Randy Hain, author of Something More: The Professional’s Pursuit of a Meaningful Life.

We’ve arguably talked about it to death. Millennials want a balance between work and life. Unlike past generations, who put an emphasis on their careers and worked well beyond a 40-hour work week in the hope of rising to higher-paying positions later on, Gen Y is not convinced that such early career sacrifices are worth the potential rewards. A balance between their personal and work lives is more important to these young employees.

This we know. But we don’t seem to ask why. Is this a new trend, or has it always been on the top of the youngest workers’ agenda? How can learning leaders bridge the gap between millennials’ work and life goals? Is it even their responsibility to do so? I interviewed Randy Hain, author of Something More: The Professional’s Pursuit of a Meaningful Life, to find out what he thought, but I’d also love to hear your thoughts. As a learning professional, are you accommodating Gen Y’s request, or do you think it’s time for them to suck it up the way previous generations had to?

What do you think millennials want from life?

Hain: I am fascinated with Generation Y for many reasons, not the least of which is their desire to lead meaningful lives filled with purpose. They seem more focused than my generation on serving their communities, giving back to others, having balance and making a real difference in the world. Of course, each young professional may pursue the meaningful life differently, but the key is they don’t define themselves by only their careers.

How does that relate to their motivators and behavior at work?

Hain: They are more likely to ask discerning questions in an interview process about company culture and the work environment before accepting a job. They will be more likely to work for a company with a sense of mission and purpose, and that produces goods and services they care about. They will want their company to give back to the community. Within the workplace, they are more likely to “turn it off” at the end of the day and draw the line between their work and personal lives. Unlike Gen X and the baby boomers, they may be more likely to grow impatient with the pace of company change or grow bored and change jobs more frequently.

Knowing this, how can learning leaders help equip young professionals early on to align their work and life goals?

Hain: I believe it is very important to listen to and engage young professionals from the beginning of their time in a new job. They have great ideas and strong feelings on what they want from life, and they need to share their thoughts. I would also suggest the following as part of a mentoring process:

• Ask them for a list of life goals as well as work goals they want to accomplish in the next year, five years and 10 years.
• Help them assimilate their time and energy at work with their life goals. They don’t always see the connection and may need coaching on how to, for example, connect job promotions and increased financial success with greater giving to their favorite causes.
• Pair them with a mentor in the workplace who has largely succeeded in aligning work and life goals and can help them navigate internal landmines and future challenges.
• Give them opportunities to voice their opinions. They have likely grown up with a voice in everything they have done and will be more involved and engaged at work if they feel they are being heard by the leadership team. It is important to temper expectations around their potential influence, but utilizing truly helpful and good ideas will help younger professionals feel more connected to their work and the organization.

Was making this connection between work and life as important to generations before Gen Y?

Hain: I know when I joined the workforce after college in the late 1980s, work-life balance was not important to me or even up for discussion. We were taught by our parents and encouraged by our employers to work hard, put in the hours, and we would be recognized for our efforts. It is important for today’s business leaders to recognize the value in listening to and acknowledging the desires of the millennial generation, but it is also incumbent upon young professionals to learn from older generations and demonstrate flexibility. Ideally, we will see more cooperation, sharing of ideas and meeting in the middle when it comes to addressing what at times may seem like a sea of frustration in many workplaces as older workers and younger workers sit glaring at each other and shaking their heads. These young leaders will run the world one day, but today it is Gen X and the baby boomers. We’d better learn to successfully coexist and have a positive generational handoff before it is too late.

1. Three Ways to Improve E-Learning: If you find e-learning to be among the most efficient methods of learning delivery, you’re not alone. But these technology trends can take it a step further. Holly Howell, director of professional learning services for UL Workplace Health and Safety, has more.

2. General Mills’ Elite Learning Strategy  | Video: Kevin Wilde of General Mills talks with editor Deanna Hartley about the company’s award-winning learning strategy.

3. AT&T: The Marriage of Business and Learning: AT&T stays on top of the latest tools, technologies and methodologies to deliver learning to its global workforce while remaining in sync with business strategy. CLO editor Deanna Hartley has the story.

4. Manage Remotely With Coordination, Not Control: Working remotely requires a change in leadership and management styles. Here’s what leaders need to know, according to Sebastian Bailey, president and co-founder of learning and development firm Mind Gym.

5. Innovative Methods to Develop Leaders: Consider these five tips when putting together a leadership development program, writes Patrick Sweeney, president of Caliper Corp., a human capital management assessment and development firm.

On Another Note …

Every boss thinks he or she is funny — for reference, see the NBC comedy series “The Office.” But, as it turns out, there is a certain kind of humor that especially “brilliant” leaders have, according to this article from Inc. Hint: Woody Allen.

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Also, need to find focus? The DealBook section from The New York Times offers some advice: don’t check email for the first 90 minutes of the workday.

Education expert Sir Ken Robinson kicked off the first day at ASTD's 2013 International Conference and Exhibition

Just outside the convention center in downtown Dallas, three sunburnt cowboys lead a herd of cattle across a stream.

Granted, they’re not real cowboys nor are the 70 massive bulls and cows stamping and huffing through traffic. Rather, it’s a striking sinuous bronze display of art in the heart of the city’s Pioneer Plaza that commemorates the massive cattle drives that once crisscrossed Texas.

While cattle drives are no longer the lifeblood of the local economy, the cowboy culture they embedded remains. That particular mix of freedom, individualism and self reliance continues to define how many Americans think of themselves. And there is perhaps no state where it’s stronger than the Republic of Texas, as locals call it.

But what’s often lost in the emphasis on the individual is the role of the herd. After all, the cowboy would have little purpose without that mass of living and breathing beings. And leadership of the herd is a peculiar mix of control and chaos. Sometimes you’re pointing the way and other times you’re just going with the flow.

So it’s appropriate that leadership for the modern business era was a theme for the first day at the American Society of Training and Development’s annual International Conference and Exhibition taking place here in Dallas, Texas from Sun, May 19-Wed, May 22. This year’s conference reportedly drew 9,000 attendees to attend more than 24o sessions and browse the trade show floor.

The Challenge of Leadership

With a flood of information to process, global teams to manage and rapidly changing business conditions and models, today’s leaders are in that same tenuous position as the cowboy. You’re in charge but it’s impossible to control it all.

For CLOs, the challenge in developing leaders who can thrive in that environment is a perplexing one. It’s impossible to know everything in today’s business environment, said author, consultant and former Coca-Cola and Morgan Stanley learning executive Rajeev Peshawaria. Yet many in L&D focus on teaching skills and competence regardless. Ultimately, it’s a fruitless leadership development approach.

His message that you can’t teach leadership is a difficult one for those who have made a career of teaching. Developing leadership is not about identifying competencies and poring over case studies, he said. It’s not a formula that can be broken down into its component parts and built up again. Real leadership is about identifying values and defining purpose.

