Ep. 4 The Appeal (or Not) of a Millennial Manager

Is the millennial manager too good to be true? This episode of 'Learning to Manage' explores five ways millennial leaders can make a positive impact: promoting transparency, trusting remote work, granting autonomy, explaining the company's greater good, and focusing on the whole employee.

Resources
Millennial Managers Can Change Company Culture for the Better

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Transcript

 Welcome to another episode of "Learning to Manage," the podcast where you embark on a journey with me toward becoming an effective leader. I'm Aruna Seegolam, MBA and I'll be sharing my learning journey toward effective leadership and management.

I believe strongly in professional development and I'm a lifelong student. I'm currently in the second half of my doctorate in business administration degree with a concentration in strategic management. I also work full-time as an operations director and I've managed employees for seven years. I've been that crappy toxic manager and now I actively work on learning how to lead with intention and compassion.  

Whether you're leading a team, managing projects or navigating the complexities of organizational dynamics. Join me as I learned strategies and get the inspiration needed to excel in a leadership role. 

This is "Learning to Manage". 

I read an article the other day, which I linked in the show notes titled "Millennial managers can change company culture for the better". This article resonated with me in two ways. Firstly, it identified areas that I knew I need to improve on as well as areas where I feel that I do well in. Secondly, it brought to light how difficult it is for millennial managers, heck any manager, to bring about these changes when there are so many other factors working against you. The fact of the matter was I didn't embrace a lot of these areas as a millennial manager, but in a lot of ways, I remember feeling the opposite with two different millennial managers in the same areas. So maybe the quintessential millennial manager is not so general as it seems.

So let's talk about the ways that company culture can be changed by the millennial manager. As a reminder of the age group, millennials are those born between 1981 and 1996. So please don't confuse us with Gen Z.   They rock and they would never let toxicity fly. So as a millennial, I can tell you some of us look forward to them increasing in quantity as managers. Talk about quality.  

Okay, back to the article. The article first discussed transparency. I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten in trouble for being transparent.  The first time I spoke up regarding inequities between my team and a lateral team, I was spoken to immediately and told flat out that I was invited to the meeting to observe and not speak. It would have been nice if someone told me that before the meeting, but I digress.

Another time I got in trouble for telling my team that someone emailed me asking for my availability. Now I get that there's a lot of context missing here, but that was the takeaway. Tell them we're working on it. In my head, I responded, but we are at working on it. I'm not lying to protect someone who isn't doing their job. Sorry, not sorry.

The second way that company culture can be changed by the millennial manager was to trust employees to be productive from anywhere. Oh, do I really have a bone to pick about this one? Let's start simple. The COVID pandemic taught us that we can be productive at home and in the office.  Heck in my current position, I'm remote, albeit working Pacific hours while being Eastern time, but the amount of work-life balance, this has allowed me is phenomenal.  I wake up anytime between 6:00 AM and 8:00 AM, have coffee, pay bills, or just reviewed my budget, get one to two hours of school assignments done, get a workout in, take a shower and comfortably start working at 11:30 AM.  During my lunch break, I make lunch and/or dinner. When I sign off at 7:30 PM, my family members and I are ready to spend quality time together. 

Now I currently don't have a millennial manager, but I do have a manager that understands that productivity is important, not where I work.  Um, servant leader.

Remember I said, I had a bone to pick about this one. Around 2022, when everyone was ready to go back to the office, a lot of employees have pushed back. Rightfully, so they showed how efficient they were working from home. Why mess with a process that wasn't broken?  A millennial manager kept saying to me, well, they need to get over it, they were hired to be in person.  Well, excuse me, but weren't, they hired to be in person and you made them work remote. Now you want to do what's most convenient for you. And yes, as employees we're there for the business's best interest, but please don't use that as an excuse.   I later continued to pick at this bone because something I was hired to do was taken away from me and then I was told I should have been okay with it. I said, "but I was hired to do this." The irony was lost for them though. 

The third way company culture can be changed by the millennial manager is to emphasize autonomy. I'm going to flag one of my biggest failures as a manager. Even after knowing how much I need to learn as a manager, I made a serious hiccup in my last managerial role.  I came in swinging and micromanaged a manager that was reporting to me. Can I make a small excuse and say that I was influenced by information being provided to me about this manager?  The manager I micromanage was a seasoned employee, but apparently there were some issues that I was asked to address. So I did.  

