My wife recently watched an online video of a 2016 interview with Simon Sinek called "On Millennials in the Workplace" (which now has more than 13 million views on YouTube). I've read (and thoroughly enjoyed) a couple of his books (Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last are two of my personal favorites), and I was finally able to listen to the interview myself. Sinek doesn't pull any punches, starting the "interview" (I use quotes because the interviewer never really said anything during the 15 minute video) with, "I have yet to give a speech where somebody doesn't ask me the Millennial question. So, let us get straight to the point. They are accused of being entitled, narcissistic, lazy, unfocused, and self-interested. They're not happy, there's a missing piece." Wow! I thought Sinek was a little too harsh, even if he did make some good points. It's worth a listen.
I've always found it difficult to compare and contrast the supposed differences in beliefs, attitudes, and motivations between the different generations. It's kind of like that old saying that parents often tell their kids, "When I was your age, we walked to school every day in 3 feet of snow. Up hill both ways!" I also keep playing a song by The Who ("My Generation") in the back of my mind. However, I do think that it's an important discussion for leaders (more on this point shortly), particularly at a time when there are five different generations in the workforce.
Speaking of five different generations in the workforce - there's an interesting statistic that keeps coming up in the media, suggesting that by the year 2025 (which is admittedly not far away), so-called Millennials will make-up 75% of the workforce. Millennials (also known as Generation Y) are defined by the Pew Research Center as individuals who were born between 1981 and 1996 (see the chart below).
The term "Millennial" was apparently first used in the book Generations: The History of America's Future , 1584 to 2069 by William Strauss and Neil Howe, who felt it was an appropriate name for the first generation to reach adulthood in the new millennium. Most Millennials are the children of Baby Boomers (individuals born between 1946 to 1964) and older Generation X (individuals born between 1965 to 1980). They were the first generation to grow up with the Internet, they tend to be more educated and more diverse than preceding generations, they tend to forego marriage and family until later in life, and they are now the second largest generation in America.
However, contrary to what is commonly believed, they will not comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025! Of course, this is an older assertion that started with the "Gen Y Women in the Workplace" study, which was conducted by the Business Professional Women (BPW) Foundation in 2011. The study claimed that by 2025, Generation Y (or Millennials) will make up roughly 75% of the world’s workforce. The study referenced U.S. Department of Labor statistics, but it wasn’t specific about the data source. Unfortunately, the statement grabbed a lot of attention and has been perpetuated ever since. Josh Zumbrun conducted some fact-checking for a 2014 Wall Street Journal article, "How to Tell if a 'Fact' About Millennials Isn't Actually a Fact". Based upon a more rigorous statistical analysis, Zumbrun concluded that in 2025 Millennials will make up a little over 40% of the labor force (which also turned out to be much closer to the truth in more recent studies):
As you can hopefully appreciate from the graph above, Generation X will make up nearly 50% of the workforce, so why Millennials are assuming ever greater importance, they are still outnumbered by the Gen X'ers.
So, the next logical question with these more accurate statistics is "So what?" Does it make any difference that 40% of the workforce next year will be Millennials / Generation Y? I guess the answer to that question depends on whether you think (1) there are differences in how individuals from different generations approach work and (2) whether those differences, if they exist, matter to how you lead and manage those individuals. Monique Valcour wrote a nice article a few years ago for the Harvard Business Review ("Hitting the Intergenerational Sweet Spot") and started with a similar statement to Simon Sinek above:
"The stereotype Millennials get tagged with goes like this: they are a generation of smartphone addicts who live for feedback and praise, lack appropriate deference, feel entitled to rapid advancement but are unwilling to 'pay their dues', prioritize personal life and work-life balance over employers' needs, and think they should be able to work wherever, whenever, and however they want." If you stopped reading there, you would miss out on perhaps her most important point. She follows this statement with, "Although this portrait drives a robust market for multigenerational workforce training, it misconstrues the qualities of employees born in the last two decades of the 20th century - while over-hyping the differences between them and older employees."
Now we're talking. It's important to remember that the use of stereotypes to generalize to a large group is never a good idea. Merriam-Webster's online dictionary even has a new, updated definition and defines stereotype as an often unfair and untrue belief that many people have about all people or things with a particular characteristic. As Valcour (and others too) points out in her article, "large-scale studies using random samples and validated measures have found only slight differences in the job attitudes and values of Millennials and members of older generations." In other words, the so-called differences in motivations, attitudes, and values between different generations probably are not as important as commonly believed. And as another article in the Harvard Business Review emphasizes, "Generational differences at work are small. Thinking they're big affects our behavior."
So what can we conclude from all of this? First, don't believe every statistic that you come across - it's important to fact-check! Second, don't believe all the hype about the important differences between the different generations that are currently in the workforce. Rebecca Knight ("Managing People from 5 Generations") recommends the following when it comes to leading and managing multigenerational teams:
1. Don't dwell on differences
2. Build collaborative relationships
3. Study your employees
4. Create opportunities for cross-generational mentoring
5. Consider life-paths
Bottom line. People from a particular generation have questioned the attitudes and behaviors of the succeeding generation since antiquity! Consider this quote from a 1911 article in The Atlantic:
"Veteran teachers are saying that never in their experience were young people so thirstily avid of pleasure as now...so selfish." Talkin' 'bout my generation...
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