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#Leadership : 6 Concepts Your Millennial Employees Wish You Understood…One of the Things you Learn very Quickly, When you Hire a Staff, Is that a Bad Boss is the No. 1 Reason Why People Quit their Jobs.

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One of the most fraught challenges that an manager/entrepreneur can face is the management of employees. Plenty of books have been written on the subject; plenty of classes have been taught. But it’s only when you’re suddenly sharing an office full of millennials with their own distinct personalities, strengths, weaknesses and dreams – each of whom is looking to you for leadership — that the real learning begins.

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One of the things you learn very quickly, when you hire a staff, is that a bad boss is the No. 1 reason why people quit their jobs. Nobody wants to be a bad boss. And nobody has to be a bad boss – not if you put in the time and effort it takes to become the leader that your employees need. Naturally, that’s easier said than done, particularly because employees rarely feel comfortable offering tips to their boss on how to behave.

Fortunately, managers/entrepreneurs who hang in there long enough often become masters of putting their employees in a position to succeed. It’s a crucial part of building a viable business. Even bosses who are beloved by their staff, though, could learn to be more effective if they were better able to view the world through millennial eyes.

Simply put, millennial employees work harder and remain more loyal if they believe their boss understands them and their needs. Here are six important considerations that your millennial employees wish you recognized.

1. Their time is more valuable than money.

It’s no great secret that employees hate it when their boss keeps them in the office late or bombards them in the evenings and on weekends with emails, phone calls and homework. Don’t do that. But your respect for your employees’ time should go further than that.

Most projects require teamwork, and when one of your team members completes their part and turns it over to you, they expect you to complete it promptly so that they can move onto the next thing instead of waiting on you. It’s imperative that the boss is not a bottleneck, preventing an efficient office, so always respect your millennial employees’ time as much as your own.

 

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2. They want to know what’s happening with the company.

Does your office operate on a need-to-know basis? Your millennial employees are probably not happy with that arrangement.

Workers usually aren’t offended if they’re not included in a company’s decision making – they know that’s your job. But they do resent being kept in the dark about the company’s plans and direction.

Employees, who endure too many surprises or can’t be sure what your business will look like in six months, begin to feel that you don’t trust them. Nobody does their best work for a boss or a business that doesn’t trust them with essential information.

Learning to manage people effectively can sometimes take a career – some would say longer, when it comes to millennials. Even then, your employees probably won’t love you for it. But if you keep their interests in mind while running your business, they just might love to work for you. Isn’t that the kind of company where you’d like to work too?

3. They want to learn something.

It’s rare these days for a worker to stick with the same company for their entire career, for many complicated reasons.

One surefire way to keep them, though, is to make sure that they’re learning new skills on the job. It’s better for the company because your staff is constantly improving its knowledge and skillset, and it’s better for the employee too.

Learning something new keeps them engaged, and they know that if and when they move onto a new job, your company will have made them a better employee. If your employees aren’t learning anything, they aren’t improving themselves, and they’re apt to go someplace where they can.

Related: This is How You Create the Ideal Millennial Workplace

4. They hate the open office concept.

For years now, more and more offices have switched to the open-office model, where employees share a communal workspace with small or nonexistent partitions between their desks. The theory is that this approach fosters communication, collaboration and transparency. But that isn’t how your millennial employees see it.

Chances are, millennials believe that you put them in an open office simply so that you could keep an eye on them. Again, this erodes trust.

Additionally, many staffers complain that the noise and distractions all around them in an open office hamper productivity. Nobody grows up hoping to work in a cube, or worse yet, around a table, like a kindergartener. And if you maintain a private office for yourself, they’ll resent you for it.

Related: Want to Understand Millennials? It’s Simpler Than You Think.

5. They want praise and a raise.

As managers/entrepreneurs, we often expect and demand that our teams will always strive to do their best work in order to share in the company’s success. And often, they do – at least at first.

But if millennials’ hard work, engagement and sacrifice isn’t rewarded, you’ll quickly catch them turning in the bare minimum. Bosses have tried all sorts of carrots and sticks to keep their employees stretching for success, but only two things really move the needle: praising quality work and raising compensation for top performers.

In a perfect world, millennials wouldn’t need encouragement to do their best. But in the real world, people get hooked on praise, and nothing motivates like more money. Don’t fight it, utilize it.

Related: Millennials Are Not the Only Ones Who Want Feedback

6. Nobody really loves their boss.

As the leader of your organization, you deserve your employees’ respect and you need their trust. Where many managers/entrepreneurs go wrong, though, is coveting their employees’ love and admiration, too.

No matter how fun you make your workplace or how deeply you involve yourself in your millennial workers’ lives, the fact remains that nobody loves their boss. And nobody wants to.

Your millennial employees need a leader with vision who is smart, fair, and encouraging. What they don’t need is a hero. If you need more love in your life, devote more time and energy to developing friendships and family. If you try to turn your employees into a family, they’ll respect you less for it. Help your workers to love what they do, not love who they work for.

Learning to manage people effectively can sometimes take a career – some would say longer, when it comes to millennials. Even then, your employees probably won’t love you for it. But if you keep their interests in mind while running your business, they just might love to work for you. Isn’t that the kind of company where you’d like to work too?

