So this week across my LinkedIn feed I get an advertisement for a workshop “Leadership and Millennials”. Now I have been in leadership roles for most of my career and I can say I definitely had to evolve my style as millennials entered the work force, but come on! Has any other generation required a workshop and manual to effectively work with them. This is what happens when the “score” becomes bad and kids aren’t taught to win and lose. We get a whole bunch of developmentally challenged snowflakes that were told how special they are, only to find out some people are more special and they can’t cope.

No not a boomer, proud Gen Xr so don’t even start snowflake! I find it rather amusing that a seminar exists to help keep the snowflakes happy. I’ve got two Gen Zrs soon to be entering the workforce that are going to eat your lunch!! It seems to me, it would be quite easy for the few well adjusted hard working millennials to really stand out.

I gave suggestions to a millennial about improving productivity and he responded- "I need to pace myself". I told him "if you paced yourself anymore you'd be asleep".

I am a millenial and I agree with you.

My millennials here take it personally when I send out a group email with a process improvement. I’m obviously picking on them. Tough shit buttercup, but this is what your leader wants.

I am the parent of two millenials. They do not fit the stereotype. A lot has to do with good parenting. Millenials seem to have trouble with writing skills,send too many emails and use the exclamation point much too frequently. Both of my kids work hard and do not expect a trophy and a T shirt for project completion.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
I gave suggestions to a millennial about improving productivity and he responded- "I need to pace myself". I told him "if you paced yourself anymore you'd be asleep".

After you said that did he cry??

Have you ever encountered a term that shouldn't exist, but the moment you hear it, you think both, "Damn, that's true" and "I don't want to live on this planet anymore?"

I did.

That term is: "Coronial."

I tell pretty much every new class of trainees that they're (figuratively) pledging OUR fraternity, not the other way around. And given that they will spend an appreciable part of their early careers working for and with NON-Millennials, it's time for them to get a crash course on US.

For many, this is a novel concept, and they're seeing it for the first time in the 20s.

There are obviously exceptions but, I'm not sure that I've ever seen so many think that someone else "owes" them a job or find so much to be offended by that hurts their "feelings". They think they are entitled to whatever they want and do not need to earn it or pay for it themselves.

This is my workshop for millennials: Do your damn jobs, do them right, and complete your tasks per deadlines.

Years ago I took a similar course explaining to me how I must change my expectations and my requirements to accommodate this new type of employee. My response was, "I'm not changing the way things are done just to please some smart-ass kid..." I explained to the class instructor that all past generations begin by disappointing their parents in some way. My father didn't think I worked hard enough, his father didn't think he worked hard enough etc. Eventually the younger generations will come around and, as all my children have done, make their parents proud.

At the same time I was a night school instructor in the advancement training class held by my local. (See my user name) While working by day, I encountered a young apprentice who seemed to go out of his way to piss me off. I finally had to send him back to the shop for "reassignment". Fast forward a couple of years and that same smart ass kid, now a journeyman, appears in my advancement training class. The only difference was, this kid had a new wife, a house with a mortgage and a kid on the way. He had lost the attitude, he was respectful, hard working and finished as one of my best students. There will always be a few that will never quite get it but most just need a little incentive.

Any way you slice it, we're stuck with them.