Managing the Millennials: Discover the Core Competencies for Managing Today's Workforce

The Builders, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials—all make up workforces in every type of industry all over the world. The generational gaps are numerous and distinctly different between each age group, and Millennials have gotten a reputation for being particularly unique and often challenging. In this updated and expanded Second Edition of the popular guidebook Managing the Millennials, you'll see how Millennial traits are the same around the globe. In fact, Millennials are more alike than any other generation before them due in large part to rapid advances in technology that let us share more experiences together. These same rapid advances are also redefining the fundamental ways businesses operate, and this revised edition includes the international perspective today's valuable leadership needs to attract and retain these high-performing workers with very different values and expectations. With fresh research and new real-world examples, the powerhouse authorial team reexamines the differences between how different generations work today in businesses around the world, with insightful exploration into what makes the Millennial generation so different from the ones that came before. The authors reveal nine specific points of tension commonly arising from clashing value systems among generations and prescribe nine proven solutions to resolve conflict and build communication, nurture collaborative teams, and create long-lasting relationships among colleagues of every age. A wealth of informative tables and convenient end-of-chapter summaries make this an invaluable everyday reference to support you: Making the most informed decisions with up-to-date, research-based guidance on getting the most from twenty-something employees Executing solutions to the most common obstacles to younger workers engaging and learning from the people who manage them Enhancing your skills as a job coach with practical tips and hands-on tools for coaching Millennials, including concrete action steps for overcoming roadblocks Complete with case studies of real managers and employees interacting in every area of business, enlightening analysis of performance and behavioral patterns across generations, and easy-to-use techniques you can use right away to improve your organization, Managing the Millennials, Second Edition gives you everything you need to inspire your entire workforce to new levels of productivity.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Gabrielle Jackson Bosché xv Introduction Close Encounters with a Different Kind xix Part I The Millennial Phenomenon 1 Chapter 1 The Millennials and You 3 The Generations at Work 4 What in the World is Happening? 8 The Coming Job Gap 12 You’re So Special 13 Bridging the Gap 15 Chapter 2 Aren’t We All Just the Same? 17 So What? isn’t Every Generation the Same? 17 Who Gets to Do the Sense-Making and Set the Rules? 24 Chapter 3 The Effective Managers versus the Challenged Managers 27 Mind-Set 30 Following Up with Human Resources 33 Chapter 4 The Points of Tension between Managers and Millennials 35 Perceptual Positioning 37 The Consequence of Inexperience40 Part II Discover the Core Competencies for Managing Today’s Workforce 53 Chapter 5 Be Flexible: When Letting Them Have It Their Way Makes Sense 55 Flexing with the Autonomous The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Work-Life Blending 56 The Bias of Experience 57 Psychological Contract 60 Learning from Our Success 61 Learning from Our Failure 62 Best Practice 62 Chapter 6 Create the Right Rewards: Rewarding the Right Things in the Right Ways 65 Incenting the Entitled The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Reward 66 The Bias of Experience 66 Rewarding the Right Way 68 Rewarding the Right Things 69 Keeping Them Informed 70 Learning from Our Success 71 In a Nutshell 73 Chapter 7 Put Their Imagination to Work: They are at the Head of the Creative Class 75 Cultivating the Imaginative The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Self-Expression 76 The Bias of Experience 76 Creativity and Competitive Advantage 78 Managerial Best Practices 79 Let Them Know What Happened with Their Ideas 80 Let Them Have Fun 81 In a Nutshell 82 Chapter 8 Build a Relationship: First Them, Then You 85 Engaging the Self-Absorbed The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Attention 86 The Bias of Experience 88 Best Practices 88 So What are Some Barriers to Engaging? 91 Something to Think About 95 The Transfer of Tacit Knowledge Will Not Happen without Building a Relationship 95 Chapter 9 Be Positive When Correcting: Fragile, Handle with Care 99 Disarming the Defensive The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Achievement 100 The Bias of Experience 103 Best Practices 104 Learning from Success 106 In a Nutshell 110 Chapter 10 Don’t Take Things Personally: It is Not Always about You 113 Self-Differentiating from the Abrasive The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Informality 114 The Bias of Experience 115 Self-Differentiating Is about You 117 Know Where They End and You Begin 118 Separateness and Togetherness 119 Know the Difference between Your Role and Your Person 119 Beware of Triangulating 119 Think about Your Presence 120 Confessions 121 In a Nutshell 122 Chapter 11 Show Them the Big Picture: The Big Picture Does Not Exist Until You Help Them See It 125 Broadening the Myopic The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Simplicity 126 The Bias of Experience 127 Learning from Success 128 Learning from Failures 128 Start with Something Easy 129 The Consequential Thinking Model 130 The Five Whys 131 Please, Do Share 132 In a Nutshell 134 Chapter 12 Include the Details: Ambiguity is Their Kryptonite 137 Directing the Unfocused The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Multitasking 138 The Bias of Experience 139 Directing? I Thought They Wanted Autonomy 140 Giving Direction 141 Learning from Success 142 Learning from Our Failures 143 In a Nutshell 145 Chapter 13 Make It Matter to Them: They Want to Know “Why” before “What” 147 Motivating the Indifferent The Millennial Intrinsic Value: Meaning 148 The Bias of Experience 150 Hierarchy of Capabilities 152 Learning from Success 155 Learning from Our Failures 156 In a Nutshell 157 Part III Your Competitive Advantage 159 Chapter 14 Building a Millennial-Friendly Culture 161 Identify Your All-Stars and Give Them a Platform 161 Involve Your Managers in the Conversation 163 Ask Millennials 163 Suspend Organizational Bias 164 Promote the Core Competencies for Managing Today’s Workforce 165 The Generational Rapport Inventory 166 Chapter 15 Mentoring Millennials 169 Challenges Millennials Face in the Workplace 171 Strategies for Overcoming Roadblocks at Work 172 The Seven Skills for Overcoming Roadblocks 177 In the End 179 Acknowledgments 181 Notes 183 Index 191

