If you are of the Boomer generation, you may remember a movie in 1963 called “Bye Bye Birdie” about a rock singer travels to a small Ohio town to make his “farewell” television performance and kiss his biggest fan before he is drafted. With all the hullabaloo that ensued with the teenage daughter, who was about to be kissed, her father, played by Paul Lynde, had a wonderful song lamenting “What’s the matter with kids today. Why can’t they be like we were — perfect in every way?”

Does that sound a little like what we Boomers are saying about those “youngsters” who are working for us? 

Just to get a little perspective, let’s think about what our parents were saying about us:

What’s the matter with kids today????
Why doesn’t he cut his hair, shave his beard?
Hippies!
Woodstock – what an outrage
Sex, drugs & rock & roll
They are cowards protesting the war
They should leave well enough alone – the races we’re not meant to be integrated
Girls should find a nice boy and get married
They’ll never amount to anything

What’s the matter with kids today may in fact be a universal question!

When it comes to the workplace, business leaders are struggling to understand the Millennial generation and soon the Gen Z folks. How do we recruit them, retain them and work with their new view of work and career? I hear from my clients that this young generation doesn’t have any work ethic, whine about needing constant direction and feedback and are not willing to give up their personal life for work. What in the world do they want?

Without a doubt, a tremendous amount of research has been done trying to answer this question. A Gallup study,  “How Millennials Want to Work and Live,”  gives us a great deal of insight.

To distill it down to the essentials:

Millennials want:

• A purpose – not just a paycheck
• Career and personal development – not job satisfaction
• Coaches – not bosses
• Ongoing conversations – not annual reviews
• It’s my life – not just my job

With this in mind, what can we do in the workplace to tackle these expectations?

• Purpose: This can be as simple as helping them connect the dots between the tasks they do and the rest of the organization. Or it can be contributing to the greater good through corporate initiatives. These young people want to be more than cogs in a big machine.
• Development: Creating a team culture will appeal to this group. Give them opportunities to participate in projects and collaborate with a team. Give them a chance, even a small one, to take a project and run with it. Once the project is complete, get good developmental feedback on how it went. Let them assess the results first to help them see a bigger picture and contribute to their own development plan.
• Coaches:  Coaches encourage, teach, inspire and hold us accountable. Bosses tell us what to do and the consequences of failure.
• Feedback and inclusion:  Develop a process for frequent conversations about work progress, how to do better. Performance reviews can measure progress but, more importantly, they are a chance to work on a collaborative goal setting for future growth.
• Life: Unlike generations preceding them, they are not defined by their titles or company, but by the quality/impact of their work on their whole life. Helping them have an active, productive work life is critical to retention.

A New Perspective

This is a pretty good roadmap, but as a practical matter, do we need to cater to just this group? What about all the other generations in our workplace? Before we get too frustrated, consider this… What if I suggested that what Millennials want is not so unique? Maybe there are things that can apply across the board in a multi-generational workplace. Thanks to some great research by IBM in their report, “Myths, exaggerations, and uncomfortable truths,” we can see a very different perspective of our generationally diverse workplace. The generations are indeed different – the worlds in which we grew up were distinctly different and we have been influenced by our life experience. But even though that is true, when it comes to our core values and expectations, we are not as different as we might have thought. Looking through the lens of the new statistics from the IBM survey, we can see that regardless of generation people want:

• To have an impact at work, to have their work mean something more than a paycheck;
• Work-life balance;
• Leaders who can tell the truth and help guide them through the organization; and
• Opportunities for career growth or to do something that they feel strongly about.

That new information really puts a new spin on things! By looking at what is common among the generations, we can consider strategies that can have an overall impact, instead of trying to craft something different for each generation.

Great stuff, but now what?

Conversations are the bridge in the multi-generational workplace.

If we look at each of the things that are important, the common thread is the ability of leaders and managers to clearly and effectively communicate. Our experience with clients has shown us that “companies succeed when conversations do.” ~ Revolutionary Conversations

Meaningful work – Everyone wants to see how they fit and where they add value to the organization. We need to have open and collaborative conversations to help individuals connect the dots.

Work/Life Balance – Life and work are no longer separate for anyone in the workplace. Our conversations about the needs and goals of people in every generation are essential. Young staffers may see work and life as one unit; Gen X’s may be pushed between the pressures of more responsibilities in their careers and children or aging parents; Boomers may be trying to balance the transition from work to retirement, whatever that might mean. We can no longer function in the old model of “leave your life at the door when you come into work.”

