Manager 3.0: A Millennial's Guide to Rewriting the Rules of Management - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

BRAD KARSH is President and Founder of JB Training Solutions and JobBound, companies dedicated to helping professionals succeed. A workplace and generational expert, he has appeared on CNN, Dr. Phil, and CNBC, and been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today.

COURTNEY TEMPLIN is the Chief Operating Officer at JB Training Solutions, and a Millennial herself. She sits on the board of the Chicago Society for Human Resource Management, where she leads the Emerging Leaders Initiative.

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Manager 3.0 is the first-ever management guide written specifically for millennials. You will learn to master such crucial skills as dealing with difficult people, delivering constructive feedback, and making tough decisions—while gaining insight into the four generations in the workplace and how to successfully bring out the best in each. Packed with interviews and examples from companies like Zappos, Groupon, Southwest Airlines, and Google, Manager 3.0 will help new millennial managers enhance their unique talents while developing an effective leadership style all their own.

Advance Praise for Manager 3.0:

“At last, a management book targeted to the newest generation of leaders. Manager 3.0 by Brad Karsh and Courtney Templin is a reader-friendly reference that not only highlights unique challenges faced by millennials but also offers helpful support to new and aspiring leaders of this generation. Read it!”

— Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager® and Trust Works!

“Hilarious stories, real-world anecdotes, and tactical advice. Manager 3.0 is a must-read for millennials or anyone responsible for coaching the next generation of leaders.”

— Ali Velshi, CNN Anchor and Chief Business Correspondent

“A guide for conquering the business world like Napoleon, written for the Napoleon Dynamite generation.”

— Graham K. Douglas, Creative Director, Droga5 (2012 Forbes 30 Under 30)

“I thought I knew millennials, but the unique way they’re shaking up management and tearing down the corporate ladder was eye opening. Our millennial managers will become better leaders thanks to Manager 3.0.”

— Tony Weisman, CEO, Digitas-North America

BRAD KARSH is President and Founder of JB Training Solutions, a company focused on helping professionals achieve more in their careers. A workplace and generational expert, he appears regularly on CNN and has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and dozens of others.

COURTNEY TEMPLIN herself a millennial manager, is Chief Operating Officer at JB Training Solutions and sits on the board of the Chicago Society for Human Resource Management, where she leads the Emerging Leaders Initiative.

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INTRODUCTION:

NOT BETTER, NOT WORSE— JUST DIFFERENT

“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”

—George Orwell

I will never forget the day I came across my first leaderless team.

In my days as a Vice President/Director of Talent Acquisi-tion at Leo Burnett, I was in charge of recruiting at all levels, but my main focus was entry-level candidates. I had the pleasure of reading more than 10,000 student resumes and interviewing more than 1,000 collegians. One of the standard interview questions I asked was, “Tell me about a group pro-ject you worked on in college.” I used this question when hir-ing for the account management department because a huge part of the job was working with diverse groups within the company. We wanted to hire people who had the ability to manage projects and lead teams.

I was seeking candidates who said that they took the role of leader within the group. I would then probe them about their ability to work on diverse teams, handle conflict effectively, and drive results for the group. I must have posed this question hundreds of times in my quest to find the best can-didates.

I still remember the day it all changed. It was in the spring of 2001, and I was interviewing a student from Princeton. I asked my standard “group project” question and was imme-diately stunned by the response. Here’s how it went:

BRAD: Tell me about a group project you worked on recently in college.

CANDIDATE: Well, last semester we did some work on creat-ing an economic model for a fictitious company.

BRAD: What role did you play in the group?

CANDIDATE: What do you mean?

BRAD: How was the group structured, and what was your role?

CANDIDATE: I’m sorry, but I’m confused. Do you mean what part of the project was I responsible for?

BRAD (annoyed): No, I mean were you the leader of the group or a team member?

CANDIDATE: We didn’t have a leader.

BRAD (dumbfounded): What do you mean you didn’t have a leader? Every group needs to have a leader. How did you get everything done and stay on track?

CANDIDATE: I don’t know, we just sort of all did our part. It wasn’t really a big deal.

BRAD (thinking this person will never work at our company and moving on to a new line of questioning): Okay, now, tell me about your weak-

nesses.

I shared the story with a few other recruiters, and we all had a good laugh about this fascinating candidate who worked on a leaderless team. Now here’s the funny thing. Over the next couple of weeks, it happened again—and again. I heard similar answers regarding leaderless groups from sharp candidates again, and again, and again.

At that point, I knew I was experiencing a fundamental shift, and I recognized that this new generation was not going to play by the same rules. This generation was planning to chart a brave, new course. I was witnessing the formation of the next generation of leaders—Manager 3.0.

That is our strong belief at JB Training Solutions. In fact, we consider ourselves the great defender of millennials. One of the best decisions I made for the company was to hire a real, live millennial—Courtney —my coauthor. Between working with the millennials on my team and working with thousands of millennials across the country, I know that you’re up against some tough preconceptions about your generation. The key problem is that many of your elders do assume you’re worse—a lot worse. I have conducted over 500 workshops for more than 15,000 senior leaders on the topic of working with millennials. This workshop, “Dude, What’s My Job?” Managing Millennials in Today’s Workforce, is primarily comprised of Xers and boomers who are strug-gling with “the kids these days”. Let me tell you, they are not a happy bunch. Although they leave the course with a sound understanding of your generation, they come into our work-shop practically spewing venom about your group:

“Why do I always have to hold their hand?”

“Why are they so entitled?”

“Don’t they understand that they have to pay their dues?”

Those are some of the tamer responses. I’ve also heard:

“The worst generation ever!”

“I. Cannot. Stand. Them.”

“Can’t we just get rid of them?”

I begin by asking the participants what they think of mil-lennials, and I receive the standard responses like, “You mean those skateboard-riding, Mountain-Dew-drinking, Fa-cebook-posting, Google-searching, YouTube-watching slackers?” I knowingly chuckle, and then I read direct quotes from Time magazine to bring a little light to the situation.

The article in Time states that this generation truly strug-gles to make decisions and that they “would rather hike in the Himalayas than climb a corporate ladder.”1 The article goes on to say that when they should be starting a career and a family of their own, “the twenty-something crowd is balking at those rights of passage.”2

At this point, one of the Xers in the workshop jumps in and says, “You got it, Brad, you understand our pain.”

I read on and share how companies feel like they “must cater to a young workforce that is considered overly sensitive at best, and lazy at worse.”3

“That totally describes Caitlyn!” screams a delighted boomer.

There is more. The article continues to describe a gener-ation of whiners that doesn’t want to pay its dues. It really drives it home when I read that this generation has “a reluc-tance to embrace the dying work ethic of the former genera-tion.”4

A warm chuckle circulates through the room as boomers and Xers rejoice in my recounting of their daily struggles.

I ask if anyone remembers reading that issue of Time magazine. A few hands usually go up. I mention that it’s from July, and then I show the cover. The young people on the cover have big bangs, large hoop earrings, and black leather jackets.

It’s July alright. July of 1990! My audience is dumbfound-ed. Jaws drop to the floor. “But how could it be?” they ask. “That totally describes millennials,” they protest.

Then I break the obvious news that the article was de-scribing many of them—generation X. I tell them that as they get older, they tend to forget what it’s like to be twenty-two or twenty-four and starting a first job or launching a career. This Time magazine sting operation really drives the insight home.

I firmly believe that half of the issues that other genera-tions have with millennials is rooted in the fact that they are just getting old. Professionals gain experience—and hopefully wisdom—and they forget about how difficult the transition from school...