bring them closure to you and they will start caring and admiring you as a leader. Remember that millennials may have grown up cuddled and cotton wooled more then Gen X, but it's not what they asked for, it is what we have done for them, and if they feel that same love at the work-place they will perform better without you asking them to do it.

Thanks for reading, I am Retnesh Raj and I specialize in putting together great teams for businesses, please like, share and comment if you liked the article.