CHAPTER FOUR
PRACTICE IN LOCO PARENTIS MANAGEMENT
Sure, if my boss was half as cool as my dad, that would be great!
—Millennial
A senior private equity managing director told me of a parent calling to complain that her son was working too many hours. I asked how he reacted to this call. “I just listened and tried to be polite. I didn’t tell her that her son was going to make ten thousand dollars less for every minute she kept me on the phone. But I did the math in my head.” He went on, “This is ridiculous. For one thing, my parents never in a million years would have considered calling my boss when I was in my first job out of college. I can’t even imagine that. They didn’t even know my boss’s name. And I would have been mortified if my boss got a call from my parents.”
I have heard this story over and over again, in various forms. The details change, but the thrust of the story is always the same. There’s no doubt that parents are far more heavily involved in the lives and careers of their young adult children than those of previous generations. College professors and administrators report that the parents of Millennials show up to new student orientations in record numbers (some studies indicate that more than 80 percent of new students are now accompanied by a parent for some part or all of orientation). Parents are often consulted several times a day by their college-attending children, using cell phone check-ins to get advice about course choices, classroom protocol, homework assignments, and exams. Professors routinely field parental complaints about student workload and grades. “After all,” many parents can be heard saying, “We are paying a lot of money for this education. We are the customers here.”
This pattern of helicopter parenting carries over once Millennials get to the workplace. Managers tell me every day about parents accompanying their children to job interviews and even, once in a while, to the first day of work. Just a cell phone call away, parents are consulted about career decisions and management practices great and small, sometimes all day long. As this Millennial put it, “My parents are my best friends. Obviously I’m going to get their take on stuff I’m doing, be it work or whatever. They are right there helping me out no matter what I’m doing. I don’t want to be out there on my own. Why would I?” The big surprise comes when managers hear directly from parents, suggesting their children should be working fewer hours, getting different assignments, winning promotions, and receiving pay increases.
Yes, it is commonplace today for parents to insert themselves in support of their young (and not-so-young) adult children, even in the most adult spheres like the workplace, where such involvement would have been considered totally inappropriate in the past. But remember, this is nothing new for Millennials. Their parents have always been highly engaged with them. Every step of the way, they have been guided, directed, supported, coached, and protected. Unlike previous generations, they don’t express much desire to break free as they reach adulthood.
It’s become almost cliché to say that the Millennial Generation is over-parented. But they are. And that is a fact with which managers today must grapple. “This is an outrage,” some managers say. “I shouldn’t have to deal with their parents at all.” On the flip side, some managers simply accept that their young employees will be accompanied and assisted by their parents throughout the early stages of their working lives. I don’t think you should accept that. You hired the employee, not the parents. But you do have to deal with it.
One nurse manager on a very busy hospital floor told me, “My approach is simple: sink-or-swim time now, kids. Just let the real world sort them out.” The problem is that if you take a sink-or-swim approach with Millennial employees, they are likely to sink; or go to the shallow end and play; or swim off in their own direction; or get out of the pool, walk across the street, and go to work for your competition. And when you hire a replacement, that person is likely to bring his or her parents along, too. The irony is that if you hire a Millennial who is not close to his or her parents, you may be sorry. Among today’s young workers, those who are closest to their parents will probably turn out to be the most able, most achievement oriented, and the hardest working.
In my seminars, I tell managers that the way to deal with the over-parenting problem is to take a strong hand as a manager, not a weak one. Your Millennial employees need to know that you know who they are and care about their success. You need to make it a priority to spend time with them. Guide them through this very difficult and scary world. Break things down for them like a teacher. Provide regular, gentle course corrections to keep them on track. Be honest with them so you can help them improve. Keep close track of their successes no matter how small. Reward the behavior you want and need to see, and even negotiate special rewards for above-and-beyond performance in very small increments along the way.
When I describe this approach at seminars, at least one manager will remark, “This sounds a lot like parenting. Are you saying that we should manage these young upstarts as if we are their parents?” I’m afraid the answer I’ve come to is “yes,” at least sort of. Let’s put it this way. You can’t fight the over-parenting phenomenon, so run with it. Your Millennial employees want it. They need it. Without strong management in the workplace, there is a void where their parents have always been.
Do be careful, and don’t get carried away. The worst thing you can possibly do with Millennials is treat them like children, talk down to them, or make them feel disrespected. Millennials are used to being treated as valued members of the family, whose thoughts and feelings are important. Remember, Millennials have received more respect from their parents and elders than any other generation in history.