But again, I'm easily manipulated by information and situations. Now I say manipulated, but the truth is I'm gullible and it takes me time to see dishonesty in others. So when I kept getting fed negative information by a millennial manager about how there was "unfair treatment by this individual" and "Aruna, you need to have a conversation about the tone of emails." I ran with it.  But one day I didn't. Again, by a millennial manager, I kept getting told "we're going to remove this person from managing so-and-so" or "they're going to be demoted." But I never saw any action being taken. So one day I called this millennial manager's bluff.  I had been asked to sit on interviews for an open position, but the way that the organization operated  only the direct manager sat in. I wasn't the direct manager. I was the manager's manager. So I said, unless we're taking active action against this employee, I think they should be in the interviews not me. Guess what happened?  Yes, no active action was being taken. I really wish I knew what the purpose of all the sneering comments and unnecessary feedback I kept getting about this person was. I wonder if the organization knows how high the administrative burden was of the discussions that did absolutely nothing.

The fourth way that company culture can be changed by the millennial manager is to explain what the company is doing for the greater good. I worked under one manager that really made me understand what our organization was doing for others and that really drives me. I hate the idea of doing mundane paperwork without a bigger purpose.  This is an area I'm severely lacking, but I blame some of that on budget. Truly a lot of this is out of my control. I have had good ideas in the past, and I've even asked to be added to like an employee engagement sort of team,  but it was to no avail. But I do want to work on this. There needs to be purpose in our work and I can't be the only person that's inspired by it. I need to do the inspiring too.

The fifth way that company culture can be changed by the millennial manager is my favorite. Focus on the whole employee. Why do we stop treating our employees as human beings? This is someone's parent child grandchild, sibling. I've actually been using this as a way to cope with my frustration at work, even when I'm dealing with toxic managers or employees.  This is someone's parent or child. I have a parent and child too and I would hope that others would be patient with them and respect their difference of opinion or kindly provide them with feedback.

Employees, leaders, managers, everyone. We're all human beings who deserve respect.

Think about this situation before you may say, or do something unkind at work. So I'd been having a really hard time at a position sometime ago.  I was kind of shunned by my manager. I kept getting weird feedback and I realized that my manager was trying to make me miserable so that I'd quit. Anyway. I got myself out of the situation, and after taking some time to heal, one day, I just called my mom and I told her everything that I experienced. She texted me every day for a month after that, checking on me. Now I have an immigrant mom who speaks a dialect so I'm going to slightly paraphrase here for the sake of clarity. One of her texts read,  my daughter, please feel better.  Immediately after she wrote,  my daughter, are you happy? 

And I almost cried because I realized how hurt she felt, knowing what I had been through. Like I mentioned, my mom is an immigrant that didn't go past grade six and together with my dad, my parents sacrificed so much and worked incredibly hard so I could have the life I have today.  And I wish that that manager that spent months slowly digging at my self-confidence could know that. Somewhere along the lines, they forgot I was a human being and hurting me, hurt others too. 

So in conclusion managers in general, have the ability to change company culture for the better. I realize that sometimes this is not logical and change cannot take place with one person, but as someone who has earnestly tried, the differences are made in the experiences that you have. Maybe the entire culture didn't change, but each working experience was respectful and people will remember that.  If you're successful in changing the culture, bravo.  I would love to connect to see how you did that. Because as a one man island in a few of my positions, trying to do better for employees, I was unsuccessful in changing the culture. I'd love to share a happy ending. 

Thank you for joining me on this episode of "Learning to Manage".  I hope you found some valuable insights and inspiration to enhance your leadership skills.  If you enjoy today's episode, please be sure to subscribe to this podcast for more discussions on leadership and management and don't forget to leave a review to let me know how I'm doing. If you have any questions, topics suggestions, or stories to share about your own leadership journey, I would love to hear from you. Please visit the show notes for my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and some additional resources.

Remember, leadership is not just about directing others. It's about empowering others to reach their full potential. Until next time, I'm Aruna Seegolam, signing off from "Learning to Manage". Take care and keep learning, keep growing, and keep leading with purpose.