How to Be a Millennial Whisperer: Understand Your Millennial Employees and Improve Engagement

By Spencer Deering

Business leaders: how can you solve the seemingly intractable problem of millennial disengagement? One word: BestWork. (Ok, that's actually two words jammed together, but we own it!).

Show millennial employees how to do their BestWork, work that's meaningful to them and also creates measurable value for their (your) organization, and they will lock into work like Legos. Your organization's productivity will soar.

In How to Be a Millennial Whisperer, author Spencer Deering provides business leaders a fun and concise guide to doing just that. Readers will learn to understand their millennial employees in order to ramp their productivity at work. As Deering says, "You, too, can be a Millennial Whisperer."

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483567655

Book preview

Spencer Deering

© Copyright 2016 Supurlativ, LLC

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-4835676-5-5

Supurlativ.com

(844) 229 - 6446

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Introduction

How This Book is Structured

America, We Got a Problem

America, We Got a Problem

Millennials Are Entrepreneurial, Right? Wrong.

Welcome to the MC: The Millennial Conundrum

Awful Eyewear: Perfection and Rejection Glasses

Case Study: Who’s Supurlativ Now?

wtfshouldIdowithmylife.com

A Case of The Confusions

The Duality of Doom and Other Traps to Avoid

Attitude is Everything

Case Study: Who’s Supurlativ Now? Take Two

Leaking Confidence

America, We Got a Solution

America, We Got a Solution

Why Business?

Deeping Breathing, Shallow Pressure

HR: Be BOLD! Make a BIG Bet with Your CFO

Case Study: Who’s Supurlativ Now? Take Three

Happiness is a Long-Term Commitment

Put Down The Phone (PDTP)

Case Study: Who’s (Still) Supurlativ Now?

Close the Laptop

Unplug, Backup, Refresh

Say It To Me: Customer Creation Ramps 50%

Create Fired Up Leaders and Let ‘Em Rip

About the Author

Spencer Deering

Acknowledgments

Sources

Books

Internet Articles, Websites, and PDFs

Introduction

Introduction

This book is for business leaders who know we’ve got a Millennial problem.

Problem?

Yep. Problem. A huge one, and it’s growing larger. It’s not a small challenge on the margin. It’s not the same old discord between two generations as the scepter of leadership changes hands. It’s a big fat hairy enemy that must, finally once and for all, be vanquished.

It’s Millennial disengagement at work.

Employee disengagement among Millennials (18-34) is not only disappointing, it’s frightening. The oldest of our Millennial friends (late 20’s-early 30’s) have now reached management age and they’re leaving (or plan to leave) their present employers at astonishing rates. The first fissures of serious business erosion started to appear a few years back, but we didn’t address them seriously.

They’ll figure it out, we thought. Besides, unemployment is at 9%.

Unemployment is now hovering around 5% and, uh, no they haven’t.

So it’s a problem. That’s the bad news. The great news? There’s a simple solution.

Huh? you say. What could possibly cut the lights on this expanding circus of transience and incapacity from Millennials who show incredible promise on paper, and demonstrate impressive skills on the job, but somehow can’t quite figure out how to stick around?

The answer is GreatWork.

I founded Supurlativ based on the belief that anyone can lead a fulfilled life when they are given the chance to do work that’s meaningful to them and creates measurable value for their organization. We call this GreatWork. Each of us has the potential to be great at something and then work at it to produce meaningful results. But it’s the doing, the active pursuing, winning, losing, and learning that gets you to your GreatWork.

Millennials, more than any generation I’ve seen, need help finding their GreatWork. It’s up to us to help them.

To be fair, 20% of this generation gets it. They have dreams and drive and aspirations and an actionable plan to get there. They’ve discovered their GreatWork and are rockin’ and rollin’. Good on them. To be even fairer: the bottom 20% are, in their current state, hopeless. They’re happy to smoke dope in their parents’ basement and play Halo all day. This cadre could determine where and how they can do GreatWork. But until they put down the controller and unclench the bong - it’s not worth trying to pry them off the couch.

In this book, I’m talking about the middle 60% of Millennials who need help. These are the 50 million Americans who know and want to be remarkable but can’t quite figure out how.

We as business leaders need to help them. I’m trying to do my best, which is why I’ve been called the Millennial Whisperer. But Supurlativ is not some magic bullet that only I can fire. You, too, can be a Millennial Whisperer. Give your employees the opportunity to do GreatWork. The first step? Build a genuine culture of initiative and innovation that supports your people to find their GreatWork. Then let them rip.

I promise: once you do this, you’ll not only see great results, but you’ll quickly become an employer of choice. All that you read about Millennials wanting to do work with purpose is absolutely true; when that value is literally built into your business it is a beacon in the midst of some very foggy professional weather.

Unfortunately creating culture to lock in Millennial engagement isn’t as easy as setting up a Ping Pong table in the lobby or hiring Taco Boy to cater Thursday lunches. But once that culture is created, it produces meaningful results – for you and your Millennial employees.

This book is also a wake up call to HR departments that are treating the problem with Band-Aids. One-on-one breakdowns to ask Millennials where they think they belong in the company don’t work. Why? Because many high performing young professionals in the Millennial generation don’t know where their ‘right place’ is. So leaders keep guessing, and they keep leaving.

These are talented individuals who simply lack some of the most crucial tools to successfully navigate the world: self-awareness, genuine self-confidence and emotional intelligence. It’s up to us to help them.

This is not just a corporate problem. Certainly, managing Millennials is the corporate challenge of our time – and those who succeed will win. But ultimately, GreatWork is about more than work. It’s about helping a generation whom we desperately need to grow roots. America’s position in the world is staked on it. (More on this later.)

Warning: If you’re the type of leader who sees jobs as roles that need filling or holes that need pegging, i.e. – you don’t want to hear anything from an accountant except numerical reports, then this book is not for you.

This book is for business leaders who believe people are our single most important competitive differentiator. Once you finish reading it, Supurlativ can teach you to be a GreatWork Trainer so you can guide your employees and get the right people in the right places. Then let them tell you where to go. And go. And go.

Warning #2: If your reading the title of this book caused you to elicit a harrumph, or maybe words like insipid or patronizing came to mind, please pass it on. This book is not for you. You’ll just get