As Generation Y gets older, employers must start preparing them for leadership. But what will happen when Gen Y gets to make the rules? By Calum Robson, freelance journalist.
Generation Y is taking on greater responsibility as the world emerges from recession. Employers must prepare the Gen Y group (which is roughly used to describe those born after 1980) for the realities of leadership – while paying attention to this generation's own agenda.
According to Lisa Orrell, generation relations expert and author of ‘Millennials Incorporated’ and ‘Millennials into Leadership’, Generation Y remain incredibly optimistic – and are poised to take advantage of the upturn. ‘Yes, some have had harsh reality checks,’ she said. ‘They may be in jobs they’re not thrilled with – but as soon as the job market returns, they’ll be ready to go. Smarter employers have continued to engage with them during the recession; they know that without a good grip on Gen Y talent, those future executives will be out the door.’
Immediate solutions
Paving the way for Gen Y to assume leadership roles will require more than persuading them to stay put. Gerry Griffin, Gen Y leadership communication specialist and chief executive of Skill Pill M-Learning, believes many of the competencies required for effective management are sorely lacking. ‘Gen Y is way below average on active listening, managing meetings effectively, sticking to an agenda and focusing on a single issue at a time,’ he said. ‘They’re brilliant at collaborating – but that alone won’t be productive.’
How Gen Y learns means that employers must look beyond classical classroom training that relies on people attending one off courses and retrieving content from memory at a later date. ‘Gen Y doesn’t do things that way – they’re more consumer-oriented,’ he said. ‘Confronted with a problem, they want the solution delivered immediately, even on a hand-held device if necessary.’
Employers who tune into Gen Y will focus on more relevant and sustained development. ‘They have to commit to ongoing leadership programmes, such as coaching and mentoring,’ said Orrell. ‘You can’t send Gen Y-ers to a token half-day workshop and then simply wish them luck for the remaining months before their next appraisal. Development needs to regular, delivered in an engaging way and be immediately applicable in the workplace.’
Leadership training must address the characteristics that make Gen Y employees enthusiastic trainees - but which expose shortcomings as they move up the hierarchy. Graeme Yell, director of global management consultants, Hay Group, believes Gen Y may have difficulty transitioning from peers to leaders: ‘They’re more likely to engage with direct reports as friends,’ he said. ‘This may also mean they become coercive when they realise nothing’s getting done, or during difficult times, when they’ll have less capacity to self manage.’
Harnessing mindsets
Older Gen Y-ers – those in their late 20s or around 30 – may only just be starting to take on management responsibilities. But at this stage, they still have to play by other people’s rules. ‘What will be interesting is what happens when Gen Y gets to make those rules,’ said Griffiths. ‘At the moment, many organisations are structured so that people work in vertical silos – but Gen Y likes to work horizontally. They can aggregate many different disciplines and they’re unafraid of challenging orthodoxies, even outside their core competencies. Employers must try to harness that innately collaborative mindset through more cross functional working.’
But that needn’t dictate wholesale restructuring. Companies where upwardly mobile Gen Y-ers exert their influence may experience greater organisational fluidity. ‘Cross-functional teams don’t have to be set in stone,’ said Griffiths. ‘One-off “pop-up” teams can be created, coming together for a couple of weeks to resolve a particular problem, then disappearing. So your management accountant might occasionally work closely with colleagues from marketing and IT on a project in which all three functions have a stake.’
Global development
As Gen Y’s careers progress, multinational employers may find themselves with more homogenous development programmes, placing less emphasis on national differences. ‘This is the first truly global generation,’ said Orrell. ‘Even Gen Y-ers who haven’t travelled or worked abroad feel connected worldwide – they make overseas friends on Facebook; they all use the same apps on their iPhones, they talk about the same stuff on YouTube. They have far more common interests and opportunities than their parents did. For many employers this means that development programmes can be designed uniformly across borders, with minor adjustments for cultural or commercial differences. A programme that pilots successfully in London may be more easily rolled out in, say, India, than would have been the case with previous generations.’
It may be that the biggest shift in mindset will be experienced in boardrooms, as companies adjust their strategies to engage with the best of Gen Y. ‘In countries with more formal business processes, senior management may be less open to taking the necessary steps to engage Gen Y – even though Gen Y-ers themselves are more globally aligned,’ said Griffiths.
But he added: ‘Even somewhere like China, where there’s a more hierarchical approach, there’s also a tremendously enterprising environment; if they see something working, they’ll run with it.’