Author: Monique Valcour

There’s no hotter topic in human resource management at present than how to manage Millennials (aka Generation Y), the age 30-and-under members of the workforce. Millennials are the “kids nowadays!” that managers from previous generations fret about. Typical challenges older people experience in working with Millennials surfaced during a conversation I recently had with a group of executives. For example: “I used to be able to give an order to a young employee and expect it to be carried out at once. Now I have to spend 20 minutes explaining why it’s important.”

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. 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.

There is an intergenerational sweet spot we should aim for, a point of maximum engagement for all employees. But we miss it by fixating on minor differences and taking them out of context, and by failing to appreciate the similarities among employees of different ages. If you find it challenging to relate to and motivate your youngest employees, it’s likely that you attribute this at least in part to differences between your generation and theirs. After all, what generation hasn’t been baffled by the behaviors of the succeeding one or questioned its values? A recent Time magazine article on the Millennials offered this quote from a forty-something writer: “Veteran teachers are saying that never in their experience were young people so thirstily avid of pleasure as now…so selfish.” The source of the quote? A letter published in The Atlantic in 1911.

What have we learned from comparative research on generations? 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. Furthermore, the differences are most often due to factors other than generational membership. For instance, take the common perception that Millennials are much more likely to hop from one employer to another. It turns out that tenure is a much more important predictor of intention to quit; i.e., people who have worked longer for an employer are less likely to leave. Millennials have shorter tenure than older employees on average simply because they have worked for fewer years. On this and other observed differences, mistaking correlation for causation contributes heavily to the Millennial stereotype. Understanding what’s behind the behavioral and attitudinal differences managers perceive among members of different generations is an important step towards reaching an intergenerational sweet spot.

One significant way in which Millennials are different from older generations is their relationship to and facility with technology. Using computers and social technology extensively since birth has shaped the ways in which they search for information, solve problems, relate to others, and communicate. They are adept at finding information and expect it to be readily available. They are comfortable reaching out directly to people in a way that can be disconcerting to older employees whose workplace relationships have traditionally been constrained by the organization’s hierarchy. As Nilofer Merchant has observed, social technology is changing the nature of power in organizations. When you are accustomed to and skilled at finding and freely sharing information, it makes no sense to have information locked up in various parts of an organizational structure. In fact, it feels frustratingly antiquated. What this means for older managers: they must shift from being controllers of information to facilitators of its sharing and collaborative use towards achieving organizational goals.

A second change that bears mentioning is the relative weakness of the psychological contract between Millennials and organizations. Contrary to the stereotype, this is not because people in this age range lack commitment or the capacity for loyalty. Rather, it’s a logical and predictable social evolution in response to the general weakening of the employment contract in our society, driven by management practices that have reduced job and employment security for most people in the workforce. Since individuals bear the ultimate responsibility for the management of their own careers, it is unrealistic to expect total devotion to an employer. On the other hand, if your organization wants to strengthen the psychological contract, it’s crucial to understand what motivates Millennials. The most powerful tool to build Millennials’ commitment to the organization is this: offering regular opportunities to learn and develop — not just through training, but through a variety of challenging tasks, the opportunity to work with people who impart valuable knowledge, and regular developmental feedback. As it turns out, this is how you build commitment in employees of all ages.

This brings me to my most important point: it’s essential for managers to understand and respond to the similarities among the generations currently in the workforce. Research from the University of North Carolina shows that Millennials want the same things from their employers that Generation X and Baby Boomers do: challenging, meaningful work; opportunities for learning, development and advancement; support to successfully integrate work and personal life; fair treatment and competitive compensation. What’s more, all three generations agree on the characteristics of an ideal leader: a person who leads by example, is accessible, acts as a coach and mentor, helps employees see how their roles contribute to the organization, and challenges others and holds them accountable.

So remember to ask yourself the following two questions when you start to feel frustrated by a Millennial employee: 1) What factors in the employee’s experience might be causing this behavior? and 2) Is this person really so different from older employees? Here’s a final example: the much-discussed desire of Millennials for flexible work options. First, consider things from the millennial perspective. One of the reasons why Millennials place so much value on flexible work is that they have been using technology to work flexibly all their lives. In some cases, they have a better understanding of how to work flexibly than do their managers. Second, are they unique in wanting flexibility? No. It turns out that Generation X and Baby Boomers value workplace flexibility just as much. Now consider why this similarity exists: at its basis, flexibility is fundamentally about having control over the conditions of one’s work and having the trust and respect of one’s manager and employer. Research established these as key factors in motivation and commitment long before the invention of the smartphone.