I call this approach in loco parentis management. In loco parentis, a Latin term that means “in the place of a parent,” typically is used to refer to the position of an institution (usually a school) charged with the care of a minor in the absence of the minor’s parent. Step into the void. Take over the tutoring aspects of the parental role in the workplace without taking over the emotional part (at least mostly). Here’s what this means:
- Show them you care.
- Give them boundaries and structure.
- Help them keep score.
- Negotiate special rewards in very small increments.
1. Show Them You Care
When I say, “care about your employees,” I’m not saying you need to love your employees as if they really are your own children or let them come live in your basement. But you may need to usher them through these early stages of their working lives and into the next. Help them make the transition.
Don’t be alarmed. You don’t need to relate to this person’s deep inside thoughts, feelings, and spirit, or even inner motives. In my view, you shouldn’t even try unless you are a trained therapist or pastor. Just care enough to help this person succeed at work, at least whenever this person is working for you. One Millennial recently told me: “I need to work for people who know who I am and what I’m doing, and who seem to care. I’ve had bosses who didn’t even know my name. But right now I’m working for this woman who is very busy, but she really connects with me, eye-to-eye kind of, asks me questions and really listens. She’s taught me a lot already.”
How do you connect with your new young talent? First, you have to get to know them as individuals.
Get to Know Them
I don’t mean you should learn what’s going on in each employee’s personal life. Actually, I think that’s none of your business. Get to know the self each Millennial brings to work. Care enough to learn his or her name. In fact, you should try to use names a lot. (Millennials usually love their own names.) But that’s not enough. You need to know who they are at work and what they are doing at any given time:
- How long has the person been working here?
- What is his schedule at work?
- What are her main tasks every day?
- What are all of his other projects?
- Where does he sit at work? Does she travel for work? Where?
- Is he generally a high performer, low performer, or somewhere in the middle?
- Is she generally a fast worker, slow, or somewhere in the middle?
- Does he usually get all or most of the details right—or not?
- Is she generally a positive influence on colleagues, negative, or neutral?
- • What is his reputation among co-workers?
- How long is she likely to stay? Is there a chance she will stay for the long term?
The only way to learn all this information about a Millennial is to spend time with him or her one-on-one on a regular basis—helping that person succeed. Of course, some people require more attention than others. But they all need your one-on-one attention. The best way to demonstrate that you care about a Millennial’s success at work is to invest your own time in helping that person succeed.
Invest the Right Amount of Time with Each Millennial
Often managers ask me, “How can I possibly spend meaningful time with every employee, get to know each person, and keep track of what everybody is doing all the time?” The answer depends on how many people you manage. I think you can actually get to know, tune into, and connect in a meaningful way with as many as fifteen or twenty direct reports, but twenty is the limit. (And you’ll need to keep notes to keep up with this many.) If you have more than twenty direct reports, you’ll have to be selective. But don’t make the mistake of spending all of your management time on a few problem employees. Be strategic. Focus on managers first. Anybody you manage who is managing other people should be your first priority. Second, focus on employees whose work cannot go wrong without great cost or injury to themselves or others—anybody whose work is particularly high stakes, high impact, or dangerous. Third, choose one or two new people each day to spend whatever time you have left. If you do pick two people each day, I recommend picking one from the high end (one star) and one from the low end (one problem). Work your way to the middle of the pack until you have tagged everyone. Then start over and work your way through the list again.
Don’t let your one-on-one time with any one person become long and convoluted. You don’t have to shoot the breeze. You don’t have time to have intense, deep, personal conversations. Keep your one-on-ones relatively brief and focused on preparing the individual for his or her immediate work of the day, week, or month. Help prepare Y for the work at hand. Remember, you don’t need to show Y that you care about him deep inside, only that you care enough about him to spend time setting him up for success.
As you get to know each person, you’ll have to fine-tune your approach in every conversation. But start each conversation with these questions: “How are you? What is your top-priority assignment right now? What steps are you following? What step are you on right now? What can I do to help you?” Listen carefully. Then try to wrap up each conversation with some concrete actionable advice.
“I try to have a particular goal that I’m working toward with every person,” said a manager in a major engineering firm. “Every person is a different situation. With one person, I’m always trying to move her along on a particular matter, finishing up one step and moving on to the next. With another person, I try to help him slow down and pay attention to the details. With another person it might be ‘tuck in your shirt,’ ‘come to work on time,’ ‘stop talking on the phone all the time.’ But I’m always working toward a particular goal with every person, and they know I really care about their success.”
