Dan Negroni discusses his book on engaging millennials at work, debunking myths about entitlement and loyalty. He covers how technology shapes communication, why retention matters, and how older workers can mentor the next generation effectively.
Book out that talks about bridging the gap between leadership and millennials in the workplace. Joining us now is the author Dan Negroni, Chasing Relevance: 6 Steps to Understand, Engage, and Maximize Next Generation Leaders in the Workplace. We talk about this all the time. Dan, welcome, nice to have you here.
Thank you for having me.
We talk and talk and talk, but we don't do anything about it. Very few people have solutions. First of all, who is a— what's a millennial and who are these people?
Yeah, I mean, I think the age ranges a little bit, but generally 20 to 36 years old is considered a millennial. There are 83 million in this country and 2.4 billion in the world. So there's lots of them.
Why are their expectations different than baby boomers, for example, like me?
You know, I don't know that their expectations are so different. Certainly the world's different, right?
Yeah, certainly.
And which is really interesting in the most connected world ever, right? We're the most disconnected. You can look at politics, you can look at everything. But they clearly have a different, being, and it's basically how they grew up. And what do you think is the biggest difference between how they grew up and we grew up, pretty much?
Well, I was expected to work for everything, work very hard, and I was expected to excel and do well in school and to behave myself and all those things. It seems that my kids, my children, who are— some of them are millennials, I think you could describe them as millennials— don't feel that way.
Yeah.
Even though I raised them that way. Why is that?
Well, Here's what I would say is, I don't know about the expectations, I know about communication, but I think the biggest difference in the world, and that's why I keep my phone here with me to act like a millennial, I pretend I'm a millennial, but the biggest difference is technology, right? And so when we were coming up, we barely had computers when we started out, we didn't have email, we didn't have texting, and right now they're looking at their phone pretty much every 8.3 seconds or 40-something times a day or whatever the numbers are, they're crazy, crazy numbers, but technology has really changed changed what we can expect and when we can expect it.
And how they communicate and how they interact with other people, I think, also is very interesting. Now, there's some Mythbusters, and I went through your book, and really, this is what— let's start by taking a little quiz. It says, do the following statements about millennials ring mostly true or mostly false? They have a sense of entitlement and expect everything now. True or false?
Yeah, so I think They're all a little true and a little false. So, you know, I was a lawyer at one time, so I have to give you that answer to begin with. But I do think I could ask you the same question. If you read a little further in the book, it will say, what do they think of us? True or false? We only care about money, right? We're not very flexible. We don't do well with technology. We live by the golden rule, a Phil Blair statement, which I got the gold, I make all the rules. So there are myths on both sides. What do we do to connect is really what I need to look at and we need to look at is how do we solve the problem, which is what the book does.
Yeah, and one of those problems is they are disloyal and jump ship if they're not engaged or growing. And I mentioned kind of in jest that, you know, here we have a problem keeping millennials on the job. That's not an unusual problem for companies, is it?
No, it's probably the most common thing, which is retention, right? It's interesting when you look at the statistics, a lot of statistics show that millennials what they call, my millennial says, bounce from a job very quickly if they don't get what they want. But actually, if you look at the statistics and you compare us to when we were young, they're not that different. And the other thing is, is if you can engage a millennial and understand them and really, really care about them and show them you care, they'll stay longer than a boomer or an Xer.
What I find really interesting about millennials, and this is on the positive side, is that they're very innovative. Our innovative culture is has been given birth by millennials. I mean, companies like Facebook and Google and things came from people like them.
Yeah. I mean, I agree 100%. Look, the best places in the workplace are where youth and experience meet. It's been that way since the beginning of time. Right? Youth, innovative, creative, question-asking, provoking. Experience, time served, right? Knowledge, age, have been there, done that. The question is, what are we doing in the workplace to bring them together instead of complaining that I don't get them, I don't understand them? Yeah, they're a little bit different. They grew up completely different than we did. And part of that's our fault.
Sure.
Do you know why?
Why?
Because we've pretty much tried to cure every single problem they've had, right? And then we blame them for actually—
Yeah, we don't let them solve their own problems.
We're not in the telling story business or letting them fail. We're in the, oh my God, my kid should not have that pain for one second business, right?
Everybody gets a trophy kind of thing.
And so then they get to the workplace and we're like, can you believe these kids? How, I mean, when I was younger, I did this and that. And it's just shocking that we're blaming them instead of leaning in and teaching them. No one said, what do we do in high school to do this? What do we do in college to teach real world skills, right? What are we doing in the workplace to teach them? It's our job. That's what old people do for younger people. Older people, not old. We're not old, right?
Not at all. Dan Negroni, the book is called Chasing Relevance. It's a really interesting read, and you can pick this up, and we'll have a link to it on KUSI.com. Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much.
Best of luck to you, and of course you can always find out about his seminars, which are very cool as well.
We'll be right back with more.
