Meagan Johnson - Generational Speaker

Solve Your Challenges and Bridge the Gap between Generations at Your Multigenerational Workforce

Generational Employee Engagement

5 Ways to Make Work Fun for Your Employees

How to make work fun for your employees? After all, there should be fun in the hard stuff we do each and every day, right?

In 1968 a television producer asked herself a generational ‘point-of-no-return’ question. That question was: “What if we took learning for children and we made learning tastes more like ice cream than spinach.”

The answer to that question is a show that is still here today called Sesame Street. It revolutionized children’s programming but more importantly, Sesame Street made learning fun.

That was the birth of an expectation that there should be fun in the hard stuff we do.

How to Make Work Fun?

In 1993 I graduated from Arizona State University and I got a good job with a company called Quaker Oats. Most of you have heard of this company. In 1993 we were in the middle of the recession and my peers were struggling to find jobs. I found a good-paying job and it was a great opportunity. A month into it, my dad, who is a baby boomer, asked me how do I like my job. I didn’t because it wasn’t fun. In fact, it wasn’t fun at all. My dad said that work is not supposed to be fun!

Why is Fun at Work Important

An audience member recently said to me that if work was supposed to be fun, we’d call it fun, not work.

We spend ninety thousand hours of our life at work. One-third of our life is spent at work, so why shouldn’t we have fun?

In fact, Millennials are the largest generation in the workplace today. People born after 1980, and Millennials, more than any other generation have really integrated the work life and their personal life together. They understand that with technology you’re set to work all the time, so it’s not like when we’re done with work then we’ll have fun. Work doesn’t stop, so it only makes sense that we should have fun at work. Majority of Millennials when surveyed said that they would take 60% less in their paycheck to work at a job they love versus a job they find boring.

Benefits of Having Fun at Work

When you’re having fun, you’re not bored. When your organization allows you to have fun, when leaders create a fun workplace, it has been shown that there’s an increase in the level of employee trust. There’s an increase in creative inspiration and there’s improved communication and connectivity between not just employees and their managers, but also coworkers.

A ‘Great Place to Work Institute’ surveyed employees that work for organizations listed on Fortune 100’s top places to work and found that over 80 percent said their company is a fun place to be.

Fun at Work Ideas

So having fun pays and we’re going to discuss a few things that you can do to have fun at work.

1. Food

My favorite as food is always fun. Alright, food people want to eat. You can do something like an interoffice beverage break or an off-site lunch.

I have a client that every Friday they have what’s called ‘food truck Fridays’ and they bring in a local food truck to serve lunch to everybody in the office.

2. Inner Office Social

There’s a service called Yammer that can set up an interoffice social network that allows employees not only to communicate and collaborate but also post things that they find online that are humorous. Videos, stories, cartoons etc. You may have to depend on your team, set some parameters about what’s acceptable and what’s not, but the nice thing about an interoffice social network is that it allows people to jump on real quick and just get a kind of a tickle of their funny bone.

3. Volunteer Time Off

Especially when this can be combined with coworkers we call the millennial generation. The giving generation, because they are one of the top generations that are giving not only their time but money to charitable organizations. According to Deloitte volunteer impact research, they found that Millennials prefer to work for organizations that allow them to coordinate volunteering with their work time.

4. Decorate the Workplace

This may sound kind of silly, but when people are allowed to decorate their workspace not only engages their creativity but also increases the way people emotionally feel connected to the workplace.

A company that is really good at this is Zappos.com. It’s an online shoe retailer. If you ever go downtown Las Vegas, take a tour of their headquarters.

5. Appreciation

Sometimes we forget just to say thank you to our co-workers and the people that helped us be successful. Every day saying thank you and remembering small details about people’s lives is not only important but shows a token of kindness that goes a long way!

Millennial Boss: How to Give Corrective Feedback to a Baby Boomer

How to Give Corrective Feedback to a Baby Boomer, when you are the Millenial Boss? Yes, a much younger person trying to lecture to an experienced one?

I’m talking to my dad, professional speaker Larry Johnson. He is a co-author of the best-selling an absolutely fabulous book ‘Absolute Honesty’.

When a Millennial Is Your Boss

Recently I had a Millennial audience member ask me about how to best give an honest feedback to somebody she was managing. Somebody much older. Old enough to be her dad. She felt a little awkward giving the corrective feedback.

I thought I’d asked my dad, who is also a baby boomer and a co-author of the best-selling book ‘Generations Inc’.

