57
Handling the
expectations of
the Y Generation
Think Tank
Charlotte Gentry, EVCOM chair and CEO of Pure
Events, worries that the Digital Age is skewing the
expectations of the younger workforce
warn you in advance that this
column may be viewed
controversially, but it is a topic that
I think a lot of people leading
teams are struggling with: the
attitudes of those known as the ‘Y
Generation’ and those in their 40s,
like me, are poles apart.
I have walked a long and arduous
career path, rife with challenges and
learnings, enabling me to be in a
position of thought-leadership and
relative authority. However, some of
my colleagues, who are at the start of
their careers, seem to want
everything right now and don’t seem
to understand that a career is a
journey. You simply can’t jump from
having no or limited experience to
earning a salary the equal of
someone who has been in the sector
for longer.
Even more challenging still, when
trying to explain this, the explanation
seems to fall on deaf ears, revealing
a level of incomprehension.
How do we therefore marry both
attitudes? I believe I am not alone in
my frustrations in this area and have
had many conversations with others
in similar positions to me who seem
to have the same challenges. What
tools do people like me need to equip
ourselves with to be able to manage
younger people at the start of their
careers and navigate their way
through this process?
We now live in a society where all
information is instant, and we can
view other people’s lives openly
through social media. It is important
to recognise, however, that social
media channels are more about
‘bragging rights’ rather than a
true reflection of other people’s
lives. Therefore, a note to all
those who are born in the
1990s: just because your
best friend is showing you
pictures of the best parts of
his or her job or life in
general, it doesn’t mean
that this is really what
their life looks like.
What are the other
determining factors
that have made our
attitudes to life so
different, and is it the
same in each
generation? Is this
gap so different
from the one that
our parents
experienced? We
have lived through
one of the greatest
technology advances in
history alongside the
easy availability of
information and I suspect
this has something to do
with this big shift.
I try to be as
open-minded as I can, as
someone in a position of
authority who owns their own
agency, and I guess that my
advice to anyone managing a
team and being faced with the
same challenges, is to set
clear guidelines around code
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of conduct as well as expectations
that the leadership team have,
on performance, career
progression within the team
and general behaviour. It is
also important to have a skill
set matrix where members of
the team can clearly see
what skills they need to
achieve in order to travel
up the career ladder.
This at least then
enables people to
assess where they
sit in terms of
their
experience
and skill
set.