Mentoring and Millennials

Contributed by Judith Lindenberger

In their book, The 2020 Workplace, Jeannie C. Meister and Karie Willyerd report that the top three things Millennials want from their bosses is straight feedback, coaching and mentoring, and personal development. There is a danger in not providing these kinds of learning experiences in your organization – one in four Millennials anticipate leaving their present employer or work setting within the next year and one in three Millennials admit they are not putting their full energies into their current job.

Jack was hired four months ago to work in research and development for a company that specializes in health care products. Jack graduated from college last June and this is his first professional job. He was assigned to a few projects and has done a good job so far. Because Jack has expressed a desire to take on more responsibility, his boss, Karen, asks him to take on lead for researching a new product. Jack is psyched … this is his opportunity to show what he’s got. After a couple of days, Jack has researched a lot of information from specialized magazines, on the Internet, and by connecting with college friend through Linked In and Twitter. He wants to meet with Karen to ask her some questions and keep the momentum going but she has been traveling and sends him a few quick emails in response that don’t really answer his questions. Frustrated, Jack posts on his Facebook page and his Twitter update “My boss is useless … not answering my questions so it’s keeping me from getting my work done.”

What mistakes did Karen make in managing her new Millennial employee, Jack? First, she should have let Jack know the company policy on using social media to be critical of the company. Next, for a new project like this, where Jack will have a lot of learning, she might have had him work in a team with more experienced researchers. And, because she won’t always be around to give Jack on demand coaching and counsel, she could assign him a mentor.

According to Bob Canalosi, chief learning officer of General Electric Health Care, a top leadership competency needed in the 2020 workplace is to be a “legendary builder of people and teams.” Canalosi explains this as “coaching and mentoring both face-to-face and virtually; challenging people to achieve more than they believed they could.” Marshall Goldsmith, executive educator and coach, also predicts that a top competency for leaders of the future will be “sharing leadership.”

The Millennial Generation, born between 1977 and 1998, are the latest generation to enter the workplace. They are 75 million strong in size and are characterized as being self-confident, focused on learning and moving up quickly, team-oriented, well networked, and technologically savvy.

Millennials have one other thing in common: no matter how smart and confident they are, because they are new to the professional workplace, they need and want mentoring. In addition, the timeline for leadership development is ramping up. Millennials may be thrust into leadership roles faster than any other leaders in the last thirty years, as there are not nearly enough Gen X workers to fill the ranks of the departing Baby Boomers. The good news is that they want to be leaders.

One-on-one mentoring is a powerful way to develop Millennials. It gives them practice with one-on-one interactions and affords them personal attention, feedback, and the opportunity to share and challenge ideas. Millennials like structure and stability, so one-on-one mentoring should include scheduled meetings, clear and consistent communication, and a more take-charge attitude from mentors. Being authentic is important to Millennials; mentors must lead by example. Mentors can invite their protégés to shadow them, have protégés observe them conduct a meeting or presentation, give protégés recommendations of e-books to read, and check in with protégés from time to time just to see how they are doing.

One-on-one mentoring can utilize new technologies such as conducting meetings via Skype, introducing your protégé to others via Twitter, inviting your protégé to participate in Webinars you conduct, or writing on your blog about your protégé.

One of the quickest ways to sabotage a mentoring relationship, for either partner, is to lose trust. Transparency and confidentiality must be discussed such as setting boundaries about what conversations are private and what can be shared with others.

Mentoring is an affordable, creative and smart tool to tap into the talents of your Millennial workers, engage them in your company, ready them for future leadership roles, and meet the challenges of the 2020 workplace.

Judy Lindenberger is President of The Lindenberger Group, an award-winning human resource consulting, coaching and training firm located near Princeton, NJ. She is a two-time recipient of the national Athena Award for Excellence in Mentoring and has consulted with numerous companies to develop successful mentoring programs.

Contributed articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Glass Hammer team.