Focus on solutions

Focus on solutions, not problems.
Keep track of their performance.
Teach them how to get what they need from you.
Be well,
Dwika-ExecuTrain




Managing Generation-Y is Easy
by: Steven

The article highlighted that the way to manage Gen-Y employees was to do the following five things:

1. Set clear ground rules at the outset.
2. Establish a regular time and place for one-on-one meetings.
3. Focus on solutions, not problems.
4. Keep track of their performance.
5. Teach them how to get what they need from you.

So how did I know that these suggestions came from someone who did not have experience managing people?

Before I answer that question, let me tell you one of the things I do for a living.

Teaching Generation-Y Students
Those of you who have been following my e-Zine know that I teach classes to college seniors and graduate students. These are Gen-Y people. I sometimes hear my colleagues complain about some of their students in this age group. The professors complain that the Gen-Y students have high expectations and that they don't work very hard and they want everything handed to them. And in some cases they are right.

But I have none of these issues in my classes. My students, regardless of age, all respond in the same way... with great interest.

Why?

Because I do not believe that my job is to impart knowledge and information and it is the student's job to absorb it. Rather I believe that both the students and I have the same task; and that is to build an environment where knowledge can be absorbed in order to lead to a change in behavior. That means that it is just as much my responsibility to ensure that the student succeeds as it is the student's responsibility that he or she learns.

I do not expect to spoon-feed my students and I do expect them to take responsibility for their learning. This is a two-way street. It is a "relationship of teaching and learning" and the word relationship implies "two". This is the case whether I am teaching at the university level, conducting workshops in a corporation, or coaching engineers, managers, or executives.

The same philosophy applies to management. I believe that management is not about dictating what to do and how to do it. It is a relationship between manager and direct report such that the manager helps the direct report to be successful. I have generally been able to manage a very wide variety of direct reports because of this philosophy.

So here are my primary rules of engagement in the classroom (and in my workshops and in my coaching as well):

1. Information and knowledge that do not have the potential to change behavior is generally useless. (Think about it and you will realize that the statement is true for all knowledge accumulated by the human race. If it does not change behavior in some way, it doesn't even show up as knowledge and it does not stick around.)

2. It is my job to build an environment where the potential for behavioral impact can be achieved. Then it is the job of both the student and me to make the exchange happen. (This applies whether I am teaching class, conducting a workshop, coaching a client, or managing a team.)

3. I do not subscribe to the artificial construct that says my job is to artificially stratify the students into arbitrary As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs. If everyone achieves the level of behavioral change that I intend for the class, then everyone gets an A. Period, end of discussion.

And here is another interesting point... I work with a wide range of age groups and frankly, I sometimes enjoy working with Generation-Y people more than some of my Boomer colleagues.

So with that as a foundation, what do I think about the answers given in the Fortune magazine? (short answer... not much)

First, the fact that I guessed that the contributing expert had not managed much was borne out later in the article as well as in a Google™ search. Over and over again, the expert quoted others by saying, "a manager once said that Gen-Y employees want....." or "a manager said Gen-Y employees would rather....". Asking questions of others is no substitute for personal experience.

As I said before, I am not dissing the so called expert for not having management experience. But it is important for all of us to seek experts who have experience in management, not just those who observe, ask questions, and then call themselves experts.

Ultimately, the reason I knew that the article had been sourced by people who did not have management experience or very much of it, was because the 5 suggestions they listed (the ones I listed at the beginning of this section) are management processes to be used with ALL DIRECT REPORTS regardless of generation. (Yes, those letters are capitals for a reason.)

Whether I'm managing, teaching, coaching, or working side-by-side with Boomers or Generation-Y, I always:

1. Set clear ground rules at the outset. This is a no brainer. Good managers always take the time to clarify expectations with direct reports. And in my workshops and coaching sessions I teach direct reports how to initiate this ground-rule-setting discussion themselves if their managers do not.

2. Establish a regular time and place for one-on-one meetings. Dah! For some employees that contact will be once a day and for others it will once a month. In my experience, if I have confidence in the employee, the meetings might be once a week. If I have very high levels of confidence they might be once every two weeks. And in some cases they might be only when the employee wants something from me. However, the decision regarding the frequency of the meetings is always done in combination with how often the employee wants contact with me as well. If I am comfortable with contact once a week and the employee wants to see me every other day, then we will negotiate and I will do my best to accommodate the employee. However, if the employee wants to see me less frequently than I want to, I am much less flexible.

3. Focus on solutions, not problems. This response is not very useful. Some people automatically focus on problems. Many engineers for example, often focus on solving problems. Engineers often believe that problem solving is what they are on this earth to do. On the other hand, sales people often are focused on possibility, on solutions. So this answer is too much of a generalization for my taste. The answer to whether I focus on solutions or problems is... "it depends".

