Perceptual Positioning

Perception is an often overlooked element of communication and relationships. You've probably experienced this when in a disagreement with a coworker or a friend and felt that you weren't being understood. Your vision of how things are is unique to you as an individual and may be heavily influenced by previous experiences, beliefs, or personal background. At work, as well as in your personal life, it is useful to look at events, outcomes, or situations from a viewpoint other than your own—essentially learning to see things in a new way. In this section, we'll cover three different perceptual positions and why “seeing” a situation (or more specifically, a generation) from each lens can help you progress, understand, and create new choices for yourself. On the contrary, failure to do so can seriously inhibit your effectiveness as a manager.

The first perceptual position requires very little effort and is what comes naturally to all of us; seeing, hearing, and feeling through our own eyes, ears, and emotions. Your reaction to and interpretation of things usually centers on what is important to you and what you want to achieve.

The second perceptual position requires you to “walk a mile in another person's shoes.” You've probably heard the saying that to really understand where another person is coming from, you have to experience things as they would. This involves seeing, hearing, and feeling a situation as if you were them. Rather than reacting to a situation based on how things seem to you, you need to think in terms of how the same situation looks or feels to the other person involved.

The third and last perceptual position is that of an outside observer, someone who is detached from the emotional element of the situation or event. This perspective can be uncomfortable because it requires a solely objective view about our own behaviors and attitudes. When you try to see a situation from the outside looking in, you think in terms of what observations a third party would make, what advice they would give, and what opinions they may develop based on what they see. When you gain the ability to see yourself objectively, you begin to look for different ways to respond to things; often resulting in more positive and desirable outcomes.

Sometimes we get stuck just living life and see the world from only one of these three perspectives. We may fail to expand our vision to include the other perceptual positions. Someone who lives life in only first position focuses on their own needs, rather than considering the needs or perceptions of others. Someone who lives their life in second sacrifices their own needs to accommodate the needs of other people; this is often referred to as being codependent, enabling, or a doormat. And a person stuck in third position may be a disinterested and detached observer of life. Although all three perceptual positions are important throughout life, it is productive to cycle through each perception regularly. In fact, your success at work (and in life) depends on your ability to do so.

The nine perceived orientations of Millennials as experienced by our managers are (1) autonomous, (2) entitled, (3) imaginative, (4) self-absorbed, (5) defensive, (6) abrasive, (7) myopic, (8) unfocused, and (9) indifferent. For every perceived orientation, we have listed a set of corollary intrinsic values. As you can see, intrinsic Millennial values are normal, if not admirable (see Table 4.1).

Once we identified the perceptions managers had of working with Millennials, we listened to how the managers responded to each of the orientations. Our aim was to understand what separated managers who were successful in working with Millennials from those who struggled. We discovered that successful managers practiced a set of core competencies that are essential to effectively managing Millennial employees. The competencies fall within three behavioral categories: (1) adapting, (2) communicating, and (3) envisioning.

Adapting is the willingness to accept that a Millennial employee does not have the same experiences, values, or frame of reference that you had when you were the same age. We refer to this as suspending the bias of your own experience. Adapting successfully may require adjustments to your management style. In some cases, it may require changes to your organization's policies and procedures. Several major corporations found that they were better able to remain true to their mission by making their policies more accommodating to the expressed values of Millennial employees. The adapting competencies are “Flexing with the Autonomous,” “Incenting the Entitled,” and “Cultivating the Imaginative.”

Communicating refers to the ability to make a connection at a relational level. It is the primary area in which tension can escalate into emotional conflict. In the saddest cases, professional relationships deteriorated so much that we observed personal attacks. For the manager who is committed to succeeding despite relational tension, communicating is essential. It is about staying engaged even when both parties are frustrated. The communicating competencies are “Engaging the Self-Absorbed,” “Disarming the Defensive,” and “Self-Differentiating from the Abrasive.”

Envisioning is about lifting the horizons among the unmotivated and myopic. It incorporates management practices that create both meaning and accountability for the Millennial employee. In practice, envisioning entails connecting employees' personal goals and aspirations with the organization's objectives. Without the adapting and communicating skills, it is highly unlikely that envisioning can take place. The envisioning competencies are “Broadening the Myopic,” “Directing the Unfocused,” and “Motivating the Indifferent” (see Table 4.2).

Obviously, mastering the nine competencies will help you to effectively manage an employee of any generation. However, the competencies are exponentially more important when managing Millennials. Builders, Baby Boomers, and Gen X(ers) have been working long enough to get each other and therefore are more likely to understand where management is coming from even if they disagree. Millennials do not have enough experience to read between the lines when it comes to understanding management behavior.