 

Entrepreneur.com | August 19, 2016 | Steven Kaufman

#Leadership : A Retired Navy SEAL Commander Explains 12 Traits Effective #Leaders Must Have…Just as Discipline & Freedom are Opposing Forces that Must be Balanced, Leadership Requires Finding the Equilibrium in the Dichotomy of Many Seemingly Contradictory Qualities Between One Extreme & Another.

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Jocko Willink is the retired commander of the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War: US Navy SEAL Team Three Task Unit Bruiser, which served in the 2006 Battle of Ramadi.

 

Retired Navy SEAL Task Unit Bruiser commander Jocko Willink.

In his new book “Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win,” co-written with his former platoon commander Leif Babin, he and Babin explain the lessons learned in combat that they’ve taught to corporate clients for the past four years in their leadership consultancy firm Echelon Front.

During his 20 years as a SEAL, Willink writes that he realized that, “Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities between one extreme and another.” By being aware of these seeming contradictions, a leader can “more easily balance the opposing forces and lead with maximum effectiveness.”

Here are the 12 main dichotomies of leadership Willink identifies as traits every effective leader should have.

‘A leader must lead but also be ready to follow.’

Willink says a common misconception the public has about the military is that subordinates mindlessly follow every order they’re given. In certain situations, subordinates may have access to information their superiors don’t, or have an insight that would result in a more effective plan than the one their boss proposed.

“Good leaders must welcome this, putting aside ego and personal agendas to ensure that the team has the greatest chance of accomplishing its strategic goals,” Willink writes.

‘A leader must be aggressive but not overbearing.’

'A leader must be aggressive but not overbearing.'

Echelon Front

Leif Babin and Willink when they were deployed in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006.

As a SEAL officer, Willink needed to be aggressive (“Some may even accuse me of hyperagression,” he says) but he differentiated being a powerful presence to his SEAL team from being an intimidating figure.

He writes that, “I did my utmost to ensure that everyone below me in the chain of command felt comfortable approaching me with concerns, ideas, thoughts, and even disagreements.”

“That being said,” he adds, “my subordinates also knew that if they wanted to complain about the hard work and relentless push to accomplish the mission I expected of them, they best take those thoughts elsewhere.”

‘A leader must be calm but not robotic.’

Willink says that while leaders who lose their tempers lose respect, they also can’t establish a relationship with their team if they never expression anger, sadness, or frustration.

“People do not follow robots,” he writes.

‘A leader must be confident but never cocky.’

Leaders should behave with confidence and instill it in their team members.

“But when it goes too far, overconfidence causes complacency and arrogance, which ultimately set the team up for failure,” Willink writes.

‘A leader must be brave but not foolhardy.’

'A leader must be brave but not foolhardy.'

Courtesy of Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Task Unit Bruiser SEALs look up at an Apache flying overhead Ramadi in 2006.

Whoever’s in charge can’t waste time excessively contemplating a scenario without making a decision. But when it’s time to make that decision, all risk must be as mitigated as possible.

Willink and Babin both write about situations in Ramadi in which delaying an attack until every detail about a target was clarified, even when it frustrated other units they were working with, resulted in avoiding tragic friendly fire.

‘A leader must have a competitive spirit but also be a gracious loser.’

“They must drive competition and push themselves and their teams to perform at the highest level,” Willink writes. “But they must never put their own drive for personal success ahead of overall mission success for the greater team.”

This means that when something does not go according to plan, leaders must set aside their egos and take ownership of the failure before moving forward.

‘A leader must be attentive to details but not obsessed with them.’

The most effective leaders learn how to quickly determine which of their team’s tasks need to be monitored in order for them to progress smoothly, “but cannot get sucked into the details and lose track of the bigger picture,” Willink writes.

‘A leader must be strong but likewise have endurance, not only physically but mentally.’

'A leader must be strong but likewise have endurance, not only physically but mentally.'

Courtesy of Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Navy SEALs on a roof overlook in Ramadi in 2006. (Faces have been blurred to protect identities.)

Leaders need to push themselves and their teams while also recognizing their limits, in order to achieve a suitable pace and avoid burnout.

‘A leader must be humble but not passive; quiet but not silent.’

The best leaders keep their egos in check and their minds open to others, and admit when they’re wrong.

“But a leader must be able to speak up when it matters,” Willink writes. “They must be able to stand up for the team and respectfully push back against a decision, order, or direction that could negatively impact overall mission success.”

‘A leader must be close with subordinates but not too close.’

“The best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people — their lives and their families,” Willink writes. “But a leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself.”

“Leaders must never get so close that the team forgets who is in charge.”

‘A leader must exercise Extreme Ownership. Simultaneously, that leader must employ Decentralized Command.’

“Extreme Ownership” is the fundamental concept of Willink and Babin’s leadership philosophy. It means that for any team or organization, “all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader,” Willink writes. Even when leaders are not directly responsible for all outcomes, it was their method of communication and guidance, or lack thereof, that led to the results.

That doesn’t mean, however, that leaders should micromanage. It’s why the concept of decentralized command that Willink and Babin used in the battlefield, in which they trusted that their junior officers were able to handle certain tasks without being monitored, translates so well to the business world.

‘A leader has nothing to prove but everything to prove.’

“Since the team understands that the leader is de facto in charge, in that respect, a leader has nothing to prove,” Willink writes. “But in another respect, a leader has everything to prove: Every member of the team must develop the trust and confidence that their leader will exercise good judgment, remain calm, and make the right decisions when it matters most.”

And the only way that can be achieved is through leading by example every day.

Businessinsider.com | October 22, 2015  |