Gen Y and Self-leadership
If you are a baby boomer manager (47 to 67 years old) you will probably have experienced the challenge of getting loyalty and productivity from your Gen Y employees (20-32 years old).
Gen Y’s, often called millennials, and the younger Gen X’ers (still in their 30’s) typically have high self-esteem, a global perspective and are optimistic. They are driven by immediacy and innovation but what they often lack is the ability to speak up appropriately and listen to their more experienced colleagues.
Self-leadership is about being more successful and effective from the inside-out and self-leadership cultures are characterized by autonomy and responsibility. In this article I am suggesting that promoting self-leadership is a strategy to harness the innovation and energy of Gen Y’s with a slight shift in leadership style by senior managers.
Self-leaders are self-aware and confident; they set goals and motivate themselves to achieve these goals. This type of behavior is productive for an organization when the goals the self-leader sets are in alignment with the company’s vision and values. Baby boomers and older Gen X’ers have often had goals set for them and when they become leaders in an organization expect their employees to not only conform to the goal but go about achieving it in the same way they would.
Conforming is not a driver for Gen Y’s who prefer a fluid network of connections rather than a rigid hierarchy of authority. Telling a Gen Y what and how to do their job is de-motivating for them, as they expect to be listened to and disengage if they are not.
How then do we resolve the generation gap?
Baby Boomers and older Gen X’ers must accept that a job is no longer about just making a living; it is about making a living and having a life. Finding meaning and purpose in work is what self-leaders do and is healthy regardless of what age you are. We must keep asking, “Why are we doing this?” and not just make this a top down directive but ask everyone in the company. Gen Y’s love to be listened to, so why not create forums for them to share their ideas about why what they do is important? Self-leadership research shows that people are much more productive when they have a purpose.
“Live, learn and play” is a theme for Gen Y’s; they have blurred the line between work and life and for them work-life balance is not necessarily going home early but being able to have a life at work. What would this look like in your organization? There are various approaches to making work a fun and learning environment such as ‘Fish Philosophy’ by Stephen C. Lundin and rotating roles regularly. I recently heard Amy Lynch of Bridgeworks talk about Thomson Reuters who, when hiring straight from university give employees not one job but three jobs lasting 9 months each. Gen Y’s experience this as rapid learning and rapid career advancement – two things that are very important to them staying in a job!
Relationships matter and Gen Y’s expect their managers to be caring, inspiring and competent. The caring piece might be a tough ask for senior managers who had no experience of being cared for in their career – the answer is coaching. Coaching, when done properly, is about listening, which equates to being cared for by Gen Y employees. Leaders must develop their coaching skills which, in addition to listening, includes co-creating goals and targets which is inspiring, rather than telling – which is not.
Finally I want to talk about respect and responsibility; these are two important values for baby boomer which Gen Y need to learn to observe if they are going to be successful. We need to be telling Gen Y’s, “Yes, you are innovative, yes, we will listen to you and in return we expect you to share your ideas and innovations without insulting the hard work that has gone before you and we expect you take responsibility for managing yourself to achieve your goals.”
The world has changed. The advent of personal computing in the 1990’s and the mobile connectivity advancements in the 2000’s means everything happens faster and globally. Gen Y’s are digital natives but have not had to develop the patience and resilience that build the self-leadership of older generations and so we need to learn from each other if we are going to continue to live, love, learn and play.
We now take for granted our ability to share ideas, opinions and facts instantaneously and across borders, but prior the the early 1980′s this was not possible. See an old 
Are you Gen Y or do you manage Gen Y?