Learn from our younger generation

Through TED, I have got to learn about Adora Svitak, a great young author from America. When I called her young, I mean it. She is only 14. I watched her speech in TED, and was totally blown away. I would strongly encourage everyone to experience her powerful words from http://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitak.html. The topic she has shared is “What can adults learn from kids?” and I found this topic extremely important to us, especially to our leaders.

Often we forgotten to listen and lend an ear to our younger one. We tend to share more of our experience to them instead of understand what’s in their mind. We lead them by our pass experience and expect their success. I would say at most of time, we have just simply ignored their voice. We forget the fact that the world has changed, and we did not catch up these changes better than our youths.

We communicate more rapidly through technology nowadays, which in fact we weren’t as good as our youngsters. We can learn more through Internet now, but we spend less time in comparison to our youngsters. We need to admit the fact that we can actually learn from our younger one in many aspects.

By empowering them to share their thought with us, we then get opportunities to learn. We can learn how to improve our management skill through Internet, and yet such learning can be costless. We can learn how to better communicate with others through technology, and again many of these tools are free. Through exchange ideas, we can identify much efficient ways to achieve result, and yet with lower price.

Lend an ear to our next generation, and allow them to share their opinions with us. Allow them to achieve their need of supreme through this little action, and you may avoid them to obtain responsiveness through miss behaviors. We will be surprise with how much we can learn from our youth, and yet how much they would appreciate such interaction from us.

Management for the New Generation

Management, the word invented by mankind in 20th century. It has been evolving through years from micro-management, open door policy, carrot & stick, empowerment and lately, ownership. Due to uncertainty of the world economic, industries have to make changes to better enhance management efficiency and productivities.

However, there are still industries fail to catch up or develop into the next business model, such as service industry. Majority still serves the golden rule of “customer is always right” or “customer first”, and continuously matching the wants of their customer instead of needs. The greatest need of all customers is engagement, not a room upgrade, free meal or any free gift. Of course, they are something we love to have, but not need to have. We all desire to engage and form some sort of friendship while experience a service, but we often can’t, due to unhappy employees.

Executive management from service industry complains on the current