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Kids These Days

According to Pew Research,¹ there are more than seventy-seven million Millennials, born since 1980, who in 2014 are between twenty-two and thirty-four years of age. This generation eclipses Generation X’s forty-six million by almost 68 percent, and generally equals the size of the Baby Boomer generation which the U.S. Census Bureau counts at 76.4 million (Population Reference Bureau).

It’s important to remember that Millennials are not all alike. Derek Thompson, senior editor at the Atlantic, notes that the Millennials born between 1980 and 1986 “landed in the cradle during an awful recession, learned to walk during the Reagan recovery, came of age in the booming 1990s, and entered the labor market after the Sept. 11 attacks and before the Great Recession, the two tragedies of the early 21st century.”² Millennials born between 1986 and 1992 have entered—or tried to enter—the job market during or at the tail end of the Great Recession. Those born since 1992 are now in school and facing a decidedly different reality than those born at the beginning of the generation. And the huge size of the cohort tells you that we can expect Millennials to have the same type of dynamic and sweeping impact on American culture that the Baby Boomers have had in the last twenty years (and will continue to have, in a different way, as they age). What the size doesn’t tell you is the key differences between this generation and those that came before it.

Since 2008, a set of bitter myths about Millennials have emerged and been perpetuated to the point that they have taken on a life of their own. I count six prevalent myths:

Most of these myths are false, a couple are plausible, and one is true. Behind each myth is a gap in understanding that we must bridge in order to deal with management’s frustration and start harnessing the incredible talent Millennials bring to the party. For Millennials, understanding why their older colleagues are frustrated is the first step they can take to help make the workplace better … for everyone. Before we explore these myths, it’s important to review a few differences in the way Millennials see the world compared with Boomers and Gen-Xers.

Digitally Native

Millennials are the first digitally native generation, growing up with technology touching virtually every aspect of their lives. Frankly, gadgets seem to grow from their extremities—Darwin would have had a field day.

Gen Yers have grown from toddlers to college graduates with seemingly endless sources of technology-enabled distraction, real or perceived. Over the past fifteen years, teachers have struggled to find the right balance between using computer, tablet, or phone screens effectively in the classroom and teaching in a more traditional style. The commoditization of chips, screens, and other technologies has resulted in homes full of computer-aided gadgets, digital services, and technology that operate simultaneously and at increasingly fast speeds. All of this has tremendous impact on the workplace.

Time-Shifting, Second Screens, and TV without TVs

Brought up with five hundred channels of television programming of dubious quality or cultural value, Millennials now watch less and less live television. Instead, they increasingly prefer to time-shift their favorite shows using DVRs or streaming what they want, when they want, where they want onto their computers, tablets, or phones. Also, for this generation, and increasingly for Gen Xers and Baby Boomers alike, simply watching doesn’t deliver the engaging experience they crave—more than 70 percent of people with tablets or smartphones are simultaneously watching television while viewing and interacting with companion information on their second screens.³

Media’s ability to provide instant gratification is just one piece of the “want it now” sentiment so many managers complain about when talking of their Millennial team members. One Baby Boomer senior leader from Chicago observes that Millennials “like variety and a fast pace, and seem to be very confident in multitasking. I’ve walked into some offices full of people where you could hear a pin drop because no one was talking, yet everyone had their headphones on and was working on two large screens plus had their mobile phones and tablets in their hands.” This phenomenon has two large impacts in the office environment. First, “live” doesn’t carry the same weight with Millennials that it does with older generations, except in sports programming. This translates into a “don’t need to be here now” attitude and the general understanding that “my time” is more important than the “show’s” time. In an on-demand world, Millennials have grown up getting the media and entertainment they want, when they want it, increasingly on any device they want it on. The concept of time and place is different for Millennials than it is for those of older generations, who grew up waiting for the next episode to play on Tuesday at 9 p.m. It is a different mind-set.

