Managing millenials in the workplace: Our Purpose or Their purpose?

As the so-called millenials enter the work force, or form a start-up business, or simply begin the journey of defining career objectives, there exists the challenge of educating them to the harsh cold realities of the work-a-day business world. So, how can we lead millenials to a place where they can mature into effective and useful participants in the company culture?

The problem here is somewhat complicated in that millenials grew up believing they could achieve anything, for the most part, without a clear set of rules, or framework, or container to help them form a good foundation that can support and sustain their achievements. Thus, when they encounter something that stands in the way of the path to achievement, they tend to consider it antagonistic to their objective.

It doesn't at all help that many present-day brands marketing almost exclusively to this group (i.e. video games, listening & mobile devices) actually leverage these self-centric tendencies to foist product on the group as a whole thereby reinforcing the negative programming.

Eventually, it all comes crashing to a halt in the workplace, where millenials suddenly realize that their sense of entitlement to a sort of achievement fast-track is a complete delusion. But companies, seeing this as a communications problem, are considering ways to meet the group half-way through specialized messaging and intra-networking platforms to make it easier for the group to receive training and execute strategy. This is not automatically a productive solution.

Companies need to count the hard costs of hand-holding this group until it can somehow get its bearings in the real world. And the solution should be finite in its execution. Otherwise, the company will be permanently married to another cluster of apps that only results in enabling the very self-centric perceptions the group needs to shed in the process of maturing in the workplace.

Until companies solve this growing dilemma, there will continue to be bumps in the road that can only be mitigated by incubating millenials in a way that gradually empowers them to achieve their goals in a team context while also training them to be effective participants instead of usurpers.