One of the biggest issues managers face is working with, and getting the most out of younger employees, so called millennials. A lot of managers are asking themselves: ‘What’s the matter with kids today?’ Millennials make up two distinct groups between Generation Y and Generation Z. Gen Z is the second-wave of millennials who were born between 1990 and 2000. Gen Z now makes up the bulk of new employees joining the workforce in the United States. Bruce Tulgan has studied this new generation of workers and shares his insights in the book, Bridging the Soft Skills Gap: Teaching the Missing Basics to Today’s Young Talent. Tulgan says the biggest difference between Gen Y and Gen Z is that the younger millennials have grown-up in an era of mobile devices. ‘They’re used to thinking learning and communicating with handheld devices. It means that some of their in-person communication skills are not as well refined. They’re not in the habit of puzzling through problems because right in their hands, they can get an infinite number of answers.’ But when it comes to the workplace, Gen Z millennials want to be taken seriously. Tulgan believes they don’t want to be humored and especially do not want to be told they’re winning, if they are not. ‘What they want, is they want to be setup for success.’ So, which employers are doing a good job of get the best out of their young employees? Tulgan points to the U.S. military as one of the best employers for young people today. ‘They take a strong hand and what they do is they try to take the fact that young people today are so tech savvy, that they have such high expectations for technology, they know how to use contemporary tools. They take advantage of this technical savvy and they fill in the gaps.’ With coaching on what Tulgan calls ‘the soft skills gap’ he believes managers can help setup younger workers for success. He points to one exercise his team teaches managers. ‘We teach managers to engage young people in a regular on-going structured dialog where they can tune into real issues that young people are experiencing. One of the simplest examples is how to conduct yourself in a meeting. how to do your homework in advance of a meeting. how to say the right things in a meeting and how to not say the wrong things.’ No matter what age, that’s some advice we can all take to heart.
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