Reaching Up and Out: How Millennial Managers Can Effectively Enable Older Workers

Reaching Up and Out: How Millennial Managers Can Effectively Enable Older Workers

By Rishav Gupta, CEO, iCoachFirst

If you look to Mark Zuckerberg for management inspiration and prefer to give your direct reports shout-outs on a company-wide Slack channel, odds are you are a millennial manager.

Although millennials may now be a majority in the overall workforce, they’re still coming into their own as managers. Only about 28 percent of millennials are now managers, but they have big plans for the future: research from Deloitte shows that 53 percent dream of being the leader or most senior executive at their current company. As those dreams become reality, more millennials will manage older and more experienced employees. After all, baby boomers and Gen Xers still make up about 30 and 35 percent of the workforce, respectively.

Rest assured there are ways to overcome the challenges that come with managing older workers, including having tough conversations with employees who have been in the workforce for 30 or more years. Here are some strategies for building a better rapport and enabling employees’ top performance:

Ditch the Desire to Be Authoritative

One of the worst ways to garner respect is to demand it. Instead, be a leader who builds a foundation based on trust, teamwork, integrity and transparency. This type of leadership coaching is not only more effective, but it also comes naturally to many millennials, who seek it out in their own managers and mentors.

While everyone’s coaching mindset is unique, the qualities that most employees look for in a coach are remarkably similar. Employees want leaders and coaches who set clear benchmarks, provide training, give regular and immediate feedback and help employees find purpose in the workplace. It's also important to align coaching goals to the goals of the broader organization, so that the goals you set for your team align with the vision and direction of the organization.

Tap Technology Selectively

Your position as a member of the first generation of digital natives most likely weaves into how you approach work and collaborate with colleagues. But instead of firing off a quick IM, try stopping by an employee’s desk to discuss the project at hand. It will go a long way for those who entered the workforce before the days of hyperconnectivity and value more personal, face-to-face relationships.

Many older employees are surprisingly open to embracing tools so that they can share knowledge, garner feedback and put forth new ideas. To leverage the full power of social and mobile collaboration tools, ensure those tools can be integrated into existing workflow channels so they are not viewed as disruptive and make feedback a two-way street. When recognition and feedback flows in every direction, employees stay engaged, focused and productive. 

Be Flexible
Varied generational views and attributes means you’ll need to be flexible in managing a blended workforce and adapt to different work styles. This includes recognizing your own desire for flexibility—for example, working remotely to accommodate personal commitments may be new to your direct reports who are accustomed to a more traditional work schedule.

One of the best ways to ensure everyone is comfortable with different work styles is to get aligned around the same set of goals. These goals should be agreed upon by all team members and revisited regularly to remain relevant in the face of evolving business realities. It is your job to help employees see the link between daily work and overall goal achievement, which is best done through a mix of continuous micro-conversations and check-ins that ensure transparency, as well as tools to provide longer lines of sight into progress. 

As a millennial, you have already been part of the complete upending of the American workforce as it was long known. That transformation will continue as you take on increased leadership roles, and increasingly, it will be your responsibility to not only manage performance, but also to enable it.

Meaningful Technology

Empowering the emotional impact of employee recognition

By:  Jonathan McClellan, Employee Recognition Segment Director at Hallmark Business Connections

I think we can all agree that employee recognition plays a huge part in the ongoing success of today’s businesses. Engaging, connecting, and empathizing with your employees strengthens your relationship with them and helps create a work culture that fosters greater feelings of being valued, increased productivity, and enhanced performance for your entire organization. Simply put, by “telling them,” you create meaningful connections that deliver measurable results. But how can you maintain authentic, meaningful connections in your employee recognition program when you have 100, 1,000, or more employees? The answer is technology—technology that allows you to work in a meaningful, yet effective way.

Emotionally Impactful Enterprise Effectiveness

Efficiency in your business’ tools, procedures, methodologies, and processes are key to enterprise effectiveness for your business. And when it comes to employee recognition, it’s truly no different.

While face-to-face communication is the best way to recognize an employee achievement or milestone, turning to a technological solution doesn’t have to mean losing warmth or emotion. In fact, technology can make an enterprise-wide recognition program more authentic and meaningful while being efficient. To do this, it must deliver speed, service and scalability in the following ways:

Speed—the ability to recognize, react, and reinforce the employee behaviors and accomplishments that matter most, when they matter most. Speed in your recognition program shows that you care enough to make their moment a priority.

Service—Your technology solution’s ability to give the right people in your organization the right tools to grow the relationships that benefit your business. By empowering them with resources that give them real-time, reaction capability, they can respond on the fly and recognize on the go.

