Tag Archives: Business

What does it mean to “Mentor Up?”

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It’s easy to think that people younger than you don’t have enough knowledge to understand the “complexities” the way you do, and that may be true to a point. However, leaders today are missing a key opportunity to capture both the creativity and loyalty of young people by not giving them an opportunity to “Mentor-Up.”

The people side of the equation is where we need the Boomers and Traditionalists to mentor the Xers and Millennials. However, reverse mentorship comes into play when it comes to technology. We see a twenty-two-year old with tattoos and piercings mentoring a fiftyplus leader in a blue suit and starched color and tie.

Mentor-Up creates an informal or formal relationship where the younger person is recognized for his or her expertise in a particular area and encouraged to train older team members on that skill. An opportunity for cross-generational bonding and understanding
is to have Millennials design Mentor-Up workshops on a basic technology skill-set the team needs, and then hold a weekly mentoring session. Other formats for training can include short YouTube or internally hosted video training on high need skills like shortcuts or
how to use a piece of software more effectively.

No jerks allowed!

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With a “No Jerks Policy,” the core practice at these companies is “Be a JERK and you are gone.” Xers (and Millennials too) believe that life is too short to work with jerks. It takes courage to let them go, but Xers will respect and be loyal to leaders with the chutzpa to take courageous action. Letting a toxic team member remain damages more than that person’s own personal output. It erodes the rest of the team’s belief in you as a leader and they will leave you over it.

“One size fits all” is OVER.

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This may come as a shock to those of you that worked your way up the old-fashioned way, but the one size-fits-all career ladder has run its course. Today’s knowledgeable worker is looking to begin a dialogue from Day One/Interview One about the options, avenues, and possibilities he can explore and experience during his tenure at your organization. In fact, the capacity of your leaders, human resource professionals, and recruiters to engage effectively in these conversations directly affects the length of time a top talent will spend with your company.

Organizations that want to attract and retain Xers and Millennials must be willing continuously to match their needs and evolving life circumstances. Many times it will include creating the flexibility for Xers and Millennials to move in and out of organizations or up and down hierarchies as life’s priorities and demands shift.

Gen Xer Andrea, a wealth adviser  expressed it this way, “I’m only loyal to this organization for the benefits. I have a young family and the benefits cover them. I could easily go anywhere that offered a competitive package. My husband is an entrepreneur so we are just waiting for his firm to take off and then I will too.”

Millenials enter into an organization willing and ready to leave at any time when they don’t feel like their employer is providing the appropriate career opportunities needed for them to stay engaged and excited, not bored but always stimulated. For Millennials, providing value is a two-way commitment. Millennials are not just signing on to a company saying, “The only value I expect is my paycheck.” They are telling their bosses, “I expect an experience that I am proud to be part of, and satisfied in having given my time and talent to.” If Millenials are not feeling opportunities are being presented, they are very likely to jump ship with no sense of guilt, shame, or having left their boss in the lurch.

What happened to ‘Do What You Love?’

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Millennials grew up hearing, “Do what you love and love what you do.” When Millenials enter the workforce they expect immediately to be part of the cool action. From day one, they want to like where they work and the people with whom they work. If they don’t, during the day they will go onto their social media outlet and update their statuses on Facebook to reflect that they are not having a good time at their new job. Millennials are shocked to find it surprising to their Boomer bosses that they expect to love their jobs and have fun at work all-day, every day. An even bigger shock for supervisors and managers is the Millennials’ casual expectation that you will be BFFs (best friends forever). Xer managers are not just surprised by this attitude, but in fact, are so incredulous that they are taking a self-imposed time out to get their emotions under control.

As our Millennials enter the workforce, it is important to remember that they’ve been raised on positive coaching from their teachers, their parents, and their protectors. After an organization spends so much money to select the right person, it would be criminal to lose that person because the onboarding process was ineffective in helping him to become part of the company and feel like he is part of the team. Millennials and Xers often have decided in the first week or first month whether they are going to stay with your organization. Certainly within the first ninety days of employment, they have made a decision that could be costly to the organization if they have elected to leave, even if it takes them four, twelve, or eighteen months to find another position before they do leave. Integrating new people onto the team can always be challenging, but it can also be a rewarding endeavor.

