More millennials are entering the workforce. In 2015 Deloitte conducted an international survey to see how millennials approach leadership.
First, they found that millennials take a new approach to business than the baby boomers might. Wealth and profit remain important, but social advancement and helping employees are also significant factors in which companies often fall short of millennial expectations. Millennials believe that businesses should focus on such goals as job creation, employee wellbeing, profit generation, improving society, and employee growth.
There is also a gap in leadership values. According to the study, millennials believe that today’s leaders focus on profit and personal reward, while millennials place more value on people. They value and strive to show leadership skills such as strategic thinking, being inspirational, and having interpersonal skills above financial results.
So how do we prepare these current and future leaders for their roles? Much of it will have to be in the workplace. The survey shows that higher education only contributed about a third of the skills needed in the leadership position and to contribute to the company as a whole.
On-the-job training is important for emerging leaders in any generation, allowing them to enhance their skills that got them to those positions while improving in areas they may be lacking.
Nextep’s online training library, for example, has more than 600 classes devoted to leadership and management. Topics that might be especially useful to leaders include:
- Leading a diverse workforce
- Become an effective leader
- Creating a mentoring program
- What to say when people are wasting time online
- Create a culture of feedback
- Recognize and reward
- The problem of nightmare staff
- Performance management: setting goals
- Leading through service
- Impedership: mistakes leaders make
- Generation clashes
- Leading accountable teams
For human resource guidance on developing your company’s leaders or more information about our online training program, please contact your HR consultant at Nextep.
Source: 2015 Deloitte Millennial Survey