Don’t Pretend
I realize that this chapter is called “in loco parentis management,” but don’t get me wrong. I am not saying you should actually pretend to be a parent to your employees at work. In fact, you shouldn’t pretend anything. Millennials have giant BS detectors, especially around authority figures. You have to be authentic to succeed with them. So focus on the authentic common interest between you two, which is the work at hand, and on playing very well the real role you have in their working lives: that of a manager.
You are running a workplace. The relationships at work are transactional relationships. I promise you, none of your employees would be showing up to work every day if you were not paying them. So treat each person and the relationship with respect. But don’t hesitate to take charge and tell them what to do. You are paying them to work very well, very fast, all day long. Make that fact explicit, keep a spotlight on it, and never try to camouflage it.
Some managers, unfortunately, pretend to be friends with their employees. I realize plenty of workplace friendships are genuine. But let’s face it: when you have a genuine friendship with a colleague at work, especially a direct report whom you are supposed to be managing, you try to keep friendship separate from work. Deep friendships are the ones you protect from the complications of the workplace and sometimes, in private, you almost have to do some apologizing for your cool demeanor in the workplace. If you don’t have a genuine friendship with an employee, don’t try to play Mr. Friend at work. It is often confusing and sometimes damaging. One Millennial put it plainly: “People can be so fraudulent around here. You know what? Don’t humor me. I get it. You’re in charge. I’m fine with that. Stop wasting my time pretending to be my best friend. Tell me what you want me to do. Go ahead and tell it like it is.”
Often managers tell me: “I think the younger employees like me. They think I’m pretty cool. I don’t want to spoil that.” This hope sometimes leads managers to build rapport on unhealthy ground. Sometimes these managers will participate in bad-mouthing the larger organization or the powers that be, blaming highers-up for unpopular decisions, letting employees off the hook on requirements, and looking the other way when people mess up. These managers might be tempted to make promises they can’t keep, give employees more responsibility than they can handle, and offer insincere praise. Often these managers give Millennials the false impression that their input will be included in decisions when it won’t be. They don’t make it clear where the employee’s discretion begins and where it ends, and this sometimes leads young employees to go off wildly in their own direction thinking that is exactly what they are supposed to be doing. Avoid these giant pitfalls.
I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t be cordial and friendly with your employees. I don’t mean you shouldn’t be polite. I’m suggesting that you build rapport with employees by talking about the real stuff you have in common, which is the work at hand. The more you focus your relationship on work, the better the work will go. You will prevent unnecessary problems and solve problems before they get out of control.
Sometimes managers try to turn themselves into cheerleaders in an attempt to imitate those very rare individuals who have that special ability to inspire: charisma, contagious passion, and infectious enthusiasm. Is this really you? If it is, then you are blessed. But if that is not you, you simply cannot learn it, and you shouldn’t waste your time trying. Lead, but don’t pretend to be a cheerleader. Sympathize, but don’t pretend to be a therapist. Be authoritative, but don’t pretend to be a tyrant. You can lead in a demanding and supportive way and be real all at the same time.
“After years of trying on one management personality after another, I finally realized that the only personality that works on me is my own,” one wise retail manager told me. “I am naturally pushy and enthusiastic, and that’s how I talk to my people. I have to impose that patience and discipline on myself to make sure I take my time and spell things out for them in a way they understand. Now I spend a lot more time thinking about exactly what I need to communicate to people and making sure expectations are clear. Doing that is what gives me the patience and discipline. But I’m going to be pushy and enthusiastic. That’s just who I am.”
Choose your words carefully. By all means, be your best self. But be yourself.
2. Give Them Structure and Boundaries
The Millennials you manage want freedom to maneuver at work. They want some latitude when it comes to their schedules, where they do their work, whom they work with, what they do, and how they do it. The problem is that every task, responsibility, and project has parameters that constrain every employee’s freedom.
But as much as they love freedom, Millennials also gravitate to structure and boundaries. For one thing, they don’t want to waste their time. Don’t forget, since they were kids, Millennials have been hyperscheduled by overbearing adults. Whether they were being subjected to metal detectors, locker searches and lockdowns in school, or their own “individual learning plans”—and everything in between—Millennials are well accustomed to programs and procedures. One Millennial describes it this way: “The last thing I’m looking for is somebody telling me, ‘Yeah, do it how you think it should be done,’ but then it turns out she already knows exactly how she wants it done. I don’t want to beat my head against the wall trying to figure something out if you’ve already got it figured out. I definitely am interested in putting my personal stamp on things, but if that’s not going to happen, tell me up-front.”
