Why is Managing Millennials "Hard(er)"?
Why is managing Millenials Hard(er)?
The number of articles, think-pieces and lamentations around how difficult it is to manage Generation Snowflake/Snakepeople tires me. We are the ungrateful generation. We all need awards and recognition for every minor achievement. We are the generation that demands things and requires that people adapt to us and we don’t just get in line and, to use a phrase, know our role and shut our hole.
I am going to leave aside whole swaths of the socio-economics (higher relative cost of college, lower relative earning potential, low wage growth, higher housing and rental costs, higher general cost of living, etc.) that drive inter-generational cultural difference and focus one central aspect.
Leaving aside the degree to which Boomers created and directly benefit from modern corporate culture, and that they’re largely the parents of Millennials and that they, as a generation, struggle with the vast changes in technology usage in the office, this “problem” of how to manage Millennials is culturally based. It is something that can be taught and understood.
Millennials, moreso than any prior generation, have a fundamentally performative life experience. Being digital natives means more than simply “understanding the social” or “knowing how to Insta”: it means that we came of age on Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and Friendster and we are used to the presentation of information in an idealized world. When you went to high school and college viewing someone’s vacation photos or their posts from a Friday night, you get a false sense of Their Amazing Life—without having to view the gristly bits that comprise the reality of life.
For younger Millennials, this can create jealousy and a sense that, if someone else can have All That, then why can’t they? Why is their salary low? Why are they struggling to find a job and, when they have a job, why aren’t they seeing more of the reward and payoff?
Many older Millennials (30’s and late 20’s, usually) understand that those social media platforms are performative and that they are a Real Housewives glimpse of that person’s reality. Verisimilitude breeds both a cynicism and a distrust of performance.
Queue a manager who uses the inducement levers most commonly pulled by Boomer’s and X’ers. It is a hallmark of poor managers and somehow found its way onto the pedestal for managers over the last twenty years. It avoids difficult conversations and can provide a short term boost in productivity and buy-in.
I present you with: the just-out-of-reach carrot.
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Tell me if you’ve heard a version of this: Things at work are challenging due to the economy or budgets or culture or workload – for some reason there is pressure on people and the manager is concerned that people are going to leave. The manager goes to a good/great performer about whom they’re particularly concerned and lets them know that a new manager position may be opening up soon-ish and that s/he thinks they’d be great for the role. It will be a second or third shift manager role, or, it’ll be in a couple months because of budgeting, or, there is some other hang-up, or hang-ups, and the role will require a less than ideal work/life balance, but gosh darnit, they just think this person would be great for the role.
The Good/Great performer buckles down. They’re excited. They’re getting noticed! Their manager is looking out for them! Sure they might be a second shift manager for a couple years, but then…! They ramp up their work and focus on the future.
Three months pass with no word and no change in title, comp. They’re still working hard. The manager continues the same story.
Six months pass still with no word. The manager is frustrated because, Hey, they want you in this role but no one will give them a timeline for it.
Inside of a year, the Good/Great performer has given notice and is gone—and the manager shrugs to superiors and says, Millennials—they’re such whiners and they make so many demands!
With no exaggeration, I’ve heard probably fifteen different variants of this story.
I should add that often times—even most of the time— the manager is not acting maliciously or with an intent to deceive, but they also are not acting out of good faith. There likely is a manager position being discussed. This person would be a good manager but it either doesn’t come to pass or the manager did not have hiring/recommendation authority on the role and they thought that if they promised this person a better role, they’d stick around long enough for them to figure something out.
The bottom line truth is that the veracity, intent or malice in the manager is irrelevant because the results are what matter. The manager put on a performance and couldn’t deliver and the Millennial put in the hours and got nothing for it.
Performative verisimilitude.
It will kill your team, kill your culture and, yes, it will make managing and hiring Millennials that much harder.
Be up front about the role, the chance it happens and, importantly, why that person is the right person.
Consider the following examples:
First, as described:
Things at work are challenging due to the economy or budgets or culture or workload – for some reason there is pressure on people and the manager is concerned that people are going to leave. The manager goes to a good/great performer about whom they’re particularly concerned and lets them know that a new manager position may be opening up soon-ish and that s/he thinks they’d be great for the role. It will be a second or third shift manager role, or, it’ll be in a couple months because of budgeting, or, there is some other hang-up, or hang-ups, and the role will require a less than ideal work/life balance, but gosh darnit, they just think this person would be great for the role. They should really buckle down and grab that carrot dangling from the string and make this a no brainer decision!
Second, improved:
Things are work are challenging, for whatever reason listed above. The manager is concerned that a good/great performer is going to leave due to the challenges and goes to them to lay out the strategic plan for the department over the next 6-12 months. There are discussions among leadership about creating a manager role for a second shift and the good/great performer would be a really good fit for that role because they’re great at training others and modeling a great work ethic for others. Explicitly, they do not promise anything and underline that—they’re hoping this role is created and they think this person would be good for it, but that is months out. They don’t know if the role is going to happen, but they’re pushing for it. The good/great performer doesn’t need to change anything—they’re already doing the right things and, again explicitly, the manager is not doing this to juice performance for a short period. The manager agrees that they will transparently keep them informed, good, bad, or other.