“We’re trying to teach something that can’t be taught,” he said, and taking a formulaic approach to something that is an art. Leadership by case study is not leadership at all, it’s copying. It’s “followership” not leadership, he said.

Peshawaria said you only become a leader when you close your eyes and see clearly a better future. And leadership is the art of creating a better future by harnessing human energy. It’s more about persistence than about competency. It’s about clarity of purpose rather than mastery of knowledge. The challenge for CLOs in their task of developing leaders is how to help leaders define their values and find purpose.

That shift in education philosophy requires them to move away from teaching what to think and do to how to connect with emotion and what lies beneath all that knowledge and competency. No easy task.

The Wisdom of the Herd

As CLOs undertake this shift from teacher to enabler and coach they face another significant risk. They take the cowboy away from the herd, teach him to ride and lasso and then stick him back on the range.

Sure, leadership can be a solitary practice but it is only truly practiced and perfected with the herd. David Rock of the NeuroLeadership Institute made that important point in another session.We need to assess and build teams. It’s not about growing talent, it’s about growing the team.

In focusing on the leader, we neglect the collective intelligence of his or her team. The cowboy who makes it to the end of the drive but lost half the herd along the way is much less valuable than the one who makes it through with the herd intact.

Joseph Grenny, author of “Influencer: The Power to Change Anything,” made a similar point to me during an afternoon briefing about his work. Many leaders don’t realize that influence is a vital part of their job. In the rush to manage, get things done, launch products or contain costs, they forget their role is to focus on the critical behaviors that ultimately drive their organizational results. And those results only happen at scale through their people.

To build leaders’ influence you can’t have them practice in a vacuum. They need to practice it with their team and have the exact same dynamics in development as they do at work. Even better, have that leader be the teacher and make them responsible for teaching and practice of the behaviors they are trying to drive.

Cowboys and cattle: one without the other just wouldn’t be the same.

Tru Pettigrew, founder and CEO of Tru Access.

I’ve always admired — and envied — how intelligent this friend is. How can he know everything about everything? Last week, after he correctly answered the longest river in the Americas before I could think of a single river, I wondered how intelligent this friend really is. He reads a lot of Wikipedia pages, watches a lot of TV, movies and stalks Reddit for his daily dose of pop culture. His brain is full of information, but is it, and the brains of those like him, full of knowledge? I interviewed Tru Pettigrew, founder and CEO of Tru Access, a conduit between youth and corporations, to find out.

Millennials have access to a lot of information. Does that transfer to a lot of knowledge?

Pettigrew: There is more information readily available to this generation than any other generation in history. Having a lot of information, however, does not automatically equate to or transfer to having a lot of knowledge. But it is the first step.

Information and knowledge are very closely related, but the two should not be confused. Information is defined as the facts or data provided about something or someone. Knowledge is defined as the information and skills acquired through experience or education. Millennials have access to so much information through Google searches, news feeds and blog posts that it makes it easy to believe you are more knowledgeable than you really are. Information leads us to knowledge, so this generation has a rock-solid foundation to build on. They just need to put that information into practice and develop the skills and experience to allow those seeds of information to bear the fruit of knowledge.

How does this affect them at work?

Pettigrew: The effect of mistaking information for knowledge at the workplace could prove to be very frustrating to both the millennial and the employer. Typically when you have a lot of information on a subject or topic, you want to share it and show how much you know. This is great when done in proper context and with the purpose of helping the team meet goals and objectives. But when it’s done simply to show how much you know, and you make it all about you, it can rub people the wrong way, particularly those of an older generation. This could quickly earn you the label of selfish or egotistical.

The other challenge that occurs more commonly is what I call the shut-off valve. Older generation team members and senior leadership will often attempt to impart some knowledge and share some insight with their millennial colleagues, only to be greeted with the proverbial “I know” after the first few words. Once this occurs, the older generation colleagues write them off as a know-it-all and decide to keep their knowledge and wisdom to themselves. That millennial, without even knowing it, has now activated the shut-off valve to a reservoir of knowledge and wisdom that could have been consistently poured into them on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis.

What can their older leaders do about this?

Pettigrew: Generation X and the baby boomers play a major role in helping millennials transfer their vast amounts of information into valuable knowledge. Each generation has a responsibility to the generations that follow. Part of that responsibility is to help equip and prepare them for success.

Older generations need to set up systems in the workplace that breaks down cultural and generational gaps. It has to start there to enhance the communications channels and create stronger climates of inclusion at the workplace. Creating cultural and generational chemistry in the workplace needs to be a priority. The older generations are the more experienced and have to take the lead on establishing this chemistry and impacting change.

Organizations need to put systems in place that focus on millennial mentoring or coaching in the same way that there are executive coaching offerings. It will be important that senior leadership understands the importance of sharing why these systems and programs are important before jumping straight to the what and the how. Millennials are less inclined to commit to the what or the how without understanding the why. And they will be much more vested in knowing that the why is for their benefit and growth. The more that leadership helps millennials to win, the more the overall organization wins.

1. Leading Today Is Harder Than Ever: Change and uncertainty demand strong emotional connections, writes guest columnist Stacey Philpot.

2. Innovative Methods to Develop Leaders: Consider these five tips when putting together a leadership development program, writes Patrick Sweeney, president of Caliper Corp., a human capital management assessment and development firm.

3. The Four Pillars of Trust: Invest time to build trust and reap the rewards of strong relationships, writes CLO columnist Ken Blanchard.

4. Three Ways to Improve E-Learning: If you find e-learning to be among the most efficient methods of learning delivery, you’re not alone. But these technology trends can take it a step further, writes Holly Howell, director of professional learning services for UL Workplace Health and Safety.

5. Hiring Managers: College Grads Unprepared for Workforce: Hiring managers only plan to hire “one or two” college graduates in the near term because most of them are unprepared to enter the workforce, according to a new survey.

On Another Note …

The massive open online course, or MOOC, industry may have some colleges on edge, reports The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper sat down with Coursera CEO Daphne Koller to talk about the company’s prospects and place in the learning and higher education marketplace. Read the story here.

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Also, Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times outlines the top 10 worse management fads. And guess what’s on there: emotional intelligence, authentic leadership and Six Sigma, among others.

Michael D. Hais, left, and Morley Winograd.

from their government is similar to what they want from work. But how is this changing leadership? I interviewed Michael D. Hais and Morley Winograd, co-authors of the upcoming book Millennial Majority: How a New Coalition is Remaking American Politics, to find out.

Below are their thoughts, but I’d like to know if this resonates with what you’ve seen

from your Gen Y employees. Do your millennials have different priorities from your more experienced staff? Are they looking to start a little revolution of their own?

What are Gen Y’s values when it comes to politics?

