34: Blaming the Millennial: Been There, Done That, Got the T-shirt

As a person who is in the business of helping executives bridge the gap between old and traditional communication tactics with the new, I have heard every disparaging remark there is, and that can be said about a certain group of people who inhabit, we'll call it the tech space, the millennial generation. And from the safety of my Gen X perch, let's face it, no one hates Gen Xers. The boomers and the older people, you know, never took us seriously, I think, but no one really hates us. But the millennials, oy, they are derided constantly by other groups that don't respect them. Everyone hates them, it seems. If I ask a group of non millennials to tell me what they think about millennials, ugh, their answers are filled to the brim with contempt. On today's podcast, why you need to give this group a break. I noticed a recent news story of a minor league baseball team that made national news with a 21st century blunder. And they blamed who else? Well, a young employee, also known as a millennial. It's a euphemism for a millennial. But more on that story later in the podcast. But it did get me thinking. Why is everyone so down on this generation still? So for the Confident Communications podcast, I'm Molly McPherson, your host, and like tbh, it's time to give the millennials a break. Not letting them off the hook completely, but a break. I've talked a lot on this podcast about age and gender gaps and how some generations are forever challenged with communicating online, though you're working on it, right? Historically, millennials have been called everything in the book. And by the way, it's a bad book of terms. You never hear the positive qualities when I ask a room full of executives, and I always do. Boomers, traditionalists. Tell me what you think when I say the term millennial. And I hear the same phrases and terms over and over again. They're young, lazy, entitled, easily bored. They're tied to their cell phones. They're down. They don't know how to use a phone. They're job hoppers. They have no loyalty. They don't know how to use voicemail. And this is when I'll chime in and I'll say, well, in defense of them, I don't like using voicemail either, but they don't want to hear that. And the big word that I hear over and over again, they're narcissists. Now, as an aside, some of the biggest narcissists that I know are baby boomers, not millennials at all. But one reason that we need to give them a break, and this is a big reason, is because I don't think people really know the definition of a true millennial. So let's look who a millennial is by definition. According to the Oxford Living Dictionaries, a millennial is described as a person reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century. Pretty generic term. The Pew Research Center. Now this is my go to place whenever I need to get to the guts of. They define a millennial as someone who was born between 1981 and 1996, and they chose those dates for key political, economic and social factors. I'm quoting Pew Research Center. And this also includes September 11, terrorist attacks, the Great Recession, and the explosion of the use of the Internet. Now, the third example is from a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, and he wrote for The Economist in 2018. His name is Jonathan Rauc, and he stated that the generations are squishy concepts. But 1981 to 1996, those birth years, are considered widely accepted. For defining who a millennial is, the word I want to focus there. The concept is squishy because that's where the problem starts. No one really knows who a millennial is. According to Gallup, 87% of millennials rate professional or career growth opportunities as important to them, compared to 69% of non millennials. Also, 59% of millennials say opportunities to grow are extremely important when they are job hunting. Compare that to 44% for Gen Xers and 41% of Baby Boomers. And young, well, millennials were born between 1981 and 1996. When I stated those dates earlier. Did you do the math in your head to try and figure out how old a millennial is nowadays? I'll do it for you. They're 38 years old, full stop. 38. Now that's younger than me. But I would not call a 38 year old young. That's the definition of a mid career type. And that's what I tell the group of executives when I ask them about millennials, when they talk about being narcissists and they're not loyal and their heads are always in their phones. I said, you know that you're speaking about a 38 year old. They could be married, they could have kids, they could be running an organization, they could be a CEO or a general manager. So which brings me back to those news stories. The first news story that triggered the topic of millennials for the podcast was about a 3 1/2 minute video that the Fresno Grizzlies aired during a doubleheader on Memorial Day. The Fresno Grizzlies, they're a minor league baseball team, a AAA affiliate of the Washing. And you'll see why that's ironic. So there was a video that played in between the games. We had Ronald Reagan, which most millennials would not have been aware or born when he was the president, but the video had a stirring rendition from Ronald Reagan about patriotism. So we heard the music and it was, it was paired with pictures of American soldiers throughout history. It was your typical Memorial Day video. And it's a video that would get anyone to stop up and unconsciously place, you know, their hand on their heart. That is until we get to the three minute mark of the video. Take a listen. As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it. We will not surrender for it, now or ever. We are Americans now. As you heard, President Reagan's voiceover talks about the enemies of freedom. And when he said it on the podcast, you couldn't see it, but we saw Kim Jong Un, the North Korean autocrat. And then eventually it moved on to Fidel Castro. And then there's other shots of enemies of freedom and. But sandwiched in between all of those images was a photograph of the representative from New York, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Not surprising, the video caused a bit of an uproar. The fans were upset and the team lost a lot of sponsorships. And one of those sponsorships happened to be controlled by a friend of mine. So that's how this became even a bigger conversation. But a lot of the sponsors condemned the video for spewing hatred. Now, the CEO apparently did not reach out to the sponsors, the CEO of the Grizzlies, which is very bad PR on their end. But what they did do, as many organizations often do when they're in trouble, they go to Twitter and released a statement on the Notes app so we could see it full on in the tweet. We are aware of the problem with the Memorial Day tribute video shown in the ballpark between games of Monday's double header. It was a pre produced video from outside our front office. So already right there you know that they are going to push the blame as quickly as they can. As the statement goes on. There are key words I mentioned. Pre produced outside our front office. They went on to say misleading and offensive editing, suggesting that the photo of AOC was spliced in after the fact, even though they have no proof