What’s different?
There are no promises in the second one. There is a concrete statement that shows the manager is paying attention and sees what the good/great performer is doing—specifically, what they are doing that would make them a good fit for this. They know the chances of this role happening are uncertain.
The other read on the difference is that the first conversation is easier for the manager. They can make assertions and promises and suggestions and juice short term performance with no accountability—either up or down—and with ready excuses!
A good warning sign is if an early discussion on career growth is “easy” and full of promises then something is wrong.
You also need to own your responsibility in someone leaving. In the example, the good/great performer didn’t leave because they’re difficult: they left because their manager promised them something they couldn’t deliver and, after a year, they were fed up.
There is a saying that, People don’t quit jobs, they quit managers. The duty of an up-line manager, of managers who manage managers, is to keep close tabs on this. If a manager gets a spate of departures—over a 6-9 month period—that is a clarion call for skip-level meetings and digging in to what that manager is doing to push people out.
Good leaders and managers admit when they’re wrong. Sometimes publically, but definitely to the people about whom, or to whom, they were wrong. This isn’t some grand gesture: this is humanizing yourself. You made a mistake. That’s okay. Own it. Apologize. Make it right. That person will follow you forever and work all the harder because you showed you give a shit and can own your mistakes.
Critically important to managers is understanding that your team members talk about you, the things you say and the things you do and don’t do. The Great Performer who just left after being strung along for a year? They talked to their colleagues on the way out the door. They may not know the full story, but they know the rough details. You might get the benefit of the doubt the first time something like this happens. You will not get it the second time around.
Being known as a manager who promises things and can’t make them happen is reputation that changes only when you change companies.
The last aspect of performative verisimilitude is Burnout. There are a growing number of articles written about burnout, and specifically burnout among Millennials, and that also plays a factor here. Chances are, your Great Performer wasn’t working 40 hours a week before you mentioned the new manager role. Implying that the way they’ll get that manager role is via more work, more hours and more off-hours work is throwing fuel on their stress level.
But here’s the other factor related to burnout: the “Always On” mentality is also performative. The email response at 1a is not because your client needed a response at 1a, it is because the person wanted to be seen responding at 1a. Setting a deadline of 6a for a deliverable is rarely because someone is actually ready to accept that deliverable at 6a, but, again, people want to be seen accepting something at 6a. Email response at all hours? 30 minute turn times for acknowledgements? First to respond gets it?
Performative. Bullshit.
Sorry, Boomer’s and X’ers: this one is on us.
And yet, businesses eat up the performative response times! Look at how dedicated my team is! They worked all night! They worked all weekend! Woe is me, I worked 110 hours last week, and I billed 108 of them, so, hey, that’s great for the bottom line!
Just stop it. It isn’t healthy, the work product is noticeably worse and it is unsustainable. And if I’m a client and I see someone billed more than 60 hours in a week, I’m not paying for anything over 55. You’re telling me you were as fresh and insightful 10 hours into your workday as you were at hour 1?
Controlling performative response times controls burnout.
Ditch martyrdom rewards. Companies and managers recognize and reward routine email sent between 8p and 8a. It shows commitment! It shows client service! Look at how dedicated my team is!
Actually, it shows an inability to plan.
Do you know why I care that you were emailing the client back at 11p last night with a report you were working on all day? It makes me question a) your workload and b) your time and project management skills. If you’re emailing a client at 11p something better be on fire or a hard deadline better be in jeopardy. A routine email sent between 8p and 8a is a red flag that someone isn’t managing expectations, their workload or their project. It is not a cause for positive recognition.
As the manager, you need to set the tone with taking time off and unplugging. My company switched to an unlimited vacation policy—which consistently drive down PTO usage—and setting the tenor for usage was critical in making my team feel okay in actually using the unlimited pool. If your team isn’t taking PTO, or if people are losing PTO at the end of the year because they can’t roll it over, force the issue.
Performative verisimilitude. That’s it. Master the ability to recognize and destroy it—in yourself and others—and I swear that managing Millennials will magically get much easier and much better.
Self-awareness is central to combatting performative work. Don’t do it yourself and don’t accept it in others. Don’t lie. Don’t stretch the truth or make hard conversations easier by making assertions, hints or outright promises that you cannot deliver. Don’t fall for others masking sub-par work product in after-hours martyrdom. Keep your team focused and fresh.
Being a manager isn’t about having the “easier” job or finding simple ways to deal with tough conversations. If the career path of your reports does not matter to you, if you would rather have an easy, empty conversation rather than a difficult and full conversation, then stop managing because managing isn’t for you. Sure, you’ll survive as a manager for a while, maybe for a very long while—but you won’t be good at it and you will make others worse for it.
And that’s the full, difficult truth.