Generationally Savvy Solutions: Generationally Savvy organizations create an onboarding timetable at least thirty to ninety days in duration. The worst scenario is that an organization’s management and leaders just neglect new employees because that’s the way those older employees were themselves treated. Putting in place a proactive onboarding program right now can put you ahead of the curve. The easiest way to lose an employee is to make her feel like she made a bad decision by coming to join your company because she isn’t able to find her footing or find a way to fit. Avoiding this situation is an easy process if you have the mentoring program to allow somebody to find her place in your culture and immediately feel like part of the team. Millenials are entering the workforce with the expectation that they will be welcomed to your organization in the same way they were welcomed to school, both public and private institutions.

Regularly check and ensure that your company’s orientation and training programs take generational diversity into account. Create an immediate mentorship or team experience, something to help new employees feel comfortable and secure from the beginning.

Recruiting-Who’s Interviewing Whom?

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The vetting process of top talent to choose whom to work for today is a two-way street. Top talent is pro-actively searching out what your company says it is committed to, but even more importantly, how you are fulfilling your promise today. Gone are the interviews where the recruiter or manager has the exclusive upper hand, and all the information. Now candidates have done their due diligence by:
• Googling
• Surveying their Facebook Friends
• Pinging their LinkedIn Connections with Questions
• Searching the Twitter Hashtag (#) Trends

The interview began long before you even knew they were considering working for you. To attract top talent to you, it’s time to put your best image forward as the premier company to join. It’s essential that you know what top talent is looking for in an organization. (Not just what you want them to provide for you.)

Your prospective employees will be asking tough questions:
• How does your organization meet my needs and values?
• What opportunities will I have to build my skills here?
• What will my career/portfolio look like in 6, 12, 18 months (not years)?
• What innovative projects/solutions will I work on immediately?

Traditionalists and many Boomers began their careers valuing job security, company history, and job perks such as retirement pensions. By comparison, top Xer and Millennial talent today have motivators lists that include:
• performance-based bonuses
• mobile benefits package (medical being a priority)
• new challenges to learn new technologies
• opportunities to engage in a variety of interesting and diverse
projects
• salary integrity (market consistent salary increases)
• meaningful work
• support for my commitment to make a difference
• recognition of my contribution to the big picture
• immediate and frequent feedback
• flexible work hours
• open work spaces and places (telecommuting and virtual teams)
• mentoring and coaching
• a culture of fun and enjoyment of life
• diversity/inclusion of workforce

Hire Slow, Fire Fast:
Over three years of judging a competition for the top Forty Leaders in the region under the age of forty, I consistently saw the following core lesson theme expressed by successful leaders, “Take your time in the interviewing process to make sure that your values and expectations match the candidate’s. Hire SLOWLY. Be willing to recognize a mistake in judgment quickly and let the individual go QUICKLY.”

Generationally Savvy Solutions:
Recruiting is for the military. Attracting like-minded team members who align with your values and vision may take more upfront effort, but they pay dividends in the long run. Whether you are an interviewer, a manager, a team member, customer service personnel, or a human resources person, being aware of your and other generations’ CODES and blind spots is a vital part of your “recruiting” success. Deal in reality when seeking to attract new team members. Don’t paint the picture you think the candidate wants to hear and think that once you’ve snagged the person, the battle is won. It’s essential to talent retention that the company evangelists project an accurate reflection of the organization when they seek to convert candidates into employees. It is no longer accepted that if what you were told would be your experience in an organization is not a match for the actual organization, that you will stay. Now, Millennials will leave within the first week, first month, or first quarter if the way the interviewer presented the company does not accurately reflect their early experiences working for it.

You may be surprised what your brand and face to the world are really conveying. Inadequate or poor web presence will ensure that you will not be considered or taken seriously among Millennials and most Gen Xers in the marketplace.

