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O P I N I O N
Prove it
If you want to empower your millennial team members, you have to offer them choice, provide purpose, and safeguard the organizational trust.
M illennials are part of the “prove it” generation, and their trust is made of glass. No matter how uncomfortable this makes you feel as a firm leader, the millennial mindset permeates modern business, and life for that matter, in every way. Organizations should not begrudge such a paradigm shift. They should accept the new reality and use it to their advantage.
Brenden Sherrer
I am a person who loves quotes, in part because quotes show how timeless some shifts are in society. In his “Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence,” Tolstoy wrote, “I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.” I believe we can start there. Are you an organization that recognizes what the shifting needs of the millennial generation are, recognize general frustrations, promise to change them, and then do all but implement such change? For young people, this will obliterate trust. It matters very little why the change hasn’t been made.
You as a leader recognized an issue, recognized the frustration, made a promise, and then did nothing. Put another way, your words were great, your concern was appreciated, but your action was found wanting. Prove that you want to make a change by actually doing so, or you will shatter that fragile trust I mentioned earlier. To avoid doing that, try these recommendations: 1) If you’re not going to include employees within the millennial demographic in final decisions, which is perfectly fine, assess your time and resources before asking for input. Most requests for input will solicit
See BRENDEN SHERRER, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER June 25, 2018, ISSUE 1254
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