Hais: Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, are in favor of an activist government that delivers more, rather than fewer services, by a 53 percent to 39 percent margin, the exact opposite of older generations. Raised to value consensus, win-win solutions that benefit each member of the group, millennials see governmental action as a way to increase social and economic equity and produce a fairer outcome. As a result they are the first generation in at least four to contain a greater number of self-identified liberals than conservatives. They are also overwhelmingly Democratic in their voting behavior, having cast 60 percent or more of their votes for President Obama in the last two elections.

They also bring a much more tolerant attitude toward previously divisive social issues. Their desire to include everyone in the group is the motivation behind their overwhelming support of gay marriage — 70 percent — and immigration reform — 78 percent — for example.

Millennials, like previous civic-oriented generations, are pragmatic idealists. They look for ways to change the world for the better, but at the local level where direct action can lead more quickly to progress rather than through large national bureaucracies. Unlike the baby boomers who currently dominate our country’s political debate, millennials aren’t interested in confrontation for confrontation’s sake, nor do they value words over deeds. The early exposure of millennials to social media and their facility with it, leads them to organize in large, flat organizations that are motivated by a single cause, rather than in more hierarchical structures that rely upon taking control of traditional institutions at the top.

How does this translate to what they want from the workplace and from leaders at work?

Winograd: Millennials are much more interested in working for organizations whose purpose is to change the world than earlier generations. The State Department, the CIA and the FBI all rank in the top 10 of their list of ideal employers. Even if their employer has a more mundane mission, about two-thirds of millennials believe it is important for a company that they work for to contribute to social and ethical causes.

Millennials, who were raised by parents who set rules, but engaged in loving discussions about the consequences of not following them, developed a friendly relationship with their children designed to last a lifetime. For the most part the parents of millennials achieved this goal; half of all millennials communicate with their mother every day. Given this upbringing, it is not surprising that millennials expect their bosses at work to behave like their parents did at home. Three-fourths of millennials want their supervisor to set specific short-term goals. By contrast, just over half of older generations prefer this management style. Sixty-nine percent of millennials want their supervisor to provide them with hands-on guidance and direction. Only about 40 percent of older generations are looking for this kind of close supervision. And millennials’ desire for constant feedback and praise is infamous among supervisors from older generations who weren’t raised on a steady diet of “nice job” comments from their adoring parents.

Social media also makes millennials skeptical of authority and expertise. Not having absorbed information from centralized media sources that dictated what people should watch, listen to or read, millennials are more apt to look to the group for answers than to authority figures. These beliefs completely overturn the existing cultures and decision-making processes of most organizations. Those expecting loyalty from millennials will have to earn it from the power of their vision and values, and not by demanding it as the price for the privilege of working under their leadership. Transparency and information sharing will have to become the hallmark of management strategies designed to gain commitment from the most connected generation in American history.

How does all of this shape the leaders they are becoming and will be in the future when they’re leading companies?

Winograd: We have already seen some early examples of millennial leadership, but whether or not these represent the ultimate leadership style of all the millennials when they are in their 30s, 50s or even older and given the authority to run things remains to be seen.

Mark Zuckerberg, the most successful millennial CEO, has changed his leadership style at Facebook as both he and his company have matured. From the hard work, hard partying early days that seemed to echo the ethos of older Generation X CEOs in Silicon Valley, he has tried to put a more socially friendly face on Facebook’s public persona as well as his own. This past year his huge donation to Newark, New Jersey’s public schools was followed by Facebook’s effort to take the lead in creating a corporate coalition in favor of immigration reform. All of this has been done while keeping Facebook’s original millennial appeal of making sharing easy.

Millennials share a commitment to preserving the environment and dealing with the challenge of climate change with older generations, but they are going about achieving this goal using different leadership strategies. Some millennials have used social media to organize fellow members of their generation to tackle specific, local problems. Groups, such as the Harry Potter Alliance and its tens of thousands of members of Dumbledore’s volunteer army or volunteer Planeteers who are following the goals of their childhood TV hero, Captain Planet to save the world, rarely get on policy makers’ radar screens in Washington.

These efforts, and many others like them, suggest that in the millennial era leadership will be exercised by those who are best at bringing about consensus. This will shift the skills needed to be a successful leader in the future. Instead of looking for brilliant soloists who can pronounce grand visions with rhetorical brilliance in order to inspire loyalty, organizations will need to find team players who use quiet diplomacy and persuasive logic to unite the group in a commitment to a common cause. Such leaders will also have to be willing to let those at the edge of the organization’s activities, who are most closely connected to customers and stakeholders, have more power in decision-making than those operating from a more distant center.

1. Is the Future of Learning Bite-Sized?: These three trends are driving big changes in the industry and make a strong case for bite-sized learning, writes Sebastian Bailey, president and co-founder of Mind Gym, a learning and development firm.

2. Innovative Methods to Develop Leaders: Consider these five tips when putting together a leadership development program, writes Patrick Sweeney, president of Caliper Corp., a human capital management assessment and development firm.

3. HP Is Playing Learning Games: To develop its large, global workforce, HP implemented game-based training to capture employees’ attention. Chanin Ballance, CEO of mobile and learning game service company viaLearning, has more.

4. What Do Teleworkers Need as Learners?: Learning leaders should play a strategic role in creating the future workplace, writes CLO columnist Elliott Masie.

5. Agile Leaders: Born or Bred?: Leaders who can thrive in any business environment share one important trait: agility. CLO editor Deanna Hartley has the story.

On Another Note …

Does a boss have to be well liked to lead effectively?

Not necessarily, but the odds aren’t great, according to this article from Harvard Business Review. “In a study of 51,836 leaders, we found just 27 who were rated at the bottom quartile in terms of likability but in the top quartile in terms of overall leadership effectiveness — that’s approximately one out of 2,000,” write Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman of leadership development consultancy Zenger/Folkman.

Don’t worry if you fall into the “unlikable” category, however. The article maps out a few ways leaders can become more liked.

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Also, The Atlantic maps out just how little math Americans actually use at work.

Maybe the snotty 17-year-old high school student in all of us complaining to our math teacher that we would never need it was right.

A few weeks ago we discussed how entrepreneurs like Kalin are limited in numbers, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I interviewed millennial entrepreneur Kyle Johnson, CEO and founder of Bixy. Johnson built AudioAnywhere — a Web-based music provider like Spotify — and realized along the way that he would need a game-changing revenue model to survive in the industry. He knew consumers prefer free, ad-supported media and that few are willing to pay for monthly subscriptions. But when ads weren’t making enough, Johnson launched Bixy with the goal to provide publishers of music, video, news and apps with five times more revenue per ad. Johnson says the solution is simple: Put consumers in charge of their advertising experience and give them rewards for brands they love.

Johnson sees himself as a problem solver and believes other millennials like himself can transform companies with innovative solutions through both intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship. Johnson dissected why millennials are drawn to starting their own businesses, what skills they need and how learning leaders can help.