Giving Negative Feedback to Baby Boomers

“How best should this millennial give honest feedback to this person she’s managing?” And I think we’re safe to assume that it’s a corrective feedback. It’s not a compliment but rather that she wants the person to change their behavior.

I think it kind of depends on where the other person perceives this younger person’s area of expertise.

In other words, the baby boomer may question what right does this person have to tell me how I should do anything? I know as a baby boomer, I really appreciate the younger person who coaches me on how to better use my software, how to use my computer, or how to use social media.

How to Give Corrective Feedback

Baby Boomers Working with Millennials

We get into some tricky territory when the younger manager is going to coach me about something I think I know everything about.

It’s very important that you preface whatever you’re going to say to this person with some acknowledgment of her experience.

Say: “I know you’ve got a lot of experience in this area of dealing with customers who are upset. However, I’m concerned. When you said to the customer ‘don’t worry your pretty little head’, it could have been considered offensive.”

The Millennial that’s giving the feedback needs to voice that it is not appropriate. It could almost be interpreted as sexual harassment. It could be considered offensive.

How to Give Corrective Feedback

I would say in that case that you pose it in terms of how it might be experienced by the customer or even by the Millennials.

Describe the effect of what he’s doing okay and maybe make a suggestion on how he might approach it differently.

The Generation X Management Style – What You Need to Know

Recently a reporter asked me about the Generation X management style – what type of managers are Gen Xers?

What is the Generation X Management Style?

I thought to myself: “Gen Xers as managers? What? No way! We’re too young to be managers! We can’t be managers! We’re still too new. We’re too young or we’re just getting our feet wet. You can’t put us in charge now?”

Gen Xers are managers. In fact, we’re in our working prime. In a survey, they found that over half of executives believe Gen Xers are the most engaged generation. We have a unique Generation X Management Style!

Gen X Managers

So what type of managers do we make?

Well, I think Gen Xers are in a really good position because they are open to change.

Especially when it comes to technology. We began using technology in school before we entered the workplace. Many baby boomers began using technology in the workplace after their careers were already established.

But Gen Xers? We started using technology before we began our careers. When Millennials approach us to try a new technology, we’re open to it.

I think about my own business in the past, when it came to running credit cards.

I would write down the credit card number while I was traveling. Then took the written credit card number back to my assistant. My millennial assistant would then enter it into the little box we were given by the bank and processed the credit cards. She approached me about this thing called ‘Square’ at the time. It reinvented the way that I handled credit cards. Many of you know and use square today.

Generation X Management Style

Gen X Leadership

Despite our unique Generation X management style, here’s where we might stumble.

We were ‘latchkey kids’. Came home from school and we had a list of chores on the kitchen counter. It was up to us to decide when we wanted to do the chores and how we did those chores. We just had to get them done before management, ‘aka mom and dad’, returned home.

As managers, sometimes we think we want to manage people the way we wanted to be managed.

When I first began my career, I wanted a manager who would listen to my input and then let me do my thing. You know? Give me what I need. Then tell me what you want to be done. Give me the tools and training to do it and then just leave me alone.

Gen X Engagement

However, with this new super engaged millennial generation that many of us are working with today as Gen X managers, we may need to step out of our comfort zone and engage with the Millennials with a little bit more frequency.

We may feel this as ‘hand-holding’, but I don’t perceive it that way. I perceive it as engaging the younger generation. Also, that engagement helps to transfer that knowledge between Gen Xers and Millennials. That is our Generation X Management Style!

I look forward to seeing you next week when we talk about the ever-changing generations in the workforce in the marketplace today.

Mentoring Millennials – What Does Mentoring Mean to Millennials

Mentoring Millennials should be a part of every organization, especially if you want to retain your millennial employees!

Here is why:

According to Deloitte study, 64% of millennials plan to see their current job in their ‘rearview mirror’ by the year 2020.

What does that mean? It means that in less than two years 64% of millennials plan on leaving their current job.

The average millennial stays in their job less than three years. However, that same Deloitte study discovered that Millennials who are at their current job or organization for longer than five years are two times more likely to have a mentor.

According to Price Waterhouse Cooper, 98% of millennials feel that working with strong mentors is very important. 

What does Mentoring Mean to Millennials?

I recently interviewed a millennial and he said to me that a mentor-mentee relationship is extremely important. He shared, however, that many mentors feel that being a mentor means telling them how they did something. He said: ”A mentor to me means challenging me to think differently!”

Mentoring Millennials

Mentoring Millennials in the Workplace

There really are 3 stages of the mentor-mentee relationship:

  1. The 1st stage is Coaching: Coaching is a very task-oriented relationship.

The coach is really there to help the millennial get their feet wet. Maybe they are new to the organization or new to the position. A coach is a great way to teach the Millennial about the corporate culture or maybe work on a soft skill.

I know that when I was in my 20’s and I had my first job out of college, I would’ve loved to have a coach to help me with writing skills. So, coaches are a terrific way to help the Millennial ease into the corporate culture of the new organization.

2. The 2nd stage is a Mentorship Relationship: The mentor relationship is based more on the relationship itself.

In fact, Millennials may have many mentors.

There is something called micro-mentoring and those are groups that connect via social media. There’s also reverse mentoring. A reverse mentor is when the millennial mentors a more senior person, typically about something technology related.

Reverse mentoring is a great way to open the door between millennial and someone who’s been around the organization for a long time. Most importantly, the mentor in the mentor-mentee relationship holds the mentee accountable for meeting their goals.

3. The 3rd stage is the Sponsorship: This is intriguing because this takes the mentor-mentee relationship up a level.

This is truly a one-on-one relationship. It is a higher level of mentoring and the sponsor typically has a high status with the company. The sponsor’s responsibility or goal is to help that millennial reach their next level. To get that promotion or that raise. That sponsor also acts as an advocate for the Millennial within the organization. He/she helps the millennial identify skills and talents they need to develop to find that new promotion or raise.

Mentoring Millennials

Mentoring millennials is not an easy task – however, it can be a rewarding one for both parties involved.

A baby boomer I recently interviewed said to me:

“It is our responsibility to mentor the young people in our lives, however mentoring is not just about handing them a book. It’s also about telling them what they have done right.”

So there you have it – the Mentoring Millennials segment.

I look forward to seeing you next week when we further dig into this topic about the multi-generations in the workplace.

Baby Boomers and Technology

Baby Boomers and Technology… Raise your hand if you’re a baby boomer!

Not sure?

If you were born between 1946 and 1964, then the answer is yes, you are a baby boomer! Your generation is 77 million strong. We had never seen such a boom in the birth rate ‘till we got to the baby boom.

Let’s shine some light on the generational differences when it comes to baby boomers and technology, their relationship to technology, as well as the 2 things you can do to get them embrace technology.

Generations and Technology in the Workplace

It used to be all about the baby boomers. But, since the millennials have come on board, we seem to forget about the baby boomers. And that is a mistake.

When I ask Millennials what are they struggle with when they work with baby boomers, a common complaint or comment is – well, Baby Boomers and Technology! That baby boomers resist technology. In fact, one millennial recently told me that a baby boomer called him to tell him he sent an email and advised him to print that email.

Baby Boomers and Technology

Well, you know we give baby boomers a lot of grief about technology and it’s not really a hundred percent accurate. I would probably guess that most of the baby boomers watching this video use technology. So in reality, baby boomers and technology are not that far off.

In fact, I always point out to my audiences, especially if I have lots of Millennials, I tell them ‘You know, you might not know this little secret about baby boomers but baby boomers were the very first iPhone users!’ Yes, baby boomers had iPhones before anybody.

A Generational Difference When it Comes to Baby Boomers

Here it is:

Ask “How will this technology make my job or life easier?”

Don’t tell them you’re just getting new technology, because it has a better ringtone, but tell them how will this new technology make their job or life easier!

If you’re an early adapter and you’re introducing a new technology to your team, you may have people resisting. Ask yourself how are you going to answer that question above.

baby boomers and technology

Here Are 2 Things You Can Do to Connect Baby Boomers and Technology:

1. Train Technology One-on-One

We often use technology to train technology and that’s great for people who are early adapters to technology. But when you have somebody who is a slow adapter, you have to train one-on-one. When you tell someone ‘Go watch a YouTube video to learn how to use this new technology.’, that’s a frustrating experience. Frustrating because that new technology never works the way it does in that YouTube video. Train them one-on-one!

2. Check Back in with Them No More than Ten Days Later

Why? Because the technology most often doesn’t work like it should. There’s a frustration or a hiccup and that person using the new technology think you know that it’s not making their job or life easier. It’s making their job or life harder.

They are going to go back to their old ways of doing things. So, check back in with that person no more than ten days later and help them through that adaptation process.

Baby Boomers Relationship to Technology

Once that person learns how the technology will make their job or life easier, I think you will see them more eagerly embrace the new technology. They may never sing from the mountaintops how much they love that technology, but your goal is that they embrace the technology and use it to make their job and life easier. And it also makes your organization or association more successful!

I look forward to seeing you next week when we further discuss the ever-changing generations and the fun challenges they bring to our lives every day.