of it. And there was no apology to Representative Ocasio Cortez. So they made an awful mistake. And they said that they pulled the wrong video down from YouTube, that they had used the video before and they didn't even know that this video or the photograph of AOC was inserted in there. Now I can see how this can happen. And I don't want to dump on farm teams at all because they're great for the area, they're lucrative for local communities. I can't hate on them at all, especially as a baseball fan. But I noticed when this story happened and I was waiting for the apology. As any listener of those podcasts knows, I'm very big on the acknowledgment or the apology. And the Grizzlies, the front office, they pushed it down because they did not want to deal with it. The first attempt at the response was not a good one because they had to draft another one. Toot sweet. And so the Fresno Grizzlies, when you have to apologize again, then you know your first one wasn't a good one. But what they ended up doing was blaming. It was a long term employee, but I guess it was a young employee. For their error in judgment, they blamed an employee. Here's another news story. There was an email link from a White House staffer that requested that the USS John S. McCain be moved when President Trump visited the U.S. naval base when it was recently in Japan. That staffer was said to be 23 or 24 years old. Again, going to cloud this and cover it as a millennial. And the White House Chief of staff, or I should say the latest one, Mick Mulvaney, blamed the error in judgment on that millennial. So unfortunately, many of the most savvy people when it comes to social media are millennials. So they're the first generation to grow up with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. It's almost wired and encoded into their brain. It's important to keep in mind that recent College graduates, these 22 year year olds, there aren't actually millennials. They're Generation Zers, which I don't even know if that's the term. A member of Generation Z. So people are blaming the wrong group. A millennial, as we stated, could be 38 years old. So when you think of that 38 year old, they're married with kids, they're running organizations, running businesses, they can be a CEO. It's not someone who's a youngblood or hella Young. And I know I was trying to be young there. I even had to ask my 14 year old son, can you give me another term for young? He came up with young blood. I guess that's an MBA term. But at any rate, I have no idea. I can even say as a Gen Xer, I'm not completely wired in to how they move and how they work and what they're doing. But I am smart enough to know, or young enough to say, or savvy enough to know. Pointing the finger at a young group simply because they're young is never a good excuse. I've said on the podcast before that a number of years ago when Twitter first came out and people were starting to get comfortable on social media, non millennials who are using social media and then they find themselves in a little bit of hot water. I'm looking at you, Anthony Weiner, and there's a lot of examples out there where something bad would happen online on Twitter, some mistweet or misfire, and the first thing they do is they blame hacking. Well, someone hacked my account. Eventually you could no longer use the hacking defense because now with technology and security, it is next to impossible to go into someone's Twitter account and hack it and send out some crazy tweet or some crazy tweet to a woman that's not your wife, that is a younger person reaching out to you. The Anthony Weiner excuse doesn't hold any water at all. And I liken it to the blame the millennial excuse as well. When I see an organization, a company, a leader that blames someone young just because they're young, they're passing the buck and it's telling me that they are not wired into what the real problem is. You have to stop blaming others for what is going on inside your organization and the gaps that you have there. These companies, organizations, if there's a problem, you need to train the employees on all the rules of engagements. So stories like these, the grizzly story, the USS John S. McCain story, that they don't leak out and see the light of day. Now, I can't speak for myself, but I do know from firsthand experience in my workshops that millennials are becoming rather fatigued for constantly defending their brethren. They're constantly on the defense. These criticisms are only stereotypes and they only serve as insight into the fears of the person who is telling me all about their opinions. Organizations need to stop hanging these millennials out to dry and blaming them for every single thing that goes wrong within that organization. Millennials do have Strengths. They are very good with technical skills. You that their head is buried in a phone all day, but they know what they're doing. Millennials are excellent at giving and receiving feedback. They can hack the feedback, good or bad because they are constantly getting feedback from social media. They are wired to hack it. They are hardworking, they're smart, they're visionaries and they're confident organizations, company spokespeople management boards and yes, chiefs of staff. You need to stop hanging millennials out to dry or blaming them when something bad happens in an organization. Remember, not everyone in your audience is a baby boomer or above and they may not agree with you because you could be potentially blaming a group that is making up the majority of your audience. You need to take ownership of the problem. Whether you're the chief of staff, the latest one, or if you're the GM of a AAA affiliate in Fresno, you have to take ownership. Now, if you are someone that needs a little bit of help in the technical expertise or how to communicate in the day and age of online communication, I do have a worksheet for you. It will help you with all the rookie mistakes that some of these Gen Xers, the older ones and baby boomers and traditionalists and can make online. So if you text the word rookie R O O k I e to 345345 you will get a link to download the worksheet. And if you're struggling with that, go ahead and ask a millennial. They'll tell you how to do it. Now I promised I wasn't going to bash on every non millennial out there because Gen Xers, baby boomers, traditionalists, yes, some of the millennials, what they do, it's kind of annoying. Some of them do have their heads in the phone or they may not be loyal. But don't confuse a millennial with Generation Z. Generation Z, they are the younger kids that are coming up that are really wired in and they're the ones that understand technology and they live in a whole different environment. But again, today's Generation Z was in the 60s, the baby boomers. Every generation has a group where they're the ones that are going to be maligned and derided and everybody hates them. It's all about age and time and how long you've been on the earth. So give them a break. So until next week, here is my Generation X goodbye. So make it the best of this test and don't ask why. It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time. It's something unpredictable, but in the end, it's right. I hope you had the time of your life. Bye for now, Sam.