What about entrepreneurship interests Gen Y?

I think when a lot of Gen Y’s see problems, we want to fix them. These problems may be small or really big, but entrepreneurship is all about problem solving. I think Gen Y gravitates toward entrepreneurship because we’re confident in our abilities to create new and useful products and because we understand technology pretty well. As we’ve grown up, we’ve used many different kinds of technologies and we’re used to perpetual change. Many of us are constantly thinking about how to make things more useful or user-friendly. Plus, we recognize that if our product is really good, millions of people could use our product to make their lives and our own better.

What sort of skills does a young entrepreneur need?

All entrepreneurs need to be relentless problem solvers because building a company is a journey. There are many unforeseen obstacles that pop up along the way and you have to have the fortitude to get over or around these problems.

You also need to be incredibly passionate about the problem you’re trying to solve. Due to the distractions, obstacles and pain along the way, you’ll probably give up before you reach the finish line if you aren’t completely obsessed with building your business. This obsession is especially necessary for first-time entrepreneurs since first-timers naturally make more mistakes.

How can young entrepreneurs avoid failure?

Mistakes are inevitable. In fact, making mistakes is a necessary part of the learning process and ultimately leads to shareholder value. The entrepreneur’s job is to try to figure out how to spend the minimum amount of money to learn from these mistakes. The expensive mistakes lead to failure.

The hard reality is that many things can kill your company along the way. So, there’s no easy advice that can prevent failure. But I have a few insights:

• Figure out who your customers will be and don’t build anything until you’ve talked with dozens of potential customers. If they’re your friends, they don’t count.
• Realize that you’re on a journey that will probably take a long time and a lot of money.
• Be obsessed with your business or don’t start it, but don’t let your business kill relationships with your friends and family. You’re much better off if your key supporters understand how hard your entrepreneurial journey is going to be.
• Constantly re-evaluate your plan, but don’t let fear keep you from implementing your plan. This takes a lot of guts and you have to keep pushing. Don’t quit.

What advice do you have for those who aren’t entrepreneurs but want to be leaders in their organizations?

Gen Y’s should be looking for opportunities to lead teams or special projects. If you want to be a leader, you need to be a self-starter. Don’t wait for things to come to you; ask for opportunities to help or identify specific ways you can help.

I think high-performing Gen Y’s like leadership opportunities and recognition. Plus, the most engaged Gen Y’s want to believe in the mission of the company. If they believe in the company and feel like they’re valued, they’ll likely be great, loyal employees and they’ll grow more quickly into valuable employees.

1. What Is the Best Job in 2013?: Newspaper reporter, lumberjack and military personnel top the list as this year’s worst jobs, according to an annual report.

2. Learning Trends: A Conversation With Elliott Masie: The learning industry veteran and CEO of The Masie Center takes on mobile learning, telework and why the LMS should be more like Amazon in this sit-down interview with CLO editor Frank Kalman.

3. Is the Future of Learning Bite-Sized?: These three trends are driving big changes in the industry and make a strong case for bite-sized learning, writes Sebastian Bailey,  president and co-founder of Mind Gym, a learning and development firm.

4. Tips to Build the Workforce of the Future: A focus on outcomes, not just delivery methods, and greater emphasis on lifetime learning, instead of short bursts of training, can help develop tomorrow’s workers. Peter Cheese, CEO at the CIPD, a professional association for human resource management professionals, has more.

5. Informal Learning’s Many Shades of Gray: A loose definition has made it difficult to create and justify an incredibly powerful discipline, writes CLO columnist Bob Mosher.

On Another Note …

The MOOC trend expands: As the New York Times reports, a growing number of colleges and universities are tapping free online courses to compensate for non-credit-bearing courses many students take on campuses before they can begin work toward their degree.

“Nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States arrive on campus needing remedial work before they can begin regular credit-bearing classes,” the Times reports. “That early detour can be costly, leading many to drop out, often in heavy debt and with diminished prospects of finding a job.

“Meanwhile, shrinking state budgets have taken a heavy toll at public institutions, reducing the number of seats available in classes students must take to graduate. In California alone, higher education cuts have left hundreds of thousands of college students without access to classes they need.”

As a result, the Times article says colleges are beginning “to experiment with adding the new ‘massive open online courses,’ created to deliver elite college instruction to anyone with an Internet connection, to their offerings.”

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Also, how do you prevent rejection at work? The Harvard Business Review explores.

On one hand, it makes sense. Unlike other generations, many millennials have not been able to break into the mainstream workforce at the level of previous generations. A sizable number of people in their mid- to late 20s have been unable to land a full-time job. As Elwood Watson, a professor of history, African-American studies and gender studies at East Tennessee State University, said, members of Gen Y have spent the majority of the first full decade of adulthood unable to work at a job that provides health care and other benefits that have been vital ingredients designed to assist millions of Americans in an effort to have a stable and viable life.

On the other hand, although my go-to answer to “How are you?” is “OK, a little stressed …” and I understood that millenials are up against tough economic challenges that could exacerbate their negative emotions, I was skeptical. To discuss whether millennials really are more stressed than their elders and what learning leaders can do to ease some of the anxiety, I interviewed Katherine C. Nordal, executive director for professional practice at the American Psychological Association (APA).

Let’s talk generations and stress. Tell me more about some of your recent findings.

Our latest Stress in America survey focused on an emerging challenge in health care: the disconnect between what people say they want in support of their efforts to live well and the actual support they feel they are getting from their health care providers. Survey results showed that people want more information and guidance from their providers to manage their stress and change unhealthy habits.

We also found that millennials — age 18 to 33 — in particular seem to have trouble managing their stress and getting health care that meets their needs. On average, this generation gives its health care lower marks than others across the country. Nearly one half of millennials do not believe or are not sure that they are doing enough to manage their stress, and few say they get stress or behavioral management support from their health care provider.

At such a young age, with little life experience, is Gen Y really the most stressed?

The higher stress levels that younger Americans face makes sense when you look at the experiences of young people today. Research about social trends shows that one in four young people self-identify as being low to lower middle class. Many have faced economic hardships, such as having trouble paying rent or medical bills, losing their jobs and having to cut back spending in the past year. And, many younger Americans are facing high unemployment in the continued economic recession. All of these pressures have the potential to shape their outlooks on life and their resilience, making it that much more important that we get them the support they need to live well now.

What does all of this mean for the workforce?

Work is a major stressor for many Americans. In fact, 65 percent of working Americans said that work was a significant source of stress. This has implications for the health of the workforce as well as for their performance on the job. Stress at work is a serious and pervasive issue and employers need to take steps to address this problem.

What can leaders do to help ease this stress from employees?

