There has seldom been a generation more discussed and misunderstood than the much heralded Millennial generation that are currently flooding the workplace.

One of the more disappointing myths surrounding Generation Y is that they’re lazy and come to the workforce with poor communication skills and an entitled mentality.

Of course, most of these myths are utter nonsense, but their existence can often deter us, either as managers or as organizations, from helping young employees to grow into the workforce.

A recent study highlights just how damaging it can be to the development of young people when managers are critical rather than supportive.

“Young adults in our study had learned a lot from mentors who modeled initiative, drive, and persistence; demonstrated how to communicate with confidence and engage in active listening; and displayed reliability, tolerance, respect, and a positive attitude,” the authors reveal.

The importance of good role models

The authors suggest that much of the current leadership development literature is excessively adult focused.  As such, they approached their study with the intention of exploring growth and development of young people as they first enter the workforce.

They found that role models and mentors were especially influential as young people transitioned into adulthood, and their paper provides a framework for leadership development in Millennial employees.

“Adults who are complaining about the new generation of ‘slackers’ should build relationships with students and young colleagues and actively model a professional work ethic for them,” the authors contend.

Help to grow

The study revealed that when young people were given a role model who mentored them through their formative stages in the workplace, they found the knowledge passed onto them invaluable and helped them to grow significantly.

Whilst third party role models were found to play a part (Mark Zuckerberg for instance), the young people nonetheless needed a more personal mentor to lay the foundations of what good leadership, and even good character really was.

“For that reason, we’d like to encourage businesses and organizations to offer leadership training, explicitly teaching employees and youth leaders to be good role models and teaching youth and young adults how to develop and maintain relationships with mentors,” the authors say.

Building a culture of coaching

Last year I looked at a report by the Institute for Corporate Productivity that explored the creation of a coaching culture.

The report reveals that just 20% of organizations believe they’re currently using coaching in an effective way, which given the strong desire to become more adaptive and responsive to shifting market conditions, is perhaps not ideal.  The report goes on to highlight four strategies organizations can deploy to improve their coaching competencies.

1. Establish the importance of coaching – An obvious first step is to regard coaching as important, and something that should thrive throughout the organization.  Whilst coaching is often regarded as a service provided by someone external, in essence it is simply about helping one another, which is something we can all do more of.
2. Transfer knowledge via coaching – Central to this culture of helping one another is of course the frequent exchange of knowledge.  The report suggests that regular coaching can “accelerate collaboration, improve performance, boost engagement and help retain institutional knowledge”.  Heady stuff.  It goes on to say that high performing organizations are five times as likely to have a coaching culture as their lower performing peers.
3. Get early adopters involved first – As with many cultural initiatives, it’s helpful to get senior managers on board, and it’s no different when trying to promote coaching with the organization.  The report highlights a lack of executive support as one of the key obstacles to overcome.  Solace can be found in a recent Stanford study found that whilst 2/3 of executives don’t engage in coaching themselves, nearly 100% would like to.
4. Build coaching accountability, capability and measurement – The report outlines three key barriers that prevent organizations from establishing coaching cultures: a lack of coaching skill; a lack of coaching accountability; and a lack of clear measurement.

A major part of the Stanford study was the realization that coaching was no longer confined to remedial work, but was instead a function of high performance.

Where the focus of that was very much on executives, the initial study reminds us how valuable it is for employees of all ages.