In Defense Of Millennial MBAs
The Millennial generation has been on the receiving end of some brutal beatings by bloggers and columnists lately, and I cannot figure out why.
Simply put – I love working with Millennials, and there are some common perceptions of this cohort that are flat out wrong. It’s time to set the record straight.
Millennials are a generation which I have led, recruited, taught, coached, hired, and fired. By a conservative estimate, I have been in an ecosystem of more than 12,000 of them over the last five years alone. My reputation and that of my team has depended on their experiences and feedback, so it’s a group that I have taken a lot of time and energy to understand.
Within the more popular press there have emerged three myths about Millennials that are inconsistent with my experience and research. They’ve been labeled, “entitled,” “pie-in-the-sky idealists,” and “disloyal.” I’ll refute these one at a time:
“ENTITLED”
Entitled implies a desire for authority, title, or responsibility without accountability. I will agree that they desire responsibility, but I haven’t seen an avoidance of accountability.
The reality is that Millennials are eager to contribute and have an amazing ability to learn quickly and be creative. It’s fair to say that they do want a seat at the table when decisions are being made or ideas are being crafted, but they’re not afraid of being held accountable for the results that get produced. Because they’re resourceful and well-connected they often have great ideas to share, too.
There are two things that employers should be doing to take advantage of these attributes. The first is to adopt a coaching mindset, instead of a management one. This is best illustrated using an equation: B = Q x C, where “B” is the benefit of an idea, “Q” is the quality of the idea, and “C” is the commitment to the idea. (The book, “The Extraordinary Coach” by John Zenger and Kathleen Stinnett explains this in great detail.) With older generations the focus of management has been on “Q” – helping new employees up the learning curve by teaching or advising them, thus raising the quality of their ideas. But with Millennials the focus needs to be on “C”; they are going to be more committed to an idea that’s their own.
So let them think, let them create, and let them build – and coach them to think about implementation and how to overcome barriers. Raise their commitment to getting things done, and then hold them accountable for doing it. If they have an idea that’s a “5”, but their commitment is a “10” then the benefit will be 50. If you try to get them to implement your idea, which is a “9” on quality, and their commitment is a “4”, then the benefit will only be 36. Capitalize on their eagerness and watch them go.
Of course over time you’d like to see the quality of their ideas go up, as well. The great thing about Millennials is that they’re not afraid of failure and they can learn quickly. So be a learning organization – after they implement their ideas and take time to learn from the experience with them. At the Kelley School of Business, we have a culture that has institutionalized the “After Action Review” (AAR), which is a debriefing exercise utilized by the Army. The AAR uses four questions to learn from an experience:
What did we set out to do?
What actually happened?
Why did it happen?
What are we going to do different next time?
In the AAR we see an incredible humility from our young leaders – honesty about what happened, why, and who was responsible. This humility breeds coachability, which allows them to learn and improve “quality” going forward. Humility and resourcefulness are phenomenal characteristics, and the opposite of entitlement.
“PIE-IN-THE-SKY IDEALISTS”
In a recent article, Millennials were described as “modern day hippies” bent on saving the Earth with unrealistic idealism and with total disregard for the cost of doing so. For starters, I’m not sure what’s wrong with saving the planet – turn on the news for 5 minutes and then tell me it doesn’t need saving. The myth here is that Millennials are dreamers who lack focus and pragmatism.
The reality is that this generation may be the first has internalized the triple bottom line of profits, people, and community/sustainability – and they care about all three. The reason they care is because they lead values-driven lives. They want their work and their existence to have meaning, and they’re happy to spend time figuring out how to get there.
So help them – as a leader help your young employees figure out how to honor their personal values at work. There is a lot of evidence which suggests that employees who know their own values are happier and more satisfied at work – and more likely to stay with their company – than those who only know their company’s values (and not their own). Yet how many organizations have their company’s values hanging in a central gathering area, and spend more time reinforcing those with their employees than understanding what inspires them?
There’s a great free tool online, the VIA Values Sorter, which prioritizes a list of 36 values for each respondent based on their answers to a five-minute survey. While it doesn’t cover every possible value, it’s a good place to start a conversation with another person. We use this at Kelley with our Leadership Academy, and the result is a rich discussion of our differences and how we want to show up in our experiences. When our students know what is important to them, they’ll find a way to bring it into their work and lives. And they not only make a difference, but they accomplish more and are happier doing so. Help them create meaning, rather than mocking them for seeking it.
“DISLOYAL EMPLOYEES”
The last myth that shows up frequently is that Millennials are “disloyal” and hell-bent on leaving their employer as soon as humanly possible. Of course, if you treat them this way it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The reality is that this generation is incredibly comfortable with change – to the point that they expect to be dealing with it on a regular basis. They will leave if they get bored or if work becomes redundant – yet, I think that’s different than being inherently disloyal.
There are a variety of things to think about when leading Millennials if you hope to retain them at your company. First, embrace the fact that some of your employees like change! (I’m sure many of you have a horror story about a veteran at your firm who refuses to do things differently than they ever have.) Technology and globalization have increased the rate of change for most of our industries and this generation can be an enormous asset if you want to be able to evolve quickly. Consider giving Millennials shorter rotations/assignments than prior generations, and let them get involved in as many projects and teams as they feel like they can handle. To Millennials multi-tasking is an innate characteristic, and if it helps reduce boredom and increase engagement then load their plates.
Because work can never be void of boredom and redundancy, make sure that you’re also taking time to help them see how their efforts are helping them develop towards their goals. At Kelley we help our students create a Personal Vision, and one of the tools we use for this is the Personal Compass, from The Grove. It’s never too early to have a professional development conversation with young employees, whether or not they’ve proven that they have leadership potential. What I’ve seen is that when Millennials have an idea of where they’d like to be in 3-5 years, and a rough plan for how to get there, they will tolerate responsibilities that they might not love if they know it’s helping them build a competency. These visions and plans will evolve, so this has to be an ongoing conversation, and not just a one-time event.
That said, they very well may leave your firm – and that can be okay too. As Reid Hoffman, the Chairman of LinkedIn, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh demonstrated in their book, “The Alliance,” today’s young workforce is the most networked in history. They show how this network can be an asset to their firms – even after they leave. A former employee who feels like were valued at their last firm and that they grew during their time there, will continue to be a source of future business opportunities or new employee referrals long after they start working somewhere else. Sounds like loyalty to me.
In short, I believe Millennials are eager, humble, resourceful, creative, introspective, coachable, and loyal. They should be considered an asset in the workforce, and employers would be wise to recruit them heavily, especially in industries which experience a rapid pace of change.
Eric Johnson of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business
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