Employers need to understand the sources of work stress. APA’s Center for Organizational Excellence recently took a closer look at what those causes are and found that low pay, lack of opportunity for growth and advancement, too heavy a workload, long hours and unclear expectations rank highly. Employers need to address these issues, making sure that pay and benefits are adequate, ensuring there are opportunities for growth and development and making sure that employees have the resources they need to do their jobs. By offering a robust mental health benefit, EAP services and other wellness programming, employers can help people be at their best on and off the job.

Is this something they can teach?

Offering stress management training and resources can help employees develop skills to better manage stress, but the organization also needs to address the sources of stress in the workplace and not expect employees to cope with an environment that is unnecessarily stressful. This is a shared responsibility.

How is all of this going to change as Gen Y grows up and an even younger generation enters the workforce?

While sources of stress can vary by generation, work stress is universal. Over the years that we have been doing the Stress in America survey, stress due to work has consistently been cited within the top three stressors for all age groups.

However, for millennials, some of the stress that they are feeling right now may be a stage of life issue. Typically people become more resilient as they get older and are better able to cope with the demands of their life, so we often see lower levels of stress in older adults. While young people are dealing with multiple and demanding pressures, it is important for them to learn strategies for managing their stress that will enable them to develop resilience and better cope.

1. What Is the Best Job in 2013?: Newspaper reporter, lumberjack and military personnel top the list as this year’s worst jobs, according to an annual report. What jobs are the best?

2. How to Create an Imagination Station: These days, when anyone bangs the drum “Be innovative!” it sounds like a parent telling us to clean our room, writes CLO columnist Brandon Hall.

3. How to Select Learning That Fits Your Business: With so many resources available, it can be hard for companies to select the programs that will serve them best. Here are the pros and cons of the most common options. Robert Hosking, executive director of OfficeTeam, a staffing organization, has more.

4. Study Aims to Confirm and Dispel Myths About Millennials: The clearest finding: Millennials, as do other generations, want more work-life flexibility — and they are willing to pay for it.

5. Tips to Build the Workforce of the Future: A focus on outcomes, not just delivery methods, and greater emphasis on lifetime learning, instead of short bursts of training, can help develop tomorrow’s workers. Peter Cheese, CEO at the CIPD, a professional association for human resource management professionals, has the story.

On Another Note …

Want to create the best workplace on earth? No problem. Harvard Business Review has everything you need to know in this May 2013 issue feature story. Tip No. 1: Let employees be themselves.

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To the excitement of human resources professionals across the globe, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer finally broke her silence on her ban on working from home at the technology company.

According to Fortune, Mayer, speaking at an HR conference, decided to address the elephant in the room — quite literally, with a giant, purple elephant appearing on the screen beside her.

Mayer said Yahoo’s move to end work from home was “wrongly perceived as industry narrative,” and that “it’s not what’s right for Yahoo right now.”

The remarks come months after proponents of telework lambasted Mayer for ending an arrangement largely common in the tech industry. The move was first reported when a internal memo from Yahoo’s HR head announcing the shift was leaked.

According to Fortune, the policy shift affects roughly 200 of Yahoo’s 12,000 employees.

While I was sheltered from criticism and failure as a child, ironically, one of the most important things in the workplace is constant, immediate feedback. It doesn’t matter if it’s positive or negative; progress reports are important. The challenge when providing feedback to those of my generation, millennials, is learning how to give it to a group that is used to gratuitous praise. I interviewed Jeremy Kingsley, author of Inspired People Produce Results, to find out how leaders can best offer Gen Y feedback and why it’s so important to this generation.

How is Gen Y different from other generations?
Gen Y is a group that is creative, optimistic, relational and has a passion to change things for the better. But they also have grown up in a time where they received immediate rewards, where every child on the soccer team got a trophy not for accomplishment, but for just participating. This is making the workplace an interesting environment. Leaders need to learn what type of feedback they need.

What types of feedback are they looking for?

Leaders should:

Offer constructive criticism. This will be hard; they are not used to hearing anything negative, but it will help them mature and excel. Leaders should be kind but firm when delivering these comments and offer to explain further if needed.

Offer positive feedback. Regardless of age, every employee needs positive feedback. Every leader should be looking for people doing things right. Encouragement is very important to people. Keep your eyes open to catch people doing a good job and then verbally let them know. You can also send an email saying, “Great job.” It is important in the development of Gen Y to teach the difference between accomplishment and participation.

Offer constant feedback. Gen Y lives in the fast-paced world of texting, Twitter and Facebook where they can post a message and receive communication back within minutes or even seconds. Leaders should know that constant feedback is important. If they do not hear from you for a period of time, they may disengage, lose passion and even begin looking for other jobs. Constant communication helps develop trust with Gen Y.
These three things give leaders a great opportunity to help Gen Y grow and mature so they can be at their best.

How is this different from what we have seen in the past?
Feedback has always been valuable, but I think previous generations did not look for feedback as much. They assumed if they were hired to do a job, the bosses believed they had the knowledge and skill to do it. Being micro-managed often felt insulting.

Also, remember when it was so hard to even find employment, people were so thankful to just have a job. My parents used to say “show up on time, work hard, get along with others and you will have the security of a consistent paycheck.”

What sort of recognition does Gen Y want as a result of positive feedback?
It takes time to teach a person the difference between recognition and reward. Doing good work once should be recognized but not necessarily rewarded. Doing good work consistently over a period of time should be rewarded. Gen Y’s need to know that they are valued and appreciated. If they do not, they will most likely move on to another job.

Leaders should know that practical recognition and rewards are very valuable — like a verbal thank you, a gift card, an extra day off or a little party with other co-workers. Make sure they know you see and appreciate them.

Do you think Gen Y’s consider development opportunities a worthy reward?
It is hard to know how each Gen Y individual feels about growth opportunities. One great thing I have been able to see through my speaking and writing is the large number of young adults who jump into classes, books and training because they have such a passion for professional development. But I have also seen a number of people who do not really care about learning, advancing, but are really just looking for a financial reward.

I train leaders to be very cautious and discerning in the hiring process with Gen Y. It’s not always about the stereotype of an age group, but it is always about finding someone with certain skills, self-discipline, a particular personality type and a passion for the job being offered.

1. How to Build a Culture of Communication: The key to motivating people and building a strong culture of communication is trust. Mary Carrido, founder and chairman of MLC & Associates, a management consulting firm, and Prashant Kumar, its president and CEO, have more.

2. How Do People Learn Best?: Use real-life scenarios to turn learning into a more powerful engine. When leaders make all the decisions, those decisions aren’t always the best, writes Dennis Bakke.

3. Yum Brands’ Taste for Learning Technology | Video: Rob Lauber, vice president of Yum University, discusses the balance between traditional and emerging forms of learning at the fast-food giant.

4. There’s No Business Like the Learning Business: Sony Pictures’ Martin Lowery | Profile: Lowery has brought traditional and experiential development initiatives to bear in a creative industry that is largely unfamiliar with many of the players in learning. Katie Kuehner-Hebert, a freelance journalist for CLO, has the story.

