People
Issue No. 6 - July/September 2002
Leading, Managing and Understanding Generation Y
Contemporary managers or executives are likely to encounter the younger generation at some stage in their tenure. The manner in which they lead, manage and understand this group of people may significantly impact on their future leadership success. Thus, it is incumbent on managers in this position to do what they can to understand the nuances, motives and interests of those people who are labelled “Generation Y”.
While generalisations can be distinctly unhelpful to those who do not conform to the tattoos liberally ascribed to them by social researchers, there are some general features of the young “people born after 1980 that are helpful in assisting executives to lead, manage and understand them better.
As a manager, it is useful to know what you are getting in the employment market and how the values, characteristics and behaviours of the younger segment of the population are qualitatively different from those of us in the Baby Boomer (born post World War II and before 1965), or Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) age categories.
The Generation Y possess characteristics that may have excluded them from even the interview stage of a recruitment process five years ago, however, like it or not, you cannot continue to ignore them because there are too many of them that will not go away.
Generation Y are affectionately referred to as the Generation “dot-com”, ”Echo Boomers” or the “Millennium Generation”. They are the children of the Baby Boomers and as a market segment have significant financial means. They are the first Australian generation to grow up in an openly multicultural society, they are technically skilled with computers and IT products and they have been exposed to the global community through their access to mass media and communication tools such as the Internet.
There is a fundamental mismatch between the traditional values, behaviours, attitudes and b...