About the Author :
CHIP ESPINOZA, PhD, is author of Millennials Who Manage and Millennials@Work. He is academic director of Organizational Psychology and Nonprofit Leadership at Concordia University Irvine. Economic Times recently named him a top 15 thought leader on the future of work. MICK UKLEJA, PhD, is the founder and President of LeadershipTraQ, a leadership consulting firm. He co-authored Managing The Millennials, Who Are You? What Do You Want? and The Ethics Challenge. Mick is an adjunct professor in the MBA program at Concordia University and keynotes across the country on issues relating to generational diversity, leadership and personal productivity. He has been featured on Fox News, CNN, Fox Business Network, NBC and in numerous publications.

Review :
Praise for Managing the Millennials "If you're going to run a successful organization in the future, you'll have to learn how to manage the Millennial generation—that thundering herd of young people whose numbers exceed the Baby Boomers. They will push you and frustrate you, but they will help you win going forward. Managing the Millennials is a must-read for every leader who wants his or her organization to have a great future." —Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and Leading at a Higher Level "Our company has had the good fortune of becoming a trusted brand with the new generation. Without them, we would not exist. It would be easy for us to think that we 'know enough' because of our business. The truth is that we cannot afford to not build the same trust within our organization between the generations that make up the Quiksilver family. Managing the Millennials is a practical hands-on approach to understanding how generational tension gets created and what to do about it. I was fascinated by what I learned and excited about sharing it within our company." —Robert McKnight, chairman, Quiksilver, Inc. "Managing the Millennials has taught us how to harvest the creativity and energy of a new generation and inspire those of us who lead them." —Bruce Ratner, chairman, Forest City Ratner Companies, New York "With more than 32 million twenty-somethings in today's workforce, managers more than ever before need a clear road map for building bridges of communication and engagement between generations. Based on years of research and real-world business experience, Managing the Millennials is the first book to fuse the authors' cutting-edge concepts with a powerful and easy-to-use framework for putting their ideas into action. This is one book that I will wholeheartedly recommend to every business leader whose job includes managing people." —Peter Economy, best-selling author of Managing For Dummies, and associate editor, Leader to Leader magazine "This book is timely and practical for those facing the challenge of managing across generations. It takes a certain degree of maturity and perspective to be able to suspend one's own bias and engage others. Managers who practice the core competencies in this book will be better equipped to develop the people they lead." —Laura Curnutt Santana, PhD, Lead Faculty Financial Services Sector/Senior Faculty Global Markets Americas, Center for Creative Leadership