5. Why Learning Measurement Matters: Innovation leads to improvement only when it’s measured. Without metrics, it is not clear that change is going in the right direction, writes CLO columnist Michael E. Echols.

On Another Note …

The CEOs of Yahoo and Best Buy might want to look away, but, according to this blog post from The Wall Street Journal’s “At Work” reporters, telecommuting boosts firms’ revenue growth.

That’s right: a new analysis by research firm IDC found that “businesses that allowed employees to work remotely at least three times a month were more likely to log revenue growth of at least 10 percent within the last 12 months, compared with firms without such policies.”

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What’s the most creative way to quit a job? Have you ever walked into your boss’s office screaming and yelling? Did you write a short, handwritten note? How about an email?

Or you can do what this guy did — bake a cake … with a resignation letter written in frosting.

New York Magazine has the story here.

I interviewed Dan Epstein, CEO of business consultancy ReSource Pro, who has a staff composed of 90 percent millennials, to find out how his team has built a community for Gen Y at work and how it’s keeping employees engaged. His 1,300 employees have an average age of 26. While it might sound like a nightmare to some, Epstein has found out what millennials want and how it can make employees and the business successful.

What role do millennials play in your organization?

ReSource Pro was founded in 2003 by a late Gen Y entrepreneur in his mid-20s who found that young, smart university graduates processed work well for small U.S. insurance agencies. After piloting the concept for a year or two, the tiny company decided to get serious. With sales now happening in the U.S., this young core team continued to build a culture that appealed to themselves as they continued to hire graduates, promote from within and take on the challenges of growth that that were addressed through collaboration and teamwork.

Our growth rate has been rapid. We have been among the Inc. 500/5000 fastest growing private companies four years in a row and this has meant that we have had to build a system for recruiting, on-boarding, training and retaining lots of young talent. We have built relationships with local universities and focused on building an organization and culture that appealed to young people. We typically hire between 30 and 50 employees per month from a monthly pool of around 1,000 candidates.

Becoming more sophisticated by 2010 with 800-plus employees, the company needed to understand its employment value proposition in order to target attraction efforts. What it found through data gathering was that ReSource Pro still appealed to university graduates. With career development opportunities, a relaxed and fun environment with tons of employee-driven community activities, young employees find ways to socialize and balance out work/life. Today, we have more than 1,300 employees with an average age of 26.

What have you found this young workforce wants from your company?

With companies shrinking across many sectors over the past five years, jobs have changed and career paths have in many cases shortened. We find our millennials don’t like to wait too long to get that promotion or development opportunity, yet they need more experience and time in the job to be effective at the next level. We have invested considerably in continuing education and development programs, building our own internal corporate university. Many programs are voluntary and some are required for promotion. These courses are often oversubscribed. We have also increased frequency of promotions while making the vertical jumps and additional responsibilities smaller and more incremental.

How about their values?

Young people like meaningful work, so we foster employee-driven efforts. We think it is important that our company is a place where people feel they can make a difference and have the time to do so. We make it possible for them to find different ways of connecting with others by supporting a common cause or issue that people care about.

“Commitment to community” is one of ReSource Pro’s five core values. We acknowledge that we are a part of three communities: our clients, our workplace and where we live.

What are you doing to cater to Gen Y’s need for community?

Our COC (Community Outreach Committee) is a self-run committee that has been in existence for about three years. Our commitment to our community is demonstrated visibly through the extensive number of employees participating. In total, 835 colleagues contributed more than 1,500 hours to 20 COC events in 2012. Each activity calls for volunteers, which are often oversubscribed. Activities include: the pantomime group that supports children causes, annual Christmas market, clean the Earth events, caring for the elderly, and caring for children with autism.

This committee produced a 2013 calendar with photographs that highlighted employee activities over the past year and we share this with clients. Last year, we opened a forum to generate ideas in the workplace to be more environmentally friendly, and we got lots of responses and active involvement.

How these values changing your organization?

We started out as a people company and still are. We focus on our culture and check in often both with our employees and also the new graduates that we seek to attract. The question is how we do keep a high level of morale, energy and involvement as we continue to grow as a business?

In order to retain our young employees and maintain a high level of engagement, we must both reflect their values and channel their expectations. We must balance the needs of our business and the work that needs to be done with millennials’ desire for professional mobility. We must provide the tools for advancement and the time and space to contribute. To check that we are on target, we monitor closely our acceptance rate for new employees, our turnover and the reasons people give for leaving. We also run biannual employee engagement surveys, build a committee of employees to digest the results and make recommendations to the company on changes or new initiatives. As our millennials move into management positions, we provide management training that teaches skills like delegation, performance management, giving feedback, time management, leadership, etc. As we evolve, we seek to do so in a balanced way, matching the values of our employees with the values and needs of our business.

1. How Do People Learn Best?: Use real-life scenarios to turn learning into a more powerful engine. When leaders make all the decisions, those decisions aren’t always the best. Dennis Bakke has the answer.

2. Virtual (Learning) Reality: In-person learning should remain a significant part of any development program, but virtual learning is slowly becoming the new normal, writes Tom Masotto, vice president of product management for ON24, a virtual communication provider.

3. How to Build a Culture of Communication: The key to motivating people and building a strong culture of communication is trust, writes Mary Carrido, founder and chairman of MLC & Associates, a management consulting firm, and Prashant Kumar, the firm’s president and CEO.

4. Study: Emotional Intelligence Improves Culture, Bottom Line: A new study by emotional intelligence network Six Seconds found that leaders with stronger emotional acumen create higher performance.

5. What Is Social Learning Anyway?: Social learning has evolved from buzzword to business imperative, but there is no industry-wide definition; it means different things to different companies. CLO editor Deanna Hartley has more in this issue’s special report.

On Another Note …

Is being a diva actually a good thing? And can it help you advance your career and status in the organization? In some instances, the answer is yes, according to this report from The Wall Street Journal this week.

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Also, psychometric tests — better known as assessments in HR circles — have proliferated widely throughout organizations. They’re being used for nearly everything, it seems, when it comes to learning and dealing with talent. But are they really effective? The Economist takes a deeper look.

First things first, how does Gen Y’s approach to work differ from generations before it?

Generation Y can have a particularly energetic and enthusiastic approach to work, though they need careful guidance to make the transition from university work to the challenges of being part of a workplace team. They are also very aware of their personal brand, and may intend to move between organizations to build up a portfolio career, rather than remaining with one employer throughout their working life.

How about millennials’ approach to working relationships?

Cedar’s recent research into team working revealed significant generational differences. While 42 percent of U.K. employees aged 16-24 prefer working alone to working as part of a team, the average across all age groups stands somewhat lower, at 37 percent. Gen Y have no problem collaborating with colleagues, but tend to do so informally. If they are to work successfully in established hierarchical teams, Gen Y need to see a clear structure and believe their hard work will be rewarded.