Digital Communicators

Millennials, and increasingly Gen Xers and Boomers, are dependent on their mobile devices and computers to communicate. The difference between the generations here is that Millennials overwhelmingly prefer e-mail, texting, and chatting on social messaging platforms to phone conversations or even face-to-face conversations. How often have you seen a group of twentysomethings sitting at a restaurant together, all swiping and typing on their phones instead of actually talking with one another?

“What hits me right between the eyes is the difference in communication styles between me and the Millennials I work with in my company and at our client’s,” says Susan, a forty-seven-year-old senior executive in a Minneapolis-based sales distribution company. “Millennials are very dependent on [short-form digital] communication. They don’t know their landline numbers; they don’t even set up their landline voice-mail boxes at work. Everything is on e-mail or text … I never thought I’d have a sales relationship with my customer over text messaging.”

Of course, Millennials don’t seem able to make decisions by e-mail, text, or IM, unlike their older colleagues. Sometimes, on bad days, I want to have a cannon shoot glitter confetti every time I get a definitive answer on e-mail. “The only way we can actually get to a decision is to have an in-person meeting,” continues Susan, “I’ll be talking, and they’ll be looking at their screens and nodding their heads a lot, but at least I’ll get a definite answer because they can’t go anywhere.”

Every manager I talked with commented that decision making is happening in person, while time is eaten up with written communication that often lacks clarity on the writing end and comprehension on the reading end. Digital communication is dependent on words, acronyms, and emoticons, but this has not led to more effective written communication. On the contrary, while words are key to good business communication, effective writing that delivers nuance and impact and understanding is difficult to find in the workplace, no matter the age of the employee.

Access to Anything and Anyone

The world is flat to Millennials, who are used to having access to virtually any information they want, when they want it. With nearly unfettered access to billions of pages of information from around the world through the Internet, Gen Y is used to getting their hands on any data point they seek. As Millennials move into the workforce, they expect the transparency they perceive in their lives to be equally present in the office. “Transparency is key—information is readily available. We are very educated and we can see what else is out there,” explains Andrew, twenty-seven, an associate at a real estate investment firm in New York City. Whether that data is accurate or not, or whether it is well supported, is a different conversation.

With easy access to so much, Millennials also seem much more worldly than their older colleagues. “I’m really impressed with the sophistication and breadth of experiences of the Millennials I see,” says Ted, the forty-eight-year old manager. “They’ve travelled, they’ve tried lots and lots of different foods, they know a lot about the world. They have very sophisticated tastes compared to my peers when I was their age.” Andrew adds, “Our generation grew up with access to the world, and I feel like we want to see and experience more of it than other generations.”

Just as access to any information is taken for granted, so is access to anybody. This is the first generation that has been raised to call their parents’ friends and their friends’ parents by their first names. Millennials are used to being one e-mail or click away from communicating directly with companies and their leaders. Introductory e-mails that start with “Hey, Lee, good to meet you,” from unknown young people seeking an interview for an entry-level job, are common in my inbox.

While this informality may be welcome in social situations, in the workplace it can immediately break down any sense of hierarchy, and for some older people, lessen the sense of respect they expect or feel is appropriate.

More Educated, but Different

While the media likes to celebrate the wild success of college dropouts Mark Zuckerberg and his predecessors Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell, this generation is our most educated.⁴ Workers with a college degree are driving a greater disparity in earning potential. According to the Pew Research Center, a college education is worth more today, as “there’s a wider earnings gap between college-educated and less-educated Millennials compared with all previous generations.”⁵

At the same time, the quality of education has changed significantly; greater emphasis on measuring teacher effectiveness has led to a generation raised to ace the test rather than master the material. It seems like they “know a little about everything and in a lot of cases not a lot about anything—perhaps depth of knowledge is not as important to them?” asks Margaret, fifty-one, who works with a large team, half of whom are under thirty.

Despite the good educations so many Gen Yers have, compared with their predecessors, Gen Y frequently gets dinged for seeking an easy way out. “They think there’s an easy digital answer to everything, and don’t understand that there are ways to know things without just clicking on something,” suggests Matt, an early Gen Xer at forty-seven. “They don’t seem to care about what’s behind the click, and don’t seem to know that the first thing they see on a search result is not the only or best answer—it’s just about getting things done fast.”

