Do you have Gen Y, or Millennial, employees who, in your opinion, think they are more proficient than they are or…think they should advance faster than you believe is realistic?
If so, join the club. This is one of the biggest frustrations I hear from managers.
While it may be frustrating, how you handle this will make a HUGE difference in whether your Gen Y employees:
- Listen to, and respect, your feedback now and in the future.
- Stay.
- Remain engaged if they stay.
Just recently, I was coaching a senior executive who was feeling frustrated with one of his young managers. Jenna (not her real name), a Millennial, firmly believed she had mastered her present position and was ready to move on.
The senior executive, Bill (not his real name), believed that anyone in that position needed several years in the position to experience the myriad of situations required to develop a deep understanding of the department she was in, and the wisdom to make sound decisions.
Bill also believed that Jenna overrated her knowledge and ability. Jenna was a classic case of someone who “didn’t know what they didn’t know”—a common challenge for novices, especially young novices with the confidence, and sometimes brashness, that comes with youth.
I’d like to share the key points we covered in our session with the hope that you’ll find it useful for your interactions with Gen Y employees who believe they are ready to progress faster than you believe they are. Doing these things—and being skilled at them—is especially important when dealing with your Millennial employees.
Don’t adopt an “It takes time; be patient” position. It will douse the flame of enthusiasm and ambition, and leave you with a disheartened, disengaged employee.
You will end up with an employee who believes:
- You don’t understand their ability.
- You don’t value their enthusiasm and ambition.
- Your organization doesn’t provide opportunities for advancement.
- Growing professionally will require looking for a new job.
You need to first shift your Millennial employee from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence.
Jenna doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, i.e. she has Unconscious Incompetence. To believe her boss’s assessment that she needs more time, and to become receptive to learning, she first needs to realize she NEEDS to learn.
She needs to become aware of what she doesn’t know and what necessary skills she doesn’t possess. In other words, Bill needs to help Jenna develop Conscious Incompetence.
Helping someone shift to Conscious Incompetence creates cognitive dissonance in the person being coached. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling created when our current viewpoint can’t hold up under the weight of new information (“Oh…I’m not as ready as I thought…”).
Helping the Gen Y employee develop Conscious Incompetence also stimulates motivation. They now see a gap between where they thought their current ability could take them and their new understanding that it won’t take them to where they want to go.
With this understanding, they’re more open to hearing what they need to do next. This sense of “I don’t know X and I need to know X to get to where I want to go” provides the fuel to power self-directed learning. Therefore, as a manager and coach, you need to make a list of specific skills and knowledge that your Gen Y employee doesn’t yet know, but needs to, for them to progress.
Give specific, crystal clear examples.
Don’t be vague when describing the areas you believe they need to develop. “I want to see you develop better conflict management skills” might be fine as a start, but it MUST be followed up with specific situations you’ve witnessed where the Gen Y employee fell short. Then give specific descriptions of what you would like to see them do differently in that situation.
As I teach in my constructive feedback seminars: When we give vague, nonspecific feedback, the receiver feels helpless because they don’t have the information they need to remedy the problem. When people feel helpless, it triggers primitive hard-wired responses to helpless—from anxiety all the way up to fear. At a primitive, hard-wired level, fear is linked closely with aggression (that’s why you don’t back an animal into a corner). Thus, when people feel helpless, they often become aggressive. By being crystal clear with your feedback, you help the listener feel a sense of control: “Ah…I know what he wants, what he doesn’t want, and what I can do to fix it.”
So, make sure you’re crystal clear.
Click here for Part II: How to Address the Emotional and Relationship Aspect of Giving Feedback.
David Lee is the founder of HumanNature@Work and an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of optimizing employee engagement and in onboarding. He has used storytelling as a teaching and transformation tool for over 20 years. He is the author of over 60 articles and book chapters that have been published in trade journals and books in the US, Europe, Australia, India, and China. For more of his articles, go to HumanNatureAtWork.com.
Photo credit: familymwr
How do we separate the role of manager or coach? Along the personal development journey, it is quite common to hear well-intentioned people use coaching and mentoring in the same sentence. These two distinct tools are often misunderstood and frequently used interchangeably. However, it is critical to note the distinctions between mentoring and coaching. Mentoring is telling – sharing a personal perspective using a teacher paradigm. Coaching, on the other hand, is asking – asking specific, open-ended questions that are focused on action steps, goals and personal accountability. Questions offered are not out of curiosity but to advance the client’s thinking and understanding of the issue. Questions asked are meant to evoke, not provoke, new learning and awareness. The successful "Manager as Coach" relies on creating the coaching environment around three critical concepts; Intentions, relationship and words forming trust.
As an ICF Certified coach our job as either internal or external coach is to draw out insight, actions and goals from the client, through a clearly defined agreement based on a foundation of trust & intimacy as well as our presence, listening, questioning, and direct communication skills. In this way, they can gain new awareness and perspective and take action that is completely unique to their issue, topic or situation. Thus, our skills take us where the client needs to focus. This holds true across the generations.
A coaching strategy for development at the individual/professional level enables clients to acquire increased awareness that helps facilitate their choices and any subsequent changes. Informed decisions, aligned with their values and beliefs, empower the opportunity to evaluate outdated belief systems and shift perspectives. Powerful change and personal commitment come from the distinctions between shift and change. Shift is defined as intended change that creates movement from one distinct position or belief to another. As you mentioned, developing cognitive dissonance. This also makes it possible for clients to reframe problems as opportunities, better enabling their actionable agendas to move forward.
I don't think it really matters on what generation you came from as long as you are bale to bridge the gap. Did you know that almost forty percent of Gen Y people are starting their own businesses. I read this here: Gen Y entrepreneurs approaching economic downturn as opportunity. These small businesses are responsible for 80 percent of brand new careers and 50 percent or more of all employed workers.