How has social media influenced this?

Being so-called digital natives means Gen Y employees can be particularly adept at multitasking and balancing ongoing work with the demands of a busy inbox. Our research showed that younger workers are comfortable with being constantly online while at work: just 21 percent said that time was wasted by long email chains with lots of people copied in, compared with 31 percent of older workers.

Having grown up with the constant interaction and relative informality of the Internet and social media, Gen Y employees are highly skilled at juggling work with socializing. Their personal and professional networks overlap a great deal, and they’re likely to treat drinks after work as an opportunity for professional networking as much as a social occasion.

What does Gen Y want from teamwork?

Gen Y workers are more likely than their older colleagues to perform at below their potential if they feel that the team environment at work is poor: they want to feel personally, as well as professionally, at home in their teams and working environments.

It’s important for managers and employers to recognize that socializing in the workplace is not necessarily unproductive for Gen Y. They will work late and put in the effort when it’s needed, but expect to be able to spend time chatting in the office, too.

Managers can help by giving younger staff meaningful tasks that build up responsibility and demonstrate how hard work will bring exciting new opportunities. Giving Gen Y the chance to shadow senior staff will help them benefit from hands-on learning with supervision and support. Pairing Gen Y with mentors within the organization also gives them an opportunity to think about career development by talking with their role model about how they got to their current position.

When working in multigenerational teams, what can older generations learn from Gen Y?

Gen Y has little sympathy for the 9-5 job, and older workers could benefit greatly from adopting a similarly flexible approach to working hours. When work can be done out of the office and out of traditional office hours, employees of all ages can spend more time with their friends or children, or pursue personal projects.

Gen Y can also be a step ahead in their career planning. No longer certain of a job for life, they’re aware that they need to focus on their personal development and career as a whole, not just the job they’re currently in. This is something that everyone, at every stage of their career, can benefit from considering.

Younger workers are also enthusiastic, determined and resilient. They’ve entered a tough jobs market and are prepared to focus on their aims, work hard and do what’s necessary to put themselves ahead of the competition. While older workers may be happy to let their careers take a back seat in favor of family or other priorities, it’s always important to keep one eye on personal development and career planning.

1. Coach Employees to Respond to Emotion: Research reveals that emotion drives customer satisfaction. Here’s how to coach employees to recognize and respond to customers’ emotional cues. Sharon Daniels, CEO of workforce development firm AchieveGlobal, has more.

2. Chief Learning Officer Names Best Companies for Workforce Development: AT&T tops the list of companies recognized as the 2013 LearningElite at a gala dinner at the Spring Chief Learning Officer Symposium in Austin, Texas.

3. What Do Next-Generation Leaders Look Like?: While leaders see potential in the young people entering the workforce today, they’re not using or developing this talent early enough, write Ellen Van Velsor, a senior fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership, and Joel Wright, a director of early leadership development in research and innovation at the firm.

4. Virtual (Learning) Reality: In-person learning should remain a significant part of any development program, but virtual learning is slowly becoming the new normal, writes Tom Masotto, vice president of product management for ON24, a virtual communication provider.

5. Informal Learning: Any Way You Want It, Any Time You Need it: Informal learning has answers to some of the most pressing educational challenges organizations face, writes CLO Editor in Chief Norm Kamikow.

On Another Note …

A school in Pittsburgh is trying to upend the way people attend college, turning coffee shops into classrooms and encouraging students to reside and study in area apartment buildings.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week how The Saxifrage School, a two-year-old experiment, “is seeking to upend the traditional notion that college students need a sequestered, ivy-covered campus — and will endure the price tag that comes with it.”

Leading the charge at Saxifrage, the Journal reports, is Tim Cook, who started the school mostly “out of frustration over the lack of practical skills with which he left school” in 2007.

“He is gambling that for a nominal tuition — $395 a class — they will use the public library, the neighborhood YMCA and existing apartment buildings to study, play and live in,” according to the Journal report.

Read the entire article here.

Also, The Atlantic with “The Definitive Guide to Eating Lunch at Your Desk.”

1. The Power in Standing While Working, Learning: Teach and encourage workers to stand when working. Stand up for something that makes people healthier at little cost, writes CLO columnist Jay Cross.

2. Chief Learning Officer Names Best Companies for Workforce Development: AT&T tops the list of companies recognized as the 2013 LearningElite at a gala dinner at the Spring Chief Learning Officer Symposium in Austin, Texas.

3. The Educational Mismatch: There’s a missing link between education and employers’ needs, writes CLO columnist Josh Bersin.

4. Coach Employees to Respond to Emotion: Research reveals that emotion drives customer satisfaction. Here’s how to coach employees to recognize and respond to customers’ emotional cues, writes Sharon Daniels, CEO of AchieveGlobal, a workforce development firm.

5. Learning Guaranteed: Aflac’s Greg Miller | This issue’s profile: Aflac Vice President and Chief Learning Officer Greg Miller hopes to instill a culture of experiential development at the insurance company.

On Another Note …

For every bit of criticism a manager gives an employee, how much praise should he or she bestow?

According to this article from Harvard Business Review (HBR), “the average ratio for the highest-performing teams was 5.6 (that is, nearly six positive comments for every negative one). The medium-performance teams averaged 1.9 (almost twice as many positive comments than negative ones.) But the average for the low-performing teams, at 0.36 to 1, was almost three negative comments for every positive one.”

Read the entire story here.

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The Atlantic dives into why anthropology – once the college major with a presumed corporate path to nowhere – may now be one of the most sought-after specialty areas for corporations. The niche where the subject area may be paying off the most is market research.

Read the entire piece here.

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Finally, The Wall Street Journal reports on a growing trend among a handful of large corporations: learning from start-ups.

According to the report, a growing contingent of companies — PepsiCo and Mondelez International Inc., to name a few — are sending employees on visits to start-ups to observe and see what entrepreneurial skills and tactics these small companies use that may apply to the larger, corporate environment.

Start-up tactics, the article points out, don’t always translate to the big time.

Read the entire story here.

Management gurus have long sung the praises of giving employees free time to fiddle with ideas they initiate, and that might be just what Gen Y needs to stay engaged and boost innovation for your company. But this isn’t an easy thing to implement — who has the time? I interviewed Tim Elmore, founder and president of Growing Leaders, a nonprofit dedicated to youth leadership development, to find out how much free time millennials should have and how learning leaders can monitor this sort of creativity to make sure it’s worth their while.

How can leaders better motivate millennial employees?

Millennials are inundated with information and have been for most of their lives. Thanks to technology, when they’ve become bored with a task, something new has instantly come along to keep their attention piqued. They’ve gotten used to it. So it’s no wonder that as they have entered the workplace, engagement and motivation have become critical issues. Let me share a strategy for sparking creativity with young team members to keep them interested, inspired and help them continue to put forth their best effort.