Transparent leadership – We can only reach transparency with a full commitment to share information that impacts the people throughout the organization. Leaders will need the ability to tackle hard conversations with empathy and understanding. “To handle yourself, use your head: to handle others, use your heart.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Guidance and mentoring – In organizations, we need the perspective of others to navigate our way. Leaders will need to mentor and guide people to learn what they need to know to be successful. It may be technical skills; relationship building; or leadership skills. And, leaders can benefit from the perspective of people on the line. To make good decisions, it’s important to hear from the people doing the day to day work and interacting with customers. It’s all about building trust and trust is built one moment, one conversation, at a time. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more and become more, you are a leader.” ~ Simon Sinek

Opportunity to grow – Everyone, regardless of generation, wants to explore opportunities for growth. What “growth” means can be distinctly different and it’s only through meaningful conversations that we can open doors to opportunity. For entry-level people opportunities may be as simple as a special project, attending a client meeting or being included in management discussion. Mid-level managers may be looking for more visibility, responsibility, and senior-level advancement. These opportunities are more complicated and can require more collaborative and strategic conversations. Senior members may be looking to transition their work as a step to retirement or they may have some special talent or interest they want to pursue within the organization. All of these important expectations and goals are grounded in conversation. People at every level will benefit from having solid and effective communication skills. We are all responsible for initiating and participating in the conversation. To be effective, communication lines must run two ways – up and down the organization.

Build strong communication skills throughout your organization – We often ensure that people gather the technical skills required to advance in the organization, but don’t invest the same energy and resources in being sure that they have sophisticated and effective communication skills. Greg Muccio, Director of People for Southwest Airlines, a 2019 Best Place to work, has a different perspective: “Instead of calling them soft skills, I would actually call them essential skills,” he says. “Some of the most crucial of these skills include communication, teamwork, leadership, relationship-building, balance, reliability, and dependability.“ Regardless of where people are in the organization, these “essential skills” are critical in individual and organizational success. We need to begin growing our leaders from the moment they enter the organization.

Start on day one during the onboarding process. Help newcomers learn communication protocols and provide resources that support the culture of the organization. Defining the protocols can be a big project, but to get the conversation started, you might consider these three ideas:

• Being on the same page – we are committed to understanding each other by clarifying ideas and feelings. We engage everyone in the process and take the time necessary to be sure we all understand.
• Coming alongside – we are open and willing to hear and understand diverse opinions and ideas. We will suspend judgment and pursue consensus.
• It’s not what we know, but what we don’t know that counts – we value collaboration, exploring the experience and knowledge of our people to find the best options and opportunities.

Help people develop the skill to provide valuable and frequent feedback. “The truth is that giving regular performance-based feedback is one of the most effective means to ensure that your team has clarity and can achieve organizational priorities for employees of all generations.” Blessing White – Beyond Millennials: Embracing an Intergenerational Workforce.

Feedback tips

• Be specific – focus on recent details that need to be discussed. Instead of “that report was poorly done,” try “when reading the report, the statistics were unclear to me. Can we talk about how you gathered that data?” It opens the conversation, so both of you can drill down to what happened. It also lets your team member think through what she could have done better and how she will figure out ways to prevent the same issue in the future. At the end of the conversation, you both want to have a clear and agreed-upon plan for improvement.
• Be timely – don’t wait when someone needs a course correction or has made a misstep. The sooner you talk about it, the easier it will be to make changes. Letting things build up until the performance evaluation is not helpful for the individual or the organization.
• Be frequent – the more interaction we have with people, the stronger the relationship becomes. An ongoing, collaborative dialogue can help people be engaged and committed to continuous learning. Frequent collaborative feedback lets people know that you care about their success and want to help them achieve their goals.
• Be positive – When we focus on what’s right, we can build on that and people can really grow. When we focus on what’s wrong, we spin the cycle of disengagement. People shut down and lose interest in growing or participating. Who wants to hear what’s wrong with them? It doesn’t help us learn. And remember to provide feedback about the good stuff, too. “You did a really great job in that meeting helping us pull all the ideas together.” That’s something to build on and a powerful incentive focused on a strength that adds value to the team.

Too busy to give feedback?

Consider trying this to get started with frequent and continual feedback: Once a week ask each team member two questions:

• What are your priorities for the week?
• What can I do to help you?

It lets people know you are interested in what’s on their plate and you are there if they need help. It’s not micro-managing, but it is a way to touch base, keep things on track and offer help if someone is struggling to meet the goals. “We humans do not do well when someone whose intentions are unclear tells us where we stand, how good we “really” are, and what we must do to fix ourselves. We excel only when people who know us and care about us tell us what they experience and what they feel, and in particular, when they see something within us that really works.” ~ Marcus Buckingham – The Feedback Fallacy – HBR March-April 2019

Into the future

To be successful and carry our missions into the future, we need to connect and collaborate with all the generations in our organization. It is our generational and experiential differences that make us strong and our organizations sustainable. The very fact that Millennials bring a different perspective to work is what will make it possible to find solutions to the ever-changing challenges organizations will face in the decades to come.

Bottom line, Millennials are a huge impact on our organizations and society. It’s good to understand ourselves as Boomers, Gen X, or Millennials so that we can build bridges with each other. Each generation has much to contribute. Our success is dependent on the quality and generosity of our conversations and our ability to collaborate and work together across the generations. Taking the time to focus on the essential skills will pay extraordinary dividends in the future.

So when we ask, “what’s the matter with kids today?” The answer is – Not a thing – they are perfect in every way, just as we were.