Scalability—An employee recognition solution must ideally offer a platform that is nimble and responsive to the changing needs of your business over time. The technology needs to provide the consistency, clarity, and control that make your job easier, your employees happier, and your bottom line the happiest.

A Note on Scalability

Why are consistency, clarity, and control so important to scalability in an enterprise-wide, recognition solution? Simple. They preserve the continuity, message, and security of your brand, mission, and vision.

In short, scalability ensures your employee recognition solution remains consistent across your organization in how it’s managed, used, and most importantly, received.

Scalability from a technology must offer clarity by providing the tracking, measurement, and reporting a business needs to gauge effective and efficient performance of the program.

Scalability helps preserve security when the technology actively administers and monitors a business’ rules, obligations, and checks and balances in order to maintain compliance.

Recognize the opportunity

Please don’t believe that a technology solution can effectively replace the ol’ face-to-face. It can’t and shouldn’t ever happen. People thrive on human interaction and always will. But, leveraging technology correctly can help your organization build and strengthen relationships when being together isn’t possible. Whether it’s because of a physical distance or a logistic issue, a technology employee recognition solution can fill the gap and ensure a special moment isn’t missed or delayed when it comes to recognizing and celebrating the employee responsible. “telling them,” says a lot about you. And when done in a timely, authentic and sincerely way, it helps your employees and your business thrive.

Jonathan McClellan leads the employee recognition business unit at Hallmark Business Connections, providing strategic leadership and employee enrichment solutions for Fortune 500 performance-centric businesses.

Regular Habits of Effective New Managers

By Rob Cahill, Co-Founder & CEO of Jhana.

Whether newly promoted or hired externally, brand new managers are going through one of the most exciting—and most challenging—transitions of any upward career trajectory.

Drawing from my company’s research and conversations with HR teams and new managers—and also speaking from personal experience— I’ve put together a list of 10 habits that new managers often struggle to build. Not coincidentally, they’re also critical for new managers to get right.

1.     Hold regular 1-on-1s.  You can’t know what’s going on with your team unless you talk to them. No matter how busy your calendar, schedule 30 minutes of face time every week with each team member. Never cancel.

2.     Give and request regular feedback. No one can work in a vacuum—not you, and not your team. Make sure you are giving each member of your team regular feedback and that most, but not all, of it is positive. Likewise, it’s up to you to solicit feedback on your performance from both your boss and your direct reports.

3.     Proactively manage up. Your boss isn’t a mind reader. If you need help, notice something that needs changing or just want to keep your boss in the loop, it’s on you to speak up.

4.     Clearly define expectations. If someone’s not delivering what you wanted, it likely means that you, the manager, haven’t done a good enough job communicating your expectations. For every project, use specific language to describe what a successful outcome looks like to you, and double check—in writing—that your instructions are clearly understood.

5.     Set fair goals. If possible, ask for your team's input to select and shape goals. They'll be more committed to goals they've contributed to in some way. Once you've set goals, be sure to also define how you'll measure success.
 

6.     Delegate well. It can be hard to let go, but it’s imperative to your team’s success that you trust them and enable them to do their jobs. Assign tasks, and then oversee, but don’t micromanage.

7.     Don’t shy away from tough conversations. It’s your job as manager to address problems head on, even  and especially when doing so makes you uncomfortable. Waiting will only make things worse.

8.   Own your mistakes. It’s common for new leaders to want to seem invincible. Resist the urge to fight or deny mistakes. Instead, admit your error, and describe what you’re doing to fix the problem and how you will ensure it doesn’t happen again. This advice applies to everyone you work with, not just your manager.

9.    Take hiring seriously. Don’t assume HR will do all the heavy lifting. After all, this person will be a part of your team, so it’s on you to ensure you’re hiring from a diverse, qualified pool of candidates. Don’t rely on your network. Some of my best hires have come from unexpected backgrounds.

10. Embrace your peers. Cultivate strong relationships with different groups and departments. The next time your team needs something quickly from Marta in sales or Jamal in Accounting, the trust you’ve already built will pay off tenfold. 

Rob Cahill founded Jhana in 2011 after personally experiencing how proper management can make or break retention and help reach company goals. Rob's mission is to provide effective and relatable management training that is available around the clock. Today, Jhana's clients have grown to many Fortune 1000's including AOL, Orbitz, CARFAX, Career Builder, Groupon and more. Rob was previously at Sunrun as chief of staff to the founder, helping the company scale from 20 to more than 200 employees.