4. Keep track of their performance. Come on. This is supposed to be new? The last person (for maybe the first public person) to make this a big deal was Edwards Demming with his TQM (Total Quality Management) Program and that was well before the birth of any of the Generation-Y people. Of course we want to keep track of performance; another Dah!

5. Teach them how to get what they need from you. This is "Management 101". I have always made it clear to my direct reports, whether Boomers or college students, how to request and get what they need from me.

None of the five management suggestions listed above should be uniquely applied to Generation-Y, they should be applied to EVERYONE. The Fortune™ article is filler and not very useful filler at that.

Here is the bottom line... and this is very important and yet subtle...

There is actually as much variation between generations
as their is within a generation.

Here is an example of what I mean taken directly from the Fortune™ article.

The article contains a paragraph in which a Boomer manager is talking about a Generation-Y intern he managed, and I quote directly from the article:

"For one thing (Generation-Y), they seem both overly ambitious and not ambitious enough. For instance, last year, one very bright and talented intern asked me how long it had taken me to get to my level in the company (14 years), then said he could do it in half the time. Yet he wasn't a hard worker and left on the dot of five every single day, no matter what was going on. I did my best to try and explain the connection between effort and advancement, but I doubt that it sunk in."

Well gee... let me see. Do any of you baby boomers out there remember anyone like that young intern in the paragraph above when you first entered the workforce? Where there people in your graduating class who believed they could advance their careers faster than the older people around them? Maybe even you.

When I was a young engineer at Rockwell International, just out of college, I remember I was convinced that I was going to cut my advancement time in half compared to the older people there. I even told the executives there at the time that I didn't think they were very good managers. And it wasn't just me. I had a co-worker in my department, also just out of college, who had the same attitude. We were both convinced that our elders didn't really know what they were doing. We worked a little harder than 8 to 5, but we were not in any way lacking in arrogance. People of my generation became known as the Boomer generation.

Management is not marketing!
So lets leave behind this approach that attempts to lump people into large groupings for the purpose of management and leadership. The rules for generalizing populations are designed to make incompetent managers look less incompetent. Those of you who really understand management and leadership know that management and leadership always come down to a one-on-one process. Whether you are talking to one person or a thousand, whoever you reach, whomever you motivate, you do so because they believe that you are talking directly to them. So good managers and leaders understand that generational generalizations don't really help much in management and leadership.

And one of the reasons people get confused regarding this whole topic is because they confuse management/leadership with marketing. Marketing thrives on the statistical relationship between a stimulus and a response. Facebook™ and Twitter™ are structured to appeal to a generation not "to an individual". They succeed because they attract a statistically significant number of people in a certain generation, in a certain demographic, who have a certain set of generalized attitudes and perceptions. And the key word here is "statistically"... significant number of people.

But that is not management and it is not leadership. When I hire employees, when I assemble a team, I cannot succeed by statistically motivating a certain percentage of the team. I must motivate "everyone" on the team. So managing for a generalized statistical result will not cut it. My goal is to motivate everyone, one-on-one.

And if there is as much variation between generations as there is within a generation, then I find both the motivational forces that span generations and the specific drivers within each generation... and I use both to be successful. The article I referenced in this e-Zine gave 5 management behaviors that cross all generations but it gave none that are specific only to Generation-Y.

In fact, in my experience, all generations want the same things. So the management and leadership "drivers" are the same across generations. These "drivers" are generally "hard-wired" into us as human beings.

The way the drivers are communicated and recognized however, does vary from generation to generation.

That is why, in my classes, in my workshops, in my coaching, and in my management of teams, age never matters. I am always sending the same messages, regardless of the age of the audience.

However, the way I send the message, the way I structure and package it so it is recognized, varies widely depending on the age group or groups I am training, working with, managing, or leading.

Here is a concrete example of what I mean!
Lets take the example of "coaching". I submit that, in my experience, all generations want coaching. Because all generations want to be successful. Let me explain my position.

I submit that Baby Boomers want coaching. However, they want it in groups. They want to have meetings, "sessions", and group encounters where they can "learn from each other". Baby Boomers grew up in a "group think", "group connection" process. They want everyone to participate, so they do not see one-on-one coaching as beneficial as group gatherings. In group gatherings everyone benefits.

Generation-Y wants coaching too, but they want it to be "personal", they want it one-on-one. They grew up much more independently than the Baby Boomers so they want their coaching to be about them. They are not so interested in having a group coaching session... a group party; now that is another thing. But give them their coaching one-on-one and they are happy.

So coaching is a perfect example of two generations wanting the same thing, coaching, because it will help them be successful. However they want to receive it in two different ways.

This provides an area for potential misunderstanding between generations, but when we understand that people all want help to be successful and we are not tied to one way of giving it, then management and leadership across generations becomes much easier.

So the bottom line is that as managers and leaders, be aware that generational generalizations do not work well for management and leadership... not nearly as well as they do for marketing. Keep these distinctions clear.

Pretty interesting stuff isn't it?... even if I do say so myself.