Regardless of what generation you represent, being self-aware and learning to understand others’ perspectives will make you more effective at work. If you are a Millennial, overcoming the negative stereotype requires that you convey the following core message through your behavior, day in and day out: I’m here to work hard, contribute to the organization, learn from you, and develop my skills. If you manage Millennials, your daily behavior should transmit this message: I value and trust you, am committed to helping you perform at your best, and care about the quality of your experience in this organization.

Improving your ability to relate to Millennials will make you a better manager of all your employees. Because despite what the stereotype might suggest, effectively engaging Millennials is not about letting employees wear jeans and bring their dogs to work, dude. The key is providing challenging, meaningful work, communicating, helping employees to see their contribution, and making sure they have opportunities to learn and grow. The best manager for Millennials, GenXers, and Baby Boomers is a person who has a coaching orientation, who is aware of employees’ talents and interests, who both supports them and pushes them to perform at higher levels than they believed they could, and who cares about the quality of their experience. Work towards that, and you’ll hit the intergenerational sweet spot.

“The most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry.” This career advice from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg makes good sense based on research. Among couples, career outcomes are indeed linked to the dynamics of support and career priority within couples.

Yet many people end up in less egalitarian marriages than they expected to have, often facing a “choice” to either stay in jobs that threaten to overwhelm them and their families or to withdraw from the workforce entirely. Just as lack of consensus around finances can doom a marriage, lack of support from one’s spouse can effectively sink a career. To make dual careers work, a couple needs to be on the same page regarding their career and life goals and how they will support each other in achieving them. Here are four strategies for developing and maintaining an effective dual-career partnership.

Shared vision and values. First of all, talk early and often about what matters most to both of you. What gives you a sense of value, meaning, identity, joy? Which of these things do you share? What would you not give up under any circumstances, even if it meant sacrificing in other important areas? Even though you may hope to “have it all,” placing things that are important to both of you (such as career advancement, living in a certain geographic area, starting a business, both being actively involved in your children’s lives, maintaining excellent health) in order of priority improves your ability to make optimal decisions. The purpose of regularly revisiting what you hope to create together is to ensure that — to borrow from the title of a now-classic Harvard Business Review article — your commitments match your convictions. In other words, you want to avoid realizing too late (e.g., when you’ve already called a divorce lawyer) that there is a big gap between what you say you care about most and how you actually invest your time and energy.

Mutual interest, appreciation and investment. Remember that you fell in love with this person because you found him or her interesting. Being interested in and learning about your partner’s work life and sharing about your own are important ways of maintaining that mutual interest and of promoting the limitless possibilities of mutuality. In less successful couples, partners come to inhabit separate, non-overlapping worlds, with the result that they know each other less well and have fewer opportunities for mutual enrichment over time. A good guiding principle to follow is to look for solutions that reduce career-related conflicts and maximize opportunities for career enrichment between the members of the couple. In a recent HBR blog post, Stew Friedman described a relevant example of an executive who improved both his job performance and the quality of his relationship with his spouse by sharing upcoming work challenges and inviting her input. My husband and I routinely help each other decide how to approach issues we encounter in our careers by listening, asking questions, and offering a broader perspective.

A team orientation. If you’ve been working on the first two strategies, it should be fairly natural to help each other out and to work together to find solutions that help you to achieve your shared goals.This often means taking turns, as my husband and I did when we put each other through school. Many dual-career couples confer with each other before accepting travel commitments to ensure that both parents are never away at the same time. The most successful dual-career couples avoid consistently sacrificing one partner’s career in favor of the other’s. This might mean saying to one’s boss, “I’d like to work from home until mid-morning the last week of next month because my spouse will be away at a conference.” In less successful dual-career partnerships, each partner’s interest in the other’s career is often more self-referential — as in, “How will my partner’s work demands or rewards affect me?” as opposed to “How do we meet the demands and enjoy the rewards together?”

