Mastering Modern Management in the Millennial Workplace (pt. I)

The workplace has changed. Millennials are now proportionally the most represented generation in the office, bumping shoulders with Gen Xers and baby boomers both in employee and leadership positions. With these millennials came vast technological change and the quirks of a growing, intergenerational workforce.

As such, the skills it took to manage an office 10 years ago are completely different than those required of modern managers, whose offices, in some cases, now exist as hybrid or even fully virtual spaces, with employees that range in digital competency from expert to amateur, and who they may never have actually met in person. This is becoming the norm, whether modern managers and leaders like it or not.

So how does one go about mastering modern management in the millennial workplace? While not definitive, here are a couple of tips that can help new cats and old dogs alike get a grip on contemporary leadership.

Understanding Millennials and Their Impact

Millennials, as a group, have received a lot of criticism in the past couple of years, and it’s only recently that you’ll find positive mentions of their generation and the impacts they have on society. While the former isn’t necessarily deserved, the latter absolutely is; millennials bring unique values and experiences to the workforce that are progressive and civically minded. They are the future of — well, everything! It’s only right that we recognize what value this generation presents to both past and future generations. The experts at Pepperdine University have presented these statistics on the millennial workforce, including information on what they value, what they want from an employer, and positive traits that they bring to the global workforce:

 

• There are 79.8 million millennials in the U.S. By 2025 millennials will represent nearly 75 percent of the workforce.
• 72 percent of Millennials want to be their own boss — however, if they do have a boss, 79 percent would want that boss to act as a mentor.
• 88 percent prefer a collaborative work culture rather than a competitive one.
• Bosses are the number one reason that millennials leave their job. Furthermore, three out of four millennials don’t know where they stand with regard to performance — nearly 90 percent would feel more confident if they had regular check-ins with their bosses.
• 40 percent of millennials stated that their ability to excel in their job is contingent upon deriving meaning from their work.
• Tech-savvy, socially conscious, civic-minded, progressive, diverse, and compassionate are all accurate descriptors for the millennial generation.

 

What these stats show us is that the millennial-influenced workplaces generally value meaningful work, autonomy, and good relationships with their bosses. This is where it helps to know the difference between management and leadership. Mix that with their inherent knack for technology, and you have a potentially sticky situation concerning remote management and digital leadership.

Remote Management and Digital Leadership

Though it may seem a new concept, the term “telecommuting” was actually coined in 1973 by former NASA engineer Jack Nilles — who was, at the time, the Director of Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Southern California. After his research uncovered the numerous benefits inherent in this mode of work, he projected the concept would proliferate in the public sphere in the 1990s. While it took a little bit longer, technology has caught up to the hype, and now nearly 3 percent of the U.S. workforce (3.7 million employees) works remotely at least half the time, according to recent survey results.

Managers would do well to make sure that, even though the office may be virtual, office hours and protocol are still respected. Communication may be written more often than not, facilitated by apps like Slack or Skype — but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t videoconference with employees regularly just to maintain a personable presence in their working lives.

To that end, what modern employees are looking for in their bosses has evolved over the years. They’re looking for more than to just be managed; they’re looking for leaders. Rutgers Online points to three primary differences that drive this dichotomy:

1. Empathy. Employees want to build relationships with their bosses, but they can’t do that unless that leader is empathetic. Where managers might be firm and unyielding, good leaders empathize and work with employees instead of against them.
2. Open communication. “Leaders need to be willing to communicate about anything and everything when it is necessary to support their team or followers,” write the experts at Rutgers. “They should be able to share criticism in constructive ways. They must be willing to admit their mistakes. They need to be able to ask for help or for more effort. And they must be willing to say the hard things in a helpful and controlled way in order to get the correct message across.”
3. Motivation and Encouragement. Similar to having empathy, managers need to learn how to motivate each employee individually, as well as how to motivate his or her team as a whole.

Learning to manage effectively in today’s society might mean navigating new technology and leadership styles that seem foreign, even if underlying principles of management are practically the same. This is why it’s imperative that modern managers and leaders be adaptive and never stop educating themselves.