Misunderstood Millennial Talent. Joan Snyder Kuhl

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      The Investment Imperative

      As it turns out, Millennials without financial privilege stay at their jobs. Nine out of ten, we find, have no plans to leave within the next year. Interviews with some forty-five of these Millennials reveal them to be committed to their current employers and utterly willing to go the extra mile, investing prodigious amounts of time and energy in their work in the hopes that their employers will invest in them in return.

      But because talent specialists, as we documented in Chapter One, tend to see all Millennials as a flight risk, they aren’t investing in any of them. We find that only 23 percent of Millennials without financial privilege have both rewarding relationships and intellectual growth in their careers—two key factors in determining employees’ abilities to succeed as contributors or leaders within their organizations.

      That does not bode well for the success of those organizations.

      Consider the effects, for example, of withholding international assignments from Millennials. Since exposure to other countries, cultures, and consumers helps give young professionals the knowledge they need to grow those markets and crack open new ones, denying them such exposure or field experience jeopardizes both corporate revenues and future expansion prospects. “Today’s globalized and technology-driven economy presents serious challenges,” JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon points out in a recent Politico op-ed. “But it also offers opportunities and rewards skills,” he continues, as long as companies make a point of “investing in people [and] training them in the skills employers in their communities are looking for.”29 Stinting on management training likewise imposes a toll, specifically on team productivity and efficiency. Near-term, Millennials will replace Gen Xers as managers, from direct-line supervisors to department heads. If they are ill-prepared for these roles, then upon assuming them they will be consumed by playing catch-up, detracting from their ability to execute on their responsibilities, unlock innovative potential, and deploy talent effectively—to say nothing of the blunders and roadblocks they might encounter along the way.

      If leadership development, typically reserved for high-potential talent, is also withheld from Millennials, then the imminent exodus of Boomers (upwards of 50 percent of whom will have exited the workforce by 2020) threatens to pull decades of institutional knowledge and market expertise out the door with them.30 Typically, talent specialists foment opportunities for cross-generational interaction by inviting high-potential Millennials to shadow directors, assigning them to work on business-critical projects, and matching them with or exposing them to potential sponsors. Such leadership development initiatives all help to ensure that Millennials acquire not only vital skill sets, but also networks of other up-and-coming leaders, and relationships with executives who will advocate for them. Yet with interaction between these cohorts limited to the occasional reverse mentoring initiative, explicit knowledge transfer—from seasoned executives to future change agents—isn’t likely to take place.

      As new Millennial hires enter the workforce, well-developed critical-thinking skills are a necessity. Yet, accustomed to crowd-sourced feedback, some Millennials have yet to fully develop these rigorous problem-solving skills—an observation made by Lisa Westlake, CHRO at Moody’s and one of several talent specialists to point out this issue. “Millennials seem to solicit a lot of different opinions before moving forward,” agrees Novo Nordisk’s Barbara Keen. “In some ways, that’s one of their greatest strengths. But, the concern is that this could become an overreliance on consensus. As a leader, yes, you do need to be able to make sure that the decisions you make are based on robust data from multiple sources and channels. You also have to be able to synthesize all of that information in context of organizational dynamics, previous investments, and the perspectives of key stakeholders.”

      Keen acknowledges that critical problem-solving and decision-making skills are a challenge for both new and seasoned leaders. Millennials have an advantage, given their seeming comfort with the vast amount of information at their fingertips, but we have to make it a priority to support their development in these areas. If we don’t, she worries about the consequences for the leadership pipeline. “We have to make time for their development. If we don’t intentionally help them learn and grow as we have in the past, we are being shortsighted.”

      Losing Out on Diverse Leaders

      Failure to invest in Millennials’ career development imperils more than just the leadership pipeline. More critically, because the investment deficit is particularly pronounced for Millennials of color, it undermines the long-term strategic goal of making leadership representative of the workforce and marketplace it serves.

      Take Miguel,* for example. During his junior year of college, Miguel was recruited by a major consultancy in the Northeast to be part of its highly competitive internship program. Of Mexican heritage, Miguel was courted by several consultancies, each intent on diversifying not only their СКАЧАТЬ