In the workplace this shows up in two ways: the ability to get started and the ability to finish. I work with a lot of Millennials who “are pretty frickin’ bright,” says Jeff, a marketing associate at a large, established online media company in New York, “but I don’t see that they work any better” than people from other generations. “Instead, I see they are not as good at self-motivating and definitely aren’t as accountable for their work.” Ted stresses that Millennials need “more context, more explanation, and more direction” to get started on a project. And they need a lot more guidance and feedback to get anything done.

Peter, forty-five, a social worker, adds, “This [difficulty completing tasks] manifests itself in tasks that are 70 percent done and things aren’t wrapped up as you’d expect them to be. When I go back to my people to get the work finished, I don’t get a lot of pushback, but the follow-up is not that much better. So I either have to finish it myself or find someone else more senior to get it done.”

The partial-work phenomenon was a constant theme in interviews with Baby Boomer and Gen X managers, who consistently complain, “They just can’t seem to get to the end of things—they just don’t know how to cross the finish line.” In my own work, I found that these two dynamics were flourishing until we laid out a different path to collaboration and success, which I discuss in chapter 4.

I think that part of this widespread issue is due to the rampant grade inflation that permeates secondary schools, colleges, and universities nationwide. A lot has been written about this trend, which Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy wrote extensively about in The Teachers College Record in 2010. The Washington Post reported on a mistakenly sent e-mail that revealed that almost everyone at the University of Virginia Law School was above average. One PhD candidate revealed in an article that “the real reason so many of us inflate grades is to avoid students complaining.”

Many Millennials have been educated in a system where negotiation is part of the modus operandi, and when they enter the workplace they simply don’t know how to cope with feedback that is not negotiable. Who to complain to when they have to re-do the work? Why isn’t this good enough? How did I become average when I graduated with honors?

We could talk a lot about this, and what a disservice grade inflation is to these students. While business probably has little impact in fixing the problem, businesses big and small have to clean up the mess that grade inflation creates in the workplace.

Parents Still Matter

Importantly, many Millennials have been raised by Xers and Boomers who have intervened at almost every difficult step along the way, consistently validating their children’s existence with awards and trophies for participation, not necessarily excellence, encouraging them to “not settle” and building a self-confidence based on input instead of achievement. “My mom is really close to being my best friend,” says Carolyn, twenty-five, in a comment I heard over and over again. “I can count on her to help me with anything.”

This generation has been raised with more two-income families, in which the parents have had to plan every moment of the day, observes Ciara. “The Millennials I know at work and in my family have never had ‘free play.’ They’ve had organized play since they were toddlers, and their parents resolved all their conflicts for them, either because they were trying to help or because they didn’t have time for their kids to take up their time to work it out.”

John, fifty-four, a senior sales executive, gets right to the point, “Our generation has to be the worst parents ever! We haven’t prepared them for real life, and when these kids get into the workplace and find out they don’t get awards for showing up, it gets ugly.” That hits close to home for me as a mother of sixteen-year-old and thirteen-year-old young men.

On my refrigerator is a list of things from 150 Ways to Show Kids You Care⁷ that’s been there for at least eight years. It reads, a bit out of order from the book, like this:

• Acknowledge them.
• Ask them about themselves.
• Tell them how terrific they are.
• Listen to them.
• Say yes a lot.
• Tell them their feelings are okay.
• Suggest options when they seek your advice.
• Answer their questions.
• Make yourself available.
• Display their artwork at home.
• Thank them.
• Give them lots of compliments.

I believe in this list: I love this book, and I give it to everyone I know when they have children. However, what’s not on my list are the other things that set boundaries, correct inappropriate behavior, enforce consequences consistently, and “graduate” kids through age-appropriate responsibilities. I’ll throw myself into the parent group that missed that chapter on how to wean kids off of trophies for participation. By themselves, these characteristics aren’t that compelling, but when combined they create a very different composite persona with whom Boomers and Gen Xers must learn to work.

