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Home Corporate Culture “Life is what happens to you while you’re texting on your smartphone.”

“Life is what happens to you while you’re texting on your smartphone.”

In a recent blog, we posed the question, “Do we live to work or work to live?” and used that as a springboard to talk about Millennials. There doesn’t seem to be any agreement on specific beginning and ending dates for this generation, but it’s generally thought to be people born in the early to mid-1980s to the early to mid-2000s.  It’s important to understand them because, according to the John Maxwell Company, by the year 2020 there will be 86 million of them which means they will make up 40% of the workforce.  According to other sources, 70% of Millennials are looking for new jobs at any point in time, and their average tenure at a job is 1.8 years.  So Millennials have a vastly different attitude toward work and toward their workplaces than do the people who are trying to manage them.  We recently saw a Simon Sinek video (one of our favorite speakers on leadership and management topics) in which he talks about Millennials, why they are the way they are, and what Corporate America should do about it.  For a summary of his insights, please continue reading below.

“Life is what happens to you while you’re texting on your smartphone.”           ~Unknown                                                           

Simon Sinek says that while older generations attribute lots of negative behaviors to Millennials, the predominant one is a feeling of entitlement. He says there are four reasons Millennials tend to feel entitled:

  • Failed parental strategies. As kids, Millennials were constantly being told that they were “special,” that they could do and have anything they want just because they want it. Their parents would badger teachers for higher grades than their children deserved, and badger their coaches for a place in the starting lineup that hadn’t been earned. So it was a cultural shock for them when they left home and discovered that nobody else thought they were quite as special as their parents had led them to believe, and that their parents could no longer run interference for them.
  • Technology. Millennials, Sinek contends, are addicted to social media like Facebook and Twitter. As a result, they don’t know how to form deep, meaningful relationships, only superficial ones . . . superficial relationships that cannot support them when they run into trouble or experience stress. In short, they have no coping mechanisms for stress. That’s why depression is more prevalent among Millennials than it has been in previous generations.
  • Impatience. Millennials grew up in a world of instant gratification. When they want something, just go on Amazon and it’s there the next day. When they want a movie, they just stream it onto their computer. They can have anything they want at the snap of a finger, except deep, personal relationships and job satisfaction. Those take time and effort. As Sinek says, “There’s no app for that.”
  • Environment. Through no fault of their own, Millennials arrive on the doorstep of Corporate America ill-prepared to cope with environment they find there. And frankly, not only are they ill-prepared to deal with Corporate America, Corporate America is equally ill-prepared to deal with them. Yet deal with them it must. That means managers are going to have to provide more coaching and mentoring for Millennials, and do a better job of managing their expectations, than they have with past generations.

Obviously, we’ve been making some sweeping generalizations here about Millennials that may be true for many, but not true for all. We have met many young people who may be Millennials according to their birth date, but who exhibit none of the behaviors discussed here and who would be a pleasure to work with.  You’ve probably run into those people too.

Simon Sinek, if you’ve never heard him speak, is funny, articulate, and has a great message. If you’d like to watch his full discussion of Millennials (it’s less than 20 minutes long), use the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MC2X-LRbkE

 
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