A couple of weeks ago, I conducted a workshop on “How to Lead Different Generations of Volunteers for a Minneapolis nonprofit organization. A Gen X participant (aka “a thirty-something) shared how exasperated she has become with the twenty-something who reports to her. When she gave her direct report an assignment at 4PM with the expectation that the twenty-something would not leave work until she completed the assignment, the Gen X boss was shocked when the twenty-something told her that she was leaving right now to meet her friends for a beer and would get to the assignment after that.

Fortunately, there were two twenty-somethings in the training session. One responded: “For us work and play all run together and we don’t adhere to a rigid work schedule or work from 8 , 5 and then play. We have a work ethic , it’s just different from that of older workers. Just give us the assignment, tell us when it is due, and let us do the work.

This is exactly how Google works. They have a preponderance of young workers (20 and 30 somethings) and they make the workplace very fluid. And¦they hold people accountable.
Over the last few months, I hear a lot of older workers and even some Gen X’ers bashing the Millennials or twenty-somethings saying they don’t work the way we do and that they are not prepared for the world of work. That statement begs two questions.

The first is, who says that Millennials need the same attitudes toward work? Isn’t work about getting results on time? Why do we still need rigid, out-dated policies about when one has to work? Take the advice of the Millennial in my training session: give an assignment with clear expectations, tell the employee when it is due, let them do the work, and hold them accountable for the results.

The second question concerns why is the youngest generation in the workplace unprepared for the world of work? The answer is a seriously flawed education system that only permits positive feedback, rewards just showing up rather than results, and gives so much latitude to students about when assignments are due that they have very poor time management skills and no clue what a deadline is. It is time for revolutionary thinking in education to better prepare students not only for work but also for life.

It seems that a lot of my work lately is around coaching Baby-Boomer bosses on how to work with the newest generation in the workforce – the twenty-somethings (AKA “Millennials”) – and teaching the twenty-somethings what no one ever taught them – how to get along in the world of work. On the same day last week, a health care professional and a chef/restaurant owner bent my ear about their frustrations with this youngest generation. What was not surprising was the usual rant about how much time many members of this generation spend on their cell phones either talking or text messaging their friends, their aversion to anything but positive feedback, the apparent lack of time management skills (“you mean deadlines matter?!?”), and their sense of entitlement. However, what I am beginning to hear more frequently is a frustration around the twenty-somethings’ lack of common sense and good judgment, the ability to “think”, and the extent to which they are totally self-absorbed. What both of these bosses told me last week was that each has to spend a great deal of time telling the millennial exactly what to do – long after they should know how to do their job – and that when something occurs that is “off-script”, the typical twenty-something becomes “fartoost” which is a great Yiddish word that means bewildered, disoriented, discombobulated, and otherwise seriously confused. Such behavior on the part of the millennial causes these two bosses to exclaim with great exasperation, “Don’t these people have a brain”.

I think they do. However, most are products of a seriously flawed education system where passing standardized tests has replaced helping students to learn how to think.

The tension between the generations in the workplace is increasing dramatically and the reality is that these twenty-somethings are the ones filling the pipeline of talented workers and future leaders as the baby-boomers retire. I am interested in hearing from others on not only their experience with generational tension in the work place, but also how we can better prepare twenty-somethings for the world of work AND how the world of work needs to adapt to this newest generation.