Parent Trap

The irony is that the Boomers and Gen Xers complaining loudest about Millennials miss the connection between their own parenting skills and their young colleagues in the workplace. While some parents of young adults still seem to exclude their own progeny from their disappointment and frustration with their children’s peers, others are staring the reality of their parenting style in the face as their kids boomerang home after college.

I have always granted any informational interview requested of me, by the interviewee or their parent or mentor. I got my first job through the generosity of informational interviews brokered by my father’s best friend, and feel that it’s the right thing to do. Besides generating good karma, I get a handle on what’s going on outside of my organization—I highly recommend it. With these interviews comes a window into parents who have their kids at home after college graduation. I find parents of adult children split into two groups: encouragers and enablers.

The encouragers work with their grown children to define a productive path, providing a safety cushion even as they explain that no job is perfect and that learning how and when to compromise is a necessary skill. They have their kids contribute at home, either in rent or chores or both. And they maintain their rules and standards in their households regardless of how old their kids are.

“I lived at home for fourteen months after college, and, yes, I did count,” said Michelle, now twenty-seven. Michelle’s parents didn’t have her pay rent, but did tell her she needed to “grin and bear it” when she got work that she didn’t like. “They wanted me to be happy and supported me changing jobs,” but insisted that she not leave one job before she had another one.

The enablers, on the other hand, don’t require much of their kids, which often leads to backlash from other Millennials and employers alike. “I don’t understand these helicopter parents who are working for their kids,” says Georgia, twenty-seven from Philadelphia. “It’s crazy what these Boomer parents are doing, and it’s crazy for these twentysomethings to let them—it’s not helping them.” Liz, thirty, adds that she doesn’t have a lot of respect for her peers who count on their parents to make their way: “I don’t have mommy or daddy paying for my rent or car like so many of the Millennials I know do … it’s going to come back to haunt them. It already does haunt them in the office.” These employees are pegged as slackers and therefore get sidelined for career-advancing assignments.

And Millennials are bringing their parents into the workplace like never before. Karie Willyerd, VP of learning and social adoption at SuccessFactors, a large HR solutions provider, believes that parents may very well be (the) “secret weapon in convincing Millennials to join or stay” at an organization.⁸ Stories of parents getting involved in their grown children’s careers abound. Willyerd notes that between one-third and one-half of the hundreds of HR executives she speaks with every year have firsthand experience of parents interfering with hiring or performance reviews.

Millennials in the workplace cite their parents as more influential than any other input.⁹ Of course, given that, according to Pew Research, 36 percent of Millennials age eighteen to twenty-four are still living at home, parental involvement in their careers should not be wholly unexpected.

Carol, who lives with her husband and two children under age ten while running a successful sales organization for a large national retailer, shares what her friends have told her: “So many of my friends with twentysomething kids say, ‘Holy crap, we should have done things differently’ and tell me that I ‘still have time to not make the same mistakes’ that they did.”

While we could talk about the reasons behind this common parenthood philosophy for hours while prone on a therapist’s couch paying $200-plus per hour, here’s where we are: upbringing matters.

So What Now?

“We need to figure this out,” says Margaret, fifty-four, a C-level executive at a large events-management company. “At my last company, we had a long string of dazzling, talented Millennials. They would consistently last six or seven months and then leave us. We could never get any of the good ones to stay—that’s no way to run a business for the future.”

If Millennials were far and few between, that would be one thing. However, Millennials make up a substantial portion of today’s companies, and by 2020 will make up almost half, 46 percent, of the workforce.¹⁰

Unless your company is going to cease to exist when you decide to retire, you need to find a way to make it work at work with this growing segment of the labor force. As a bottom line, getting along and maximizing the strengths of different people in the workplace is not just a “nice to have.” Those companies that learn to adapt and become places where Millennials are welcomed and appreciated without compromising performance standards will have a significant strategic advantage over their competition.

As Susan said, “Sometimes we look at these college graduates that we’re interviewing as if exotic animals have entered our midst.” For better or for worse, the workplace is not the Serengeti, and we need to understand how to work with Millennials and not just gather war stories about our encounters with them.