The Consequence of Inexperience

If you are a manager and still not convinced about the benefits to be gained from making the effort to engage your Millennial employees, then maybe this book is not for you. But we hope you stick with us a little longer. This section contains a truly remarkable discussion, one of tremendous optimism, energy, and willingness to engage on the part of Millennial workers today. We expect younger people to pay their dues. Many managers told us so, in just about those words. This is not lost on Millennial employees, as you will see on the next few pages. Even so, we encountered a keen understanding among Millennials of the value of—and an eagerness to gain—experience. Millennials self-report lack of experience as the biggest challenge when transitioning to the workforce. Even when Millennials start to get their experiential feet under them, the fact that they look young presents its own challenge.

The challenge takes place in the context of ageism, discrimination against or sanctioning of individuals because of their age. As you might imagine, where Millennials are concerned, ageism is a multiedged sword. We know, swords usually only have two edges, but we have found four kinds of age bias at work here, two of which work in favor of Millennial employees and two against.

One common bias we all fall prey to is the tendency to assume that individuals we encounter, including people we may work with daily, exhibit all of the traits and behaviors generally associated with their age cohort. Age stereotypes (e.g., older people are resistant to new technology) depict older persons as being less than desirable employees, particularly for technically demanding jobs. Employers default to negative stereotypes when they have limited information about applicants and project onto individuals certain perceived group characteristics.²

Recently, the problem of age discrimination has received increased attention. Many experts suggest there are two reasons for the growing interest: (1) the high costs connected with early retirement and (2) an increased proportion of older persons in the population. Although the concept of ageism or age discrimination has been around for decades, age prejudice is still considered socially acceptable. Recently more attention has been given to the subject. Sociologist Todd Nelson sees a correlation between Baby Boomers nearing or entering retirement age and an increase in academic and popular interest in aging.³

Ironically, it is the Baby Boomer phenomenon that stirred our interest in studying Millennials in the workplace. We were concerned with who was going to take the Baby Boomers' place in organizations and the disconnect that seemed to be emerging between the age cohorts.

Ageism is mostly applied to the older segment of the population, but we want to take a look at the other side of the age equation. We found it interesting that when managers compared Millennials favorably to other age cohorts, it had to do with their openness to change and willingness to try new things. Although one may stereotype older workers as slower, less willing to change, or less technologically sophisticated, we also believe that there are negative stereotypes that impact the career opportunities (pay scale, promotion, benefits, etc.) of Millennials.

We know it is challenging, if not bordering on the incredulous, to think of Millennials as being victims of ageism. After all, our culture worships youth. Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, Puerto Rico's first governor, was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he traveled to Florida in 1513. Today, people carry Ponce's spirit of eternal youth as they pursue the promise of every hair tonic, wrinkle cream, exfoliate, and injectable procedure. Futurist marketing guru Faith Popcorn has written on the phenomena she coined as “down-aging.” Popcorn says, “Down-aging is a redefining down what appropriate age-behavior is for your age…40 is now what used to be 30, 50 is now what used to be 40, 65 is now the beginning of the second half of life.”⁴ Famed lyricist Bob Dylan—who turns 76 years old in 2016—offers a blessing of eternal youth in his 1962 hit “Forever Young.”

You may be asking how someone can be marginalized when everybody wants what they have. One explanation could be stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is the threat of having the negative characteristics stereotypically associated with a group applied to a particular individual, whether justified or not. People only experience stereotype threat when a negative stereotype about their group is relevant to performance on a specific task.⁵ For instance, left-handed golfers are not as good at putting as right-handed golfers. Individuals who are easily identified with a cohort may experience greater susceptibility to stereotype threat.⁶ The perceived orientations of Millennials could adversely impact their job opportunities.

Many of the managerial leaders we interviewed resented having to adapt to the Millennials. We discovered that there are managers who even refuse to hire them. We suggest, therefore, that it is possible that Millennials can be marginalized. We mean so in the context of being prevented, in the short term, from experiencing meaningful participation in organizational life.

Negative stereotypes can adversely impact the willingness of a managerial leader to mentor or help a young person—particularly when the older employee sees the younger employee as an economic threat. Managerial leaders may also be put off by attitudes and behaviors that are not consistent with their own. Perhaps the most damaging sanction a managerial leader can deploy is to not engage the young employee or do so in a way that is condescending. Here lies the marginalization. When managerial leaders superimpose their own experience (cohort-related values) over the younger workers (i.e., they ought to be quiet in meetings for a certain period of time) and the younger workers act out of their own experience (cohort-related values), a sanction may be imposed in the form of negative feedback. Studies show that people who receive constant negative feedback often show lower levels of effort as a result.⁷

Negative feedback tends to lower self-efficacy (the belief in one's own ability to achieve successful levels of performance). A key indicator of one's future success is self-efficacy.⁸ Managerial leaders can negatively impact a person's self-efficacy by misusing their influence, position, or power.

We wanted to explore the idea of reverse ageism to see whether Millennials felt barriers to job opportunities as a result of their age. So we did a survey with college juniors and seniors who were student leaders at two Southern California universities (one private and one public). The criteria for participation were having had worked at a job in which they reported directly to a manager.