Born between the 1980s and 2000s, Millennials will represent over 75% of the global workforce by 2025. With Gen Z making its way to the workplace, Millennials are not kids anymore and are expected to replace retiring Baby Boomers in their leadership positions.
It’s an inevitable generation shift, yet, the question is “Are Millennials ready to lead?”. With differences in lifestyle, vision of the world, values, conceptual principles, and stereotypes, each generation approaches leadership differently.
Thus, while current leaders view leadership preparation rather as the individual’s responsibility, Millennials think it’s the employer’s responsibility and competence. Yet, it doesn’t mean they don’t care about leadership.
Below, we’ll look into how to develop the leadership skills of this generation and turn them into high-performing leaders.
Millennial Mindset
To grow effective leaders out of Millenials, you should first understand their mindset and their expectations from work.
The main features of Gen Y employees are as follows:
- Tech- and innovation-savvy;
- Optimistic about changes;
- Driven by the willingness to improve processes;
- Multi-taskers and team players;
- Skilled specialists;
- Hungry for learning;
- Always open to development.
This is how Gen Y workers treat work:
- Their highest value is work-life balance, so they won’t sacrifice their personal interests and comfort to achieve high-scale business goals;
- They will enjoy a working environment where their ideas, suggestions, and opinions will be appreciated;
- They’d rather prefer to set up and streamline their own processes than follow the existing rules;
- They will quickly lose interest in work that gives them no learning and development opportunities;
- They welcome work in a collaborative atmosphere and prioritize team success over their own wins.
Tips on Training Millennial Leaders
To foster your Gen Y leaders and make them thrive, you won’t have to break the wall. You just need to rely on the following tips and suggestions keeping in mind Millennial employee characteristics.
1. Encourage Through Learning
Gen Y workers have been raised and educated with permanent access to technology and information. They are inquisitive and got used to “polishing” their wit by asking questions, yet, at their own pace. Let them embrace the gist of a new leadership role and enhance their leadership skills via online courses and training sessions.
2. Ensure Mentorship
Make use of their learning capabilities, communicative nature, and teamwork skills to connect them with experienced leaders who can guide them and assess their performance. They will explain the leadership focal points and show how to lead by their own examples.
3. Create a Collaborative Climate
Young leaders are not sole players, they will feel much more comfortable and confident in a team. So, let them work in a group. By building relationships with colleagues and constantly interacting with peers and managers, they will tailor their communication skills to perfection and upgrade their leadership skills at the same time.
4. Train Through a Game
A generation of gamers will eagerly accept self-directed interactive training programs that will either match their individual leadership needs or address the issues of leading diversified teams, or managing complex workplace needs.
Let trainees earn scores or praise their success with some real prizes to keep them inspired and motivated for further achievements.
5. Welcome Innovations
Millennials are risk-takers and experimenters consistently searching for improvement and scaleup. So, let them try new things and methods and tackle the issues from unexpected angles. This is how they grow their problem-solving skills and raise their leadership.
6. Give Feedback
Gen Y workers need to know how they are doing and if they perform as expected. That said, your expectations should be clear and attainable from the start, and feedback should be regular and not only praising.
Millennials want to know the real state of things and to be aware of both their achievements and failures or pitfalls to determine the areas of improvement and do correction work.
In a word, start training your young leaders today by relying on their strengths and considering their aspirations, and you’ll get engaged and productive managers that will lead your business to success when the time comes.