Flexibility and adaptability. Both partners need to be open to change and adaptable. Plotting an inflexible dual-career roadmap at the outset and expecting that you will be able to stick to it forever is a recipe for disappointment and missed opportunities. Modern careers don’t typically follow a predictable path; the road is ever-changing. Few people make it all the way through a career without experiencing an unexpected company event that affects their career prospects, a significant failure, an apparent success that turns out to be unsatisfactory, or a desire to make a significant change. Fortunately, having two careers takes the pressure off either person to be responsible for all of the material support of the family unit. Furthermore, shared goals, mutual understanding, and a commitment to helping each other are powerful resources that help dual-career couples work through career and life challenges and changes.

If you fundamentally respect each other, value and appreciate each others’ careers, want to help each other succeed, and keep the lines of communication open, you’ll be able to handle and quite possibly even embrace the twists and turns you encounter along the way.

With the storm still swirling over Marissa Mayer’s decision to end telecommuting at Yahoo, Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly now takes center stage as the latest corporate leader to ax flexible work.

While Mayer’s announcement raised eyebrows, Joly’s decision is actually much more momentous. Why? Because Best Buy’s flexible work program is not just any flex policy, but the groundbreaking Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), one of the most innovative and celebrated examples of a company redesigning work to focus on results and boost performance through motivation-enhancing trust and autonomy. Under ROWE, corporate (non-store) employees had the freedom to work when and where they wanted as long as they got their work done.

Developed by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson (who have since written a book and launched a firm, CultureRX, to disseminate the program), ROWE yielded impressive results. Ressler and Thompson’s case studies as well as independent scholarly research find that ROWE increases productivity, employee well-being, and work-life balance while decreasing turnover. At Best Buy, these results produced $2.2 million in savings over three years, according to the CultureRX website.

The ROWE method has since been implemented in more than 40 companies. In addition to extensive media attention, it has also been featured in scores of management textbooks and teaching cases on topics including human resource management, strategy, and innovation.

Why such notoriety among management thinkers and educators? Because ROWE systematically implements what decades of research studies have shown to be the keys to motivating and engaging a workforce for maximum performance, commitment, and satisfaction. In short: help understand employees what needs to be done, give them the autonomy, trust and support to accomplish objectives in the ways that work best for them, and provide feedback and recognition to let them know how well they’re doing and reinforce good performance. When implemented effectively by well-trained leaders, this is a recipe not only for promoting work-life balance, but also for maximizing the value and contribution of a firm’s human capital over the long term.

Why on earth, then, would Joly cut this program? What killed ROWE at Best Buy was the same phenomenon that occurs frequently when a cost-cutting leader is appointed to turn around a struggling company: a short-term “get tough” mindset that favors rapid shocks over the slower, more difficult — but ultimately much more powerful — work of developing and communicating a strategy and harnessing the talent and creativity of committed, engaged employees to implement it. While Al Dunlap-style management can boost stock price in the short term, it lays waste to human capital value — the very resource that is most critical in firms like Best Buy, whose fortunes depend on providing excellent customer service.

Research including my own has shown that the culture of work-life support in a company is the most powerful predictor of employee work-life balance as well as a key element in job performance, organizational commitment, and intention to remain with the company. But top management exerts the strongest influence on culture, and nothing undermines a supportive work-life culture more quickly than a leader who believes and communicates that flexible work and work-life initiatives are nothing but frills that serve to coddle employees.

Joly made a very revealing comment following an investors’ meeting in November. “In a turnaround transformation,” he said, “you need to feel disposable as opposed to indispensable.” He is far from the only “Theory X” leader who believes that stressing employees makes them perform better, while boosting their satisfaction makes them lazy. This underlying belief persists despite enormous research evidence to the contrary because, quite frankly, it is simpler to comprehend and less behaviorally demanding of managers.

The prevalence of this mindset combined with less corporate investment in the leadership development needed to implement flexible work — and a weak job market that erodes employees’ power to demand alternative work arrangements — makes this a precarious moment for flexible work. Now is the time for leaders who understand the value and potency of well-designed flexible work programs to step forward and help others see the light.