Thanks everyone for sharing your perspectives. Here are a few thoughts:
Re: “…but the interesting thing to me with the generational approach to management is that you could remove the words "Gen Y" and/or Millenial and the advice contained in the article would be just as valid.”
You got it! I totally agree. In fact, I wrote a whole article based on my similar observation titled “The Hidden Gift Your Gen Y Employees Are Offering You”. You can read it at ERE.net or at HumanNatureAtWork.com
Here’s my take on “generation-specific advice”…
1) While everything in this two part article is applicable to people of any generation, I framed it the way I did because it is one of THE most common complaints I get from my clients: managers. Thus, I wanted to addresses what they’re most concerned about.
2) While many of the practices that are identified as being important for Gen Y employees are applicable to anyone, I believe they are even MORE important to get right with your Gen Y employees because of the reasons I spell out in “The Hidden Gift Your Gen Y Employees Are Offering You.”
I often notice when people talk about Gen Y employees a percentage fall into “all or nothing thinking”.
They either deny the existence of ANY generational difference, saying things like:
“There’s no such thing as generational differences. People are people.”
Or…
“People from the Millennial Generation are no different from young people throughout history…You were no different when you were that age.”
Or… they do the opposite. They overgeneralize.
Instead of realizing that generalizations are meant as broad brush strokes (i.e. “Gen Y tend to…”, “Boomers tend to…”) they take them as absolutes. They then see all Gen Y people as clones, all Xers as clones, etc.
When I teach about how to bring out the best in Gen Y employees, I state the following caveats in the beginning:
1) Categories and generalizations are crude and imprecise approximations. – No generational or personality style model can truly capture the complexity that is a human being.
2) Many other factors influence a person’s worldview and way of acting. – Upbringing, gender, cultural norms, regional differences, and genetics all influence how we feel, perceive the world, think, and act.
3) Generational cohorts aren’t clones – Because of the previous point, not “all Gen Y/Gen X/Boomers/Veterans” think or behave like the categorical descriptions.
4) Bridge relationship gap ≠ pigeonholing people – The whole idea of learning about generational differences is to help us develop greater understanding and compassion for those who are different from us. It’s not to pigeonhole someone through a label and then relate to the label, rather than the person.
5) Beliefs and self-fulfilling prophecies. – If we hold a negative belief about a person or a group of people, we tend to act in ways that make our negative belief come true.
That being said, I love the quote from Carl Jung:
“We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year…of which we are born.”
Carl Jung
Michael, et al: You're right that the article seems to remove the human aspect of the manager's role. As managers we must understand who are employees are and recognize their strengths and weaknesses. I would agree that you could take the generational component out of the article and find its coaching on feedback still relevant.
It is however, important to recognize that the generation types to play a general role in who we are as employees and our response to feedback. Millennial's have been exposed to the past two decades of rapid technological growth. Information is not longer exclusive to anyone, rather open sourced to everyone via the web. This lifelong exposure to information, comfortability with new tech, adaptability to change, and desire/ambition to succeed and rise through the ranks quickly make the cohort unique. At least for now. Gen Y'ers have also been exposed to the same for at least some portion of their formative periods and are also likely to been prone to what we identify in the Millennials as a "sense of entitlement."
That's my argument on the authors behalf; generation types are relevant to modern discussions of managerial coaching. I would have liked to have seen the author either make this an article about generational differences or make it an article about feedback. We're perpetuating negative stereotypes by addressing the challenge of only 1 or 2 of the 4 generations now in the workforce. Each generation has some distinct attributes and just as likely to be difficult to work with.
The final comment I would make is that for any new manager, regardless of age or generation it is important (as Michael says) for managers to provide "measurable and articulated goals and objectives," to which I would add leadership expectations. Whether the manager is 27 or 52, if they are new to being in a managerial role, it can be a challenge to jump in lead a group of people using theoretical soft skills from a classroom environment. They now have a responsibility for people as well as a much larger view of the work being performed. Have clearly communicated expectations and goals will help a manager navigate through the initial period and set them up for success, not failure.
Great read. I am an X'er and we have experienced the same things that the Y's will experience throughout their careers as well. Even on an individual basis, I have been told that I have too much ambition for the position, however I have learned that it's just a common statement used as a scapegoat to silence innovation and forward movement within a position.
Adjusting to the organization's expectations is something that we all have to figure out through trial and error at times; it's not just a generational thing, it's a people thing.
I agree, with the abouve comment by Rognlien! I am a X'er second and a person first! The way that we communicate does not need to be centered around what generation we fall into , but how well we deliver the information to any and all who need to hear it!
I agree with Michael Rognlien. It's not a generational issue.
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There's a lot of sound advice in here, but the interesting thing to me with the generational approach to management is that you could remove the words "Gen Y" and/or Millenial and the advice contained in the article would be just as valid. I really struggle with teaching managers about managing to specific generational stereotypes because they, in my experience, then start approaching their employees as Gen X/Y/Z first and as individuals second. Not ALL members of a generation think/feel/behave/believe the same way, and - especially with new managers - lumping people into broad categories in the classroom can create many more problems than it solves outside the classroom, however well-intentioned.
The advice in this article would apply to ANY employee who thinks that they are ready for / deserve more responsibility than their performance actually warrants. The biggest gap in this scenario, in my view, totally unrelated to generation - both the employee and the manager are talking about what they "believe" the situation to be vs. what the facts (performance measures, accomplishments, specifics) "prove" it to be. Staying rooted in measurable and articulated goals and objectives is the most important thing for ANY manager to do, regardless of the age and/or level of experience of the employee.