Millennials are the most entitled generation of young people the world has ever seen. They spend all their money of avocado toast and hand-crafted lattes. They live in their parents basements taking selfies and tweeting dank memes. They’re killing chain restaurants, and they demand immediate promotions at the office.
At least, that’s how the stereotype goes.
But on this episode of The Goldwaters Dr. Samantha Goldwater-Adler digs into both myths and truths about this much-maligned generation with McGill university management professor Karl Moore. He’s writing a book, Working with Millennials, on ways businesses can manage these young workers. Moore is such a Millennial booster that it has Samantha wondering whether he’s a Millennial in Boomer clothing…
“What I’m arguing in the book in one sentence is this: People over 45 with a university degree were taught a modern worldview, people under 35 with a university degree were taught a postmodern worldview, and therefore must be managed differently,” Moore said.
One of the ways he sees the difference is how Millennials treat hierarchy in the workplace and the world. “It’s not the death, but it’s the decline of hierarchy,” he said. In the workplace, Millenials don’t put the same value on rigid structures of bosses and employees, according to Moore. They also like getting feedback, and they often need to be listened to by their superiors, even if their bosses don’t agree with their outlook, Moore said.
“This generation has wisdom to share, and every generation has wisdom to share. One of the things that’s so beautiful and interesting about humans is that…we’re very adaptable to new circumstances and new situations,” Samantha said. “And so with Millennials, they are the result of, and the adaptation to the times that they grew up in.”
Further Reading
• Karl Moore: Never Apologize, Never Explain: Dumb Ideas With Millennials — In this piece, Moore lays out the case that manages and executives shouldn’t shy away from explaining themselves to their Millennial employees. “We older generations are in charge, and that is largely fine, however, we need to realize that at times we are a bit out of touch with today’s values,” Moore writes. “We must be willing to learn their approaches with the good sense to realize that they are generally, not always, but generally, right for today’s world.”