Working with Those Wonderful Millennials

As a consultant working with a number of large brokerage and support organization clients across the country, I have an opportunity to interact and collaborate with a dozen or so different staff structures on a wide range of projects that stretch from research to development to event planning and execution.

Over the past few months, I have become increasingly aware of (1) how many members of the Millennial generation I have been working with, (2) how often their interpretation of the work experience differs from my Boomer version of the same, and (3) how frequently my judgmental behaviors regarding these folks are just plain wrong.

By way of convenient example, over the past month I was engaged in producing a strategic business conference for a large client. During the 60 days leading up to the conference, many days and hundreds of hours were spent creating what I very much hoped would be a really spectacular event. At almost every step of the way, I found myself chomping at the bit as a depressing number of my Millennial co-workers failed to meet my "expectations" or managed to annoy me with what I interpreted as childish and immature work habits.

But then came the event itself. It not only exceeded my expectations, but also managed to "wow" the client's management team and virtually every one of the 80 or so attendees. Virtually every one of the 18 program segments, the very sophisticated coupling exercises that tied them all together, and the highly diverse cast of nine nationally recognized experts (that ranged from national CEOs to top researchers and recognized designers) performed without a hitch. The entire production was a thing of beauty. I have received more positive comments and compliments regarding this program than for any other program over the past five years.

So, on the morning after the show, I undertook to figure out why I had been so wrong and how this Millennial-rich crew had managed to pull out what I thought was an impossible success.