Millennials value informality. It can be seen in the way they dress, talk, and negotiate organizational culture. Other generations understand the function of titles, but Millennials see them as perfunctory, if not an impediment to building real relationships. They believe calling someone by his or her first name is a sign of relational closeness and respect. By suspending formality, they expedite the more important relational exchanges.

The familiarity that Millennials exercise is perceived by many managers to be a lack of respect for position and titles. A provost from one of the country’s largest universities told us the story of a student who walked into her office unannounced and said, “Hello Pam, we have to get together for lunch one of these days.” The provost had mixed emotions, because on the one hand, she was happy that the student felt comfortable enough to stop by. On the other hand, she felt that the academy and her office are upheld by a certain level of institutional decorum. To simply call the provost by her first name and not “Dr.” was a threat to her position and the institution. The provost decided not to take this lack of decorum personally. She realized there was more going on than a violation of protocol. This, she realized, was not an attack on her. She did not overreact to the situation, but instead, she adapted. Her method of adapting was to instruct the student that when they bump into one another off-campus, the student could call her Pam, but when meeting on campus, she preferred to be called “Dr.” The provost’s experience exemplifies the inner tension many managerial leaders feel. They worked hard to achieve their positions in their respective organizations but feel silly when they insist on being addressed by their titles. She was able to keep institutional decorum and maintain a level of informality.

In the opening remarks of this chapter, we use the metaphor of getting hooked as if you are a fish being reeled in by a skillful angler. There is a cast, a tug on the line that creates a reaction, and then the fight is on. Ultimately the fish tires and gives up or breaks the line. Managers who are unaware of their own emotions or how they get triggered can be hooked by the abrasiveness they experience from Millennials.

The key to relational health is self-regulation. All of the toxic forces in life lack self-regulation, from cancerous cells to totalitarian governments—by nature they are invasive of others. Defining the self helps us to not attempt to take others over and not let others take us over. An example of taking others over can be something as simple as not letting people out of a meeting until everyone agrees with you or accusing someone of being disloyal because they see things differently than you. A sign of being taken over by others is when you get reactionary around them and lose your sense of emotional balance. A great term for this is—someone living in your head rent-free. We all lose our balance and get hooked emotionally by others. Defining the self requires us to ask, “Why do I need people to agree with me or why am I so bothered by . . . ?”

There are two great forces in life. There is the force for Separateness and the force for Togetherness. For personal health, these must be kept in balance. If the force for togetherness is too strong, we tend to lose our objectivity and become enmeshed with the other person or group. This leads to not being able to separate someone else’s comment or action from who we are. We personalize the comment or behavior, or as we say, “We take it personally.” On the other hand, if the force for separateness is too strong, we have autonomy, but we lose connectivity. We are cut off from the person or group, which is also unhealthy. We become insensitive to their needs and we lose valuable insights they could give us.

Many people confuse their role and their person. You are much greater than your role. It is a part of who you are, but not equal to who you are. When your role is over you still exist. A self-differentiated person understands this and sees the distinction clearly. As a result, even though your role might get criticized or impacted, you can stay intact and in control. If you can maintain your self-differentiated equilibrium when they criticize your direct role, you will have no trouble not taking it personally when the company or organization is criticized or attacked.

When someone has a problem with someone else, one of the counterproductive ways of handling it is to pull another person into the mix. They are usually neither a part of the problem or the solution, but we pull them in nonetheless for support or to make us feel better about a situation. This is called triangulating. “A” has a problem with “B.” A pulls in “C” for moral support or to help in the injustice collecting with regard to B. C now has a problem with B based on A’s input. If A’s problem with B is solved, C still has a problem with B. Rather than solving the problem, A has allowed the situation to escalate beyond its reasonable proportions. A self-differentiated person has the ability to stay separate when tension arises with another colleague, whether a peer, superior, or a subordinate. They are not enmeshed to the point where they have to involve others in the injustice collecting that leads to villianizing a worker—in this case, a Millennial.

Think of presence in terms like deep listening, of being open beyond one’s preconceptions and biases, and seeing the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control.¹ Remember it is your presence that most impacts the system. It is not the amount of data you know or your particular skill set. Though important, data and skill sets are merely threshold competencies. They are what get you in the door. They get you your role. As important as they are, it is you as a person who will make all the difference in how you lead and manage. Understanding your presence and its impact is good for managing anybody, but is exponentially important when managing and leading Millennials. A self-differentiated person can distinguish between the anxiety-filled situation and who they are as a person. This allows them to become a “nonanxious” presence in the midst of the storm. Without this awareness, it is easy to take an anxious situation and infuse more anxiety into it, thus making it worse.

A sports fitness manager said that he used to take it personally when an employee did not pan out. He said that he has learned that people have to be accountable for their own failure or success, “I am accountable for training and pointing them in the right direction, but they have to take it from there.” He did say that he is still learning how to not take things personally.

In Chapter 3, we reported what we considered to be differences between managers who were effective at managing Millennials and those who were not. One glaring difference was that the effective managers allowed their subordinates to challenge them. They did not get defensive, they did not get hooked, and they even saw it as a way to connect. They had the ability to self-differentiate and not take personally the complaints, criticisms, and abrasiveness of their younger workers. They realized that the abrasiveness they experienced was not always about them.