On a regular basis, allow team members to work on whatever they want. Taking a page from progressive organizations like 3M and Google, which give their employees time every week to work on anything they choose, do the same for your youngest team members. With regular guidance and constructive feedback, their innovation will produce results. And, even from the lowest spot on the totem pole, they will feel like their ideas matter.

If you can engage the creative spirit of a young team member, you get their heart along the way and they will become both loyal and inspired.

But how can you ensure millennials are using that free time wisely?

First, I find that when you extend a level of trust to your employees, they usually rise to the occasion. Give them the benefit of doubt, but keep an eye on them in the beginning. With time you will know how much freedom you can extend or how much you need to step in and manage.

Second, give a reasonable start and stop for free projects to keep young employees on task and accountable. As humans, we tend to take all of the time allotted to complete a project, so make it a tighter, rather than loose, deadline to keep them from wasting time.

Third, ask them to show you outcomes. Some companies call this a “Fed Ex” day. They must “deliver” something by the next day, after the day of creativity is finished. The proof will be in the pudding.

Should you manage employees during that time?

Yes, but from a distance. Millennials desire feedback and will likely feel overwhelmed or disengaged if you set them free completely. Check in occasionally, maybe once in the morning and once in the afternoon, to see if they need anything. Make it clear that your door is open and you are happy to share input, but that this is their project, their commitment and their responsibility to follow through on.

This balance of responsibility and autonomy is key in helping them mature their soft skills and skills needed to succeed.

If you don’t have a corporate culture that fosters this sort of flexibility, how can you work toward it?

It’s easy to shy away or make excuses as to why allowing employees a day of autonomy will be too disruptive to your organization, as change is rarely easy to implement and follow through on. But, if you’re truly interested in increasing your engagement level, especially with millennials in the office, these sorts of initiatives are key.

If allowing employees total freedom one whole day a week is too much at this point, that’s OK. Start with a trial period once every month or two and see how it goes. Another idea, you can spread out the eight hours over the span of a week or month. After a few trial turns, you and other organizational leaders will likely feel comfortable implementing the free-time policy more regularly.

Can you point to companies that are doing this well?

We learned about this idea from companies like Google and 3M several years ago, and since, both have found much success.

Google’s 20 percent program: Google allows its employees to use up to 20 percent of their week to pursue special projects, adding up to one full day a week. According to one report, many of these pet projects have led to real Google products in the hands of customers as well policies that have improved Google as an organization.

3M’s 15 percent program: 3M introduced the program in 1948, and as a result of employees’ freedom to innovate, the Post-It was invented. By allowing employees time to try and fail with projects, creativity and passion have soared.

You want to outline a democratic system that empowers all of us to work proactively, creatively and collectively — a robust system that reflected the progressive values of our generation and is effective in moving our country forward. Why is this sort of system so important to millennials?

If we were to point to one thing that has defined the millennial experience, it’s rapid change — from technology to geopolitics to social progress. Government By and For Millennial America, the Roosevelt Institute and Campus Network’s initiative that crowdsourced the values and ideas of young people on how to build a 21^st century government, reflects this in the priorities they identified. To adjust for this pace of change, our institutions and systems have to be flexible, effective and accountable. In our outreach, we found that while millennials believe scaled institutions, such as government, are necessary to solve our collective challenges, they’re deeply skeptical that those institutions are set up to be effective in doing so. When Congress has a lower approval rating than lice, who can blame them?

Some of the characteristics that we’ve come to associate with our generation in the way they think about building a better system include a distinct desire for ownership and meaningful participation, a respect for collaboration, creativity and adaptability. I think these values are often misconstrued by older generations as entitlement, impatience and over-self-confidence, when in fact they represent an informed and educated generation that’s been enabled to develop a keen sense of their own agency and opportunities — whether political or economical — at an early age. It’s this grounding and experience that creates a desire among our generation to not acquiesce to the status quo in the pursuit of progress.

Positive change can be a powerful force for our communities and society, if we can keep up. Young people have been at the forefront of it throughout history, from major social movements to workplace culture. There is immense potential for government to harness, channel and empower this uniquely millennial bent towards progress to remain innovative and relevant, whether in how it uses data to map low-income neighborhoods to improve the delivery of critical services, or in building fast-acting consensus in countering climate change.

Is this different from past systems?

Even if we were to ignore the cultural shifts, technology by itself would account for much of what’s different in today’s workplace for millennials, in comparison to previous generations. It’s opened the doors to remote engagement and connects individuals at an unprecedented rate — probably one of the drivers of why millennials aren’t interested in waiting for results. On the cultural side, I think our generation’s values are forcing dramatic shifts in the ways that workplaces function, impacting the clothes we wear and the way we relate to our bosses.

For example, one of the most challenging differences on systems preferences is grounded in how we understand authority — technology and access to information has flattened how we equate knowledge with expertise, and paired with the sense of agency young people bring to their jobs, it lends itself to a clash with a more ‘pay your dues’ model more familiar in traditional institutions. A lot of the research emerging on best practices in the workplace applauds many of the new practices millennials are bringing to their offices, from a flexible work schedule to the empowerment of all employees to contribute substantively, regardless of title.

You’ve said the millennial generation refuses to give up on America’s democratic experience of government by and for the people. How does this translate to what this generation wants from work and their professional lives?

It goes back to the emphasis on ownership, agency and voice. If we think about it in a broader context, we’re being overwhelmed by a constant information flow in our media, social lives and homes. In response, I think members of our generation are looking to find their own sense of purpose. As a result, they deeply invested in ensuring that they are engaged and their voice is heard in a way that demonstrates and respects the value add of every member of an organization. In short, they’re looking for purpose.

What do you think millennials want from their leaders?

There is a lot of diversity there based on individual and context; however, I think there is a pervasive desire among millennials for transparency, connection and meaningful engagement. I also wouldn’t underestimate how today’s economy has shaped how we view ourselves in relation to authority. Unemployment is more than 13 percent for our age bracket, and it goes dramatically up when you include the underemployed. There is something to the claim that we expect more responsibility out of our jobs than we’re getting because so many of us are unable to get jobs our education prepared us for. Therefore, I think young people are looking to leaders to actually lead — whether in solving national challenges or in building a strong team in the workplace that leverages their talents and value add.

Some may think millennials are asking for a lot, but what do you think they are willing to give in return?

Millennials are the largest, most educated and most diverse generation in our country’s history. There is immense potential to leverage their unique experience with technological innovation, rapid adaptation and creativity to create institutions that are ready for the 21^st century. We’re ready and willing to lend that insight, and to put in the work.

Additionally, I think one of the most promising things for institutions to tap into, that millennials are willing to give, is their loyalty. This generation is mission-driven, with a strong desire to see their values lived out in their jobs. Institutions that recognize that will be able to gain the loyalty — and good work — of today’s talent.