Audit your company website from the candidate’s perspective:
• Are you showcasing your values in action, or merely touting them in theory?
• Are all four generations represented in leadership?
• Is the focus on the past history of silver-haired founders or the future talent?
• Do you clearly show the career path a rising star could follow?
• Is job security viewed as a fond memory of times gone by?
• Are pensions and retirement savings plans portable?

Millennials and Gen Xers understand that the coming economy will require technology to be a top priority and they will need up-to-date technology in order for their skills to be effective. They will not want work for an organization that finds technology to be a second tier priority. Check your marketing materials for appeal to the generations of candidates and customers you are trying to reach. Regularly hand your marketing pieces to representatives from the four generations and ask their honest feedback.

 

Sink or Swim

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Today, “New Employee Orientation” is out and “Onboarding” is in. New team members need to be welcomed and appropriately shown the ropes, briefed on the ground rules, and woven into the fabric of your organization. Here are some guidelines as to how to effectively welcome new employees based on their generation.

Traditionalists: This generation grew up with a steady guide of trial by fire, and war stories being bandied about where it was a source of pride for the individual to tell how he had survived battle after battle on the job as his way of learning the ropes. Our Traditionalists started their jobs at a new organization with the philosophy of the senior members being, “Sink or swim! You will either figure it out, or you will be washed out.”

Baby Boomers: This generation had the attitude in their onboarding days of “I learned the hard way; so can you. If I tell you too much, then I’m giving you a competitive advantage that I didn’t have.” With 80 million peers to compete against, Boomers weren’t willing to give away this advantage. Friendly competition is a tone that Baby Boomers have honed to a fine art in business. Their entire formative experience was an ongoing game of musical chairs. Enough resources (chairs) were never available for everyone playing the game. You had to be quick, perhaps throw a few subtle elbows, and keep your seat to stay in the game. For Boomers, the tone of communication is all about subtle competition or outright war with the caveat, “It’s just business.” Boomers like communications that come across in a positive, upbeat, youthful tone, but they are clear that when push comes to shove, they are still looking out for number one.

Gen Xers: This generation entered the workforce with peer-to-peer latest market information. With the competitive Baby Boomers before them, Generation X’s members banded together to help their friends find their ways through organizations. With the advent of the Internet, e-mail could be sent under the radar between the Xers.
They helped one another find out the secrets of an organization. They turned the Baby Boomers’ theme of “Information is Power, so withhold information to keep the power” on its ear and responded with their own theme of “Sharing Information is Power.” Many Gen Xers didn’t have resources invested in them early in their
careers. Today they want to see proof that managers trust and value them, and they often equate the amount of training invested in them as proof that the organization is committed to them. Xers feel “The more we learn, the longer we’ll stay.”

Millennials: When Millennials enter the workforce they expect immediately to be part of the cool action. From day one, they want to like where they work and the people with whom they work. If they don’t, during the day they will go onto their social media outlet and update their statuses on Facebook to reflect that they are not having a good time at their new job. The update will sprinkle out to their community that the job they
were so excited about is not turning out as they had hoped. Such information can affect whether peers with similar talents and values in the future want to work at your organization.

Generationally Savvy Solutions: Generationally Savvy organizations create an onboarding timetable at least thirty to ninety days in duration. The worst scenario is that an organization’s management and leaders just neglect new employees because that’s the way those older employees were themselves treated. Putting in place a proactive onboarding program right now can put you ahead of the curve. The easiest way to lose an employee is to make her feel like she made a bad decision by coming to join your company because she isn’t able to find her footing or find a way to fit. Avoiding this situation is an easy process if you have the mentoring program to allow somebody to find her place in your culture and immediately feel like part of the team. Millennials are entering the workforce with the expectation that they will be welcomed to your organization in the same way they were welcomed to school, both public and private institutions. Regularly check and ensure that your company’s orientation and training programs take generational diversity into account. Create an immediate mentorship or team experience, something to help new employees feel comfortable and secure from the beginning.