If you want to give Millennials more freedom at work, the biggest favor you can do for them is establish clear boundaries and give them a structure within which they can function with some autonomy. It is true that some jobs require employees to take risks and make mistakes. Even in those cases, it is the manager’s job to help Millennials avoid taking unnecessary risks and repeating mistakes that others have already made. Creativity and innovation do not require recklessness. You tell the advertising copywriter to “think outside the box,” but you must also help him avoid libel, slander, and obscenity. You need the nuclear scientist to be innovative, but you must help her avoid a nuclear explosion. It’s great if your food preparation workers are creative, but you don’t want them changing the recipes on regular menu items. As a leader, you have to create a structure and clear boundaries in order to create a space in which risk taking and mistakes are truly safe in the context of a job.
Often a good way to allow Millennials to express creativity is to give them assignments that are truly matters of first impression. Maybe you, as the manager, don’t yet have a clear goal in mind; you don’t know exactly what you are looking for yet. This is a great opportunity to ask a young employee to “take a crack at it” and “do it however you think it should be done” and really mean what you say. It’s perfectly fine to use this Millennial to help you work out the early stages of your own creative process. But make sure you are clear from the start about the structure and boundaries. Explain that you are delegating only the initial stage of the creative process and you intend to take the project back.
In fact, whenever you have a new task, responsibility, or project for one of your very capable young employees, always start by spelling out expectations. Make absolutely sure that person understands exactly what he is expected to do and how he is expected to do it. That’s the only way to get employees to adopt your organization’s best practices and turn them into standard operating procedures.
As long as the assignment lasts, you should follow up regularly with one-on-one check-in conversations to review the employee’s progress. In those conversations, you should ask, “What have you already done? What steps did you follow? What step are you going to do next?” Listen carefully to her answers. Make it a habit to wrap up these conversations by deciding on a specific place and time for your next meeting to follow up.
Every assignment, no matter how much freedom and creativity is required, must have clear goals and specific deadlines with measurable benchmarks along the way. Boundaries and structure, however loose, are actually the keys to making freedom and creativity in the real world possible.
3. Help Them Keep Score
You might think a generation raised on mantras like “we’re all winners” and “everyone gets a trophy” wouldn’t be particularly competitive. But that is not the case. While the self-esteem movement was chipping away at Millennials’ competitiveness, the testing movement was building it back up. Still, testing breeds a different kind of competitiveness: competition against standards and benchmarks, against averages and means, and against one’s own past performance.
Think about a video game that a Millennial might practice and practice, beating one high score after another, set by himself. He wins every time, and nobody has a reason to feel bad. That’s the kind of competition Millennials are looking for: they want to compete against themselves in a safe environment where they can try over and over again to improve on their own performance benchmarks. When it comes to competitiveness at work, this is what one Millennial had to say: “I’ll do whatever they want me to do. Just tell me someone is keeping track of all this stuff I’m doing. Tell me I’m getting credit for it, that I’ve been racking up points here like mad. Tell me someone is keeping score.”
When Millennials know you are keeping track of their day-to-day performance, their measuring instinct is sparked and their competitive spirit ignited. Keeping close track of their work tells them that they are important and that their work is important. The process motivates them to perform because they want to get credit, score points, earn more of whatever there is to earn.
“I was managing this very young team of programmers,” a senior manager in one of our nation’s intelligence agencies told me. “For the first few months, our weekly team meetings were great, but after every meeting, the programmers would come up to me one by one asking for feedback on their individual work. I kept trying to address this in the team meetings by asking each of them for status reports in our meetings. But one by one, they would come see me after the meeting to ask for individual feedback. Finally, in one of the team meetings, I asked the group about it point-blank. They all said, ‘We all want to know how we are doing, individually.’ So I said to them joking, ‘Do you want me to give out gold stars when you do a good job?’ And they all nodded affirmatively. They were very cheerful about it, but I was having a hard time with it. But I started giving out gold stars to them, individually, in the team meetings, and they loved it. They started asking all the time, ‘Do I get a gold star for that?’”
I’ve heard stories like this over and over again from managers of Millennials in a whole range of industries. Yes, they want to earn gold stars. Just remember that if you are going to give out gold stars or points of any kind, you have to make it very clear every step of the way exactly how those points can be earned—or lost. You need a system.
The Point System
One outstanding system I’ve seen in action is used in the warehouses of a large beverage wholesaler. Every day, hundreds (or even thousands) of boxes come in one end of a warehouse and hundreds more go out the other end. All day long, boxes are being moved from one end to the other, meticulously accounted for by bar codes scanned each time they are moved. Everybody in that warehouse is on a point system. One of the warehouse managers told me, “The only way you get points around here is moving boxes. If you drive a delivery truck, you get points by delivering boxes. You break bottles, you lose points. If you work in the loading dock, you get points by loading boxes onto the truck. Points are how everything gets done here. That’s how you make extra money. That’s how you get to leave early or get extra days off.”
How does the system work? The warehouse manager laughed: “Everybody is always trying to get points, especially the young guys. We’ve got a very young group in the warehouse. These guys are practically climbing over each other when a truck pulls in. The young guys want to get their points. Some of them want to work all day and make more money. Some of them just want to get their points and get out of here for the day. But they all want to get those points. I just sit back and let [the points] do most of the management work.”
Similarly, the founding partner of a small advertising firm told me that she started giving out “extra points” to associates “for above-and-beyond performance on very difficult projects.” She told me, “At first, I didn’t even know what I really meant by extra points. But I’d usually come back with a bonus check, so the points came to mean something.” The practice was so popular among the younger associates that the partner started attaching points to projects in advance. “After a while, just about any task, no matter how small, was eligible for extra points. If you get something done very fast, you might get extra points. If you really do a fantastic job on something, that’s extra points. It’s for above-and-beyond performance. And it’s worth money.”
Am I saying you should create a point system or start giving out gold stars to your Millennials? If you can think of easy ways to convert the performance you need from your young employees into a point system, then maybe you should consider it. I promise you, a point system will get Millennials focused like a laser beam. If you want them to start showing up earlier for work, attach points for every minute they arrive early, and take away points for every minute they come in late. If you want Millennials to meet quality standards, give them checklists of every detail and specification, and give points for every detail and specification completed—and take away points for every one missed. If you want Millennials to speed up, set a realistic quota of tasks per hour and give points for every task done over the quota—and take away points for every task under the quota. And so on.
Keeping Track Informally
Formal gold stars and point systems are not always necessary. You will get a similar result as long as you make it clear that you are paying close attention to what they are doing and keeping score, one way or another. Have regular one-on-one conversations where you ask for an account of what the person has done since your last conversation: “What concrete actions did you take? Did you meet the expectations we spelled out? Did you do all the items on your to-do list?” Then offer credit for the items done and take note of the items not yet done. You might say, “You did a great job on A, B, and C. But on D, you fell a little short. So that’s three out of four for today. Let’s talk about how you are going to do D next.”
Another approach is to help Millennials keep track of their own work by using self-monitoring tools like project plans, checklists, and activity logs. Millennials can monitor whether they are meeting goals and deadlines laid out in a project plan, make notations within checklists, and report to you at regular intervals. Activity logs are diaries that Millennials can keep, noting contemporaneously exactly what they do all day, including breaks and interruptions. Each time he or she moves on to a new activity, the young employee might note the time and the new activity. By using these tools, Millennials can document their own hard work every step of the way and build their own track record of success.
4. Negotiate Special Rewards in Very Small Increments
Today we live in a world in which relationships are governed by an increasingly short-term and transactional logic. That’s true for people of all ages. But Millennials have never known it any other way. Segmented as a market from birth and armed with credit cards, they have been taught to think of themselves as customers in virtually every sphere. Even in their roles as students, most Millennials think of themselves as buying and consuming the learning services sold by schools. Meanwhile, their parents have been negotiating “choices” with them since they first uttered “I want” as toddlers, trading short-term rewards for short-term desired behavior.
By the time Millennials arrive at the workplace, short-term transactional thinking is second nature to them. They are still thinking like customers. Sometimes when I point this out to managers, they’ll say, “Yeah, well, they’re not paying us. We are paying them. So what currency do they bring to the transaction? They can do as they are told.” I agree with that 100 percent.
Of course, you want to get more work and better work out of every one of your Millennials. For their part, Millennials want to earn more of what they need and want. The best solution? Plug into Millennials’ transactional mind-set. Stop paying them and start buying their results, one by one. The more you trade results for rewards, the more reliable their performance will be. The smaller the increments you buy in, the more effective it will be. “I had this manager who would always say to me, ‘What do you need from me?’” a Millennial told me. “I’d always know she was going to get me back with, ‘Great. Here’s what I need from you.’ She did that with everybody. She knew I needed the money and went out of her way to help me make more money, which was really great of her.”
The critical element when it comes to rewarding Millennials is letting them know that rewards are tied to concrete actions within their own direct control. This might remind you of the old-fashioned pay scheme called piecework in which individuals are paid an agreed-on amount for each defined unit of work they produce. The seamstress might be paid per stitch or per finished garment. The accountant might be paid per tax return prepared. The computer programmer might be paid per line of new code written. And so on. The key to your success will be defining those measurable pieces of work and setting a price per piece.
Traditional Compensation Versus Short-Term Rewards
“Oh yeah?” one manager interrupted to ask in the middle of one of my seminars, “Then why do Millennials push so hard for more when it comes to traditional compensation and benefits? It’s not like they are saying, ‘Don’t give me health care, don’t give me the 401k, and don’t give me the salary. I’ll just take the short-term rewards.’ Are you telling me they just want more of everything?”
This was no doubt a fair question and one that is on the minds of a lot of managers. Perhaps, if given the choice, many Millennials would actually opt for a safe lifelong employment relationship with secure, long-term vesting rewards. The problem is that you won’t find any Millennials who actually believe that this is a real option in today’s world. To them, it sounds like an absurd claim on its face—largely because it is. Therefore, most Millennials are concerned about all the rewards they might be able to extract from their immediate bosses in the short term. However, Millennials are also acutely aware that the compensation systems and language of their employers almost always revolve around the traditional elements of compensation and benefits; pay scales or salary, health care plans, eligibility for 401k or pension plans, and the like. They often ask about traditional rewards because they are aware that you only know how to talk about traditional rewards—they figure at least the conversation will make sense to you. They also want you to think they care about the reward system you seem to care so much about. Plus, they figure they might as well get everything they can out of that system, even as they are making their other more idiosyncratic requests.
The answer, then, is, sure, they want more of everything. But the real performance drivers for Millennials are the short-term, special rewards you negotiate in exchange for their short-term above-and-beyond performance. A senior engineer shared this story with me: “One of the engineers on my team, a young lady who talked about little else but flextime and work-life balance, pretty much dropped everything for two months and lived here around the clock working on a killer deadline for me. Why? I arranged for her to take six weeks off, two unpaid, in a row after the project was finished. That was all it took. She was here around the clock for two months, then she disappeared for six weeks and came back happy as could be. The other two guys on that team? They just wanted a bonus check.” He concluded, “They all want something different. But they all want something, and most of them are willing to work for it.”
Negotiating Rewards in Small Increments
So when that Millennial knocks on your office door and asks if you have a minute to discuss his special need or want, you could roll your eyes and think about beating your head against the wall—or you could realize that this need or want might just be the key to driving this employee’s performance to a whole new level, or at least the key to getting more work out of him better and faster for the short term.
The best approach is to negotiate these special rewards in very small increments. You want to be able to say, “Okay. I’ll do that for you tomorrow if you do X for me today.” Work a particularly undesirable shift? Work longer hours? Work with a difficult team? Do some heavy lifting? Work in some out-of-the-way location? Clean up some unpleasant mess? Then deliver the reward in question as soon as you possibly can. Immediate rewards are much more effective with Millennials because they provide a greater sense of control and a higher level of reinforcement. Millennials are likely to remember the precise details and context of the performance and are therefore more likely to make the connection the next time the desired performance is called for. Plus, they won’t spend time wondering whether their performance has been noted and appreciated, and they will therefore be less likely to lose the momentum generated by their short-term success.
Most managers have more discretionary resources at their disposal than they realize. These are often resources that can be deployed as special short-term rewards. What extra funds are available to you that you might be able to use for special short-term bonuses? What can you do to improve work conditions in the short term for your employees? How much latitude do you have to make special short-term accommodations in employees’ schedules or paid time off? How much control do you have over extra training opportunities? Can you offer exposure to decision-makers? How hard is it to have a written commendation added to an employee’s file? There are many extra rewards managers have in their control, and you need to use every resource at your disposal.
That does not mean that everything is open to negotiation. You should be rock solid on your basic standards and requirements. What is not negotiable? What is essential? What is not acceptable? That’s your starting point. From there, take control of the ongoing negotiation and help Millennials earn those special rewards they want so much. In the process, you’ll get so much more, and better, and faster work out of them, one day at a time.