Make 2010 a Year of Millennial Thinking

After nearly each of my speeches or workshops this fall, at least one person (equal parts eager and irritated) would approach me and say, "I really want to shift from surviving to thriving" or "I want to recycle the box I've put around myself," but "I'm just too old. I'm not like these Millennials you talk about."

In each instance I'd reply, "Here's the good news. None of us is ever too old to correct hiccups in our path to success or create/refine the vision and corresponding strategy for where we and are companies are headed." Then, I'd follow-up by saying, "Yes, Millennials are 95-million strong and will be the largest generation working, making purchases, and casting votes by 2016. Now that you know this, you have a competitive edge. The sooner you understand, value, and adjust to our thinking, the more quickly you will create the foundation for the sustainable success you seek."

As Professor Bill George of Harvard recently declared, "We have come to realize that the economic crisis was less a matter of subprime mortgages than subprime leadership." As each us of embarks on a year of ensuring that our nation's social, economic, and environmental crises are footnotes in history rather than reoccurring themes, we are charged to develop courses of action that are informed by what we have learned from assessing professional and personal successes and shortcomings from the past. We must just as importantly take note of the ways of doing and being that are working in the present and are necessary to carry us into the future. As you go about strategic planning in your organization, small business, and career, employ these 10 facets of Millennial-thinking to activate your best leadership performance.

Strategy One: EMBRACE CHANGE
With an affinity for job hopping, Millennials have mastered the art of adapting quickly to anticipated and unforeseen circumstances. In 2010, get up and go more quickly than you did in 2009, and re-frame change from something scary or unpleasant to an opportunity to reinvent and bulldoze forward stronger and wiser than before.

Strategy Two: PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS
Millennials may have received trophies for everything short of breathing. But having competed in activities like sports and debate as soon as we were out of diapers, we also learned that not all trophies were created the same. We realized quickly where we were star players and often avoided activities where we were sub par. Identify your 2-3 top strengths and let them fuel your top goals and objectives for the year.

Strategy Three: EMPLOY A TEAM
Once you identify the areas where you do your best and most enjoyable work, identify where you could use support. Whenever I embark on a project, I ALWAYS look for a great detail-oriented person to maintain records as well as someone who is a bottom-line thinker (as I can luxuriate a little too long in the possibility phase). Millennials have been working in teams throughout their education and understand that they are the only way to actualize a vision and, most importantly, share it (and gain commitment) from those who need it most. The Obama presidential campaign understood this and used Millennials as a key tool for disseminating their message of "change" brilliantly.

Strategy Four: ASK QUESTIONS
Millennials have been asked by teachers, parents, and family friends and mentors for their opinions throughout their lives. As a result, we tend to ask a lot of questions of our supervisors, colleagues, friends, significant others, and most of all, ourselves. While answers are important, devising solutions before articulating the right questions means we engage in thinking that operates symptomatically rather than in thinking that gets to the source. If you are someone who is always looking for a quick-fix, take a deep breath, slow-down, and check-in on the questions you are asking. Ensure they align with the actions you are taking.

Strategy Five: MAKE THE PRESENT PERFECT
When you are coming of age, you tend to think about the future. When you are in your twilight years, you tend to reflect on what you have done and who you have become. When you are in your professional and personal prime, naturally, you have an easier time putting both feet down in the present. And this is exactly where you want to be regardless of where you are in your life or career! While reflection and strategizing are important, so is showing up fully and maximizing the current moment.

Strategy Six: GIVE CARROTS
Clients, customers, and most importantly, co-workers, thrive from feedback that is frequent, specific, timely, skill-based (versus personal), and action-oriented. Yes, Millennials love to be told when we have done a good job. But as Coach Suzy Rogers says, "Millennials are like sponges," and we know that to learn and grow we need to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly of our performance. Don't wait for people to come to you for an appraisal. Condition peak performance by following the aforementioned feedback guidelines. And most importantly, let your people know when they have done a good job and the why and how behind it so success can be replicated.

Strategy Seven: SUSTAIN WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION
Millennials don't believe in work-life balance. As Millennial blogger Rebecca Thorman muses, the work-life stuff is "more of a see-saw, kind of up and down, and is only ever balanced for the briefest moments." Millennials instead want a quality of life that allows for more up moments of alignment between work and life than not. We understand that having such integration is vital for health, engagement, peak performance, and overall sanity. Ensure that you and those you work with and for allot time and consideration for the achievement of work-life integration. It really is the foundation for sustainable leadership.

Strategy Eight: BE OF SERVICE
I find it ironic that Millennials are often branded the "Me" generation and yet have such high levels of community service. To facilitate change that is good for you, your business, and your global community, you don't need to travel very far. As you shift from symptom to source thinking, as discussed earlier, figure out where you can be of service and give your ideas, time, money, and other applicable resources. Sometimes the biggest opportunities to make a contribution are those right in front of you.

Strategy Nine: BALANCE SOCIAL MEDIA WITH FACE-TO-FACE CONNECTION
Millennials love their gadgets, and yet older adults are the fastest growing population on Facebook. The majority of Twitter users are Gen-X and older. Find your message. Find your audience. Connect with them the way they want to communicate. Often times this is face-to-face. (I have yet to conduct a workshop with a Millennial where I didn't facilitate buy-in from an experiential activity). And if you haven't seen the new film, Up in the Air, make sure that you do. It creatively addresses the limitations of media.

Strategy Ten: JUST DO IT!
The theory of praxis, which has grounded my current work as a coach as well as my previous work as a theatre and social justice educator, says that you must take action, reflect on it, and then take new action (or transformation) based on what you have deduced from your post-action musing. Millennials have worn Nikes as much for the slogan as for the product. Perfection is the enemy of progress and sometimes done is better than perfect. Get the answers you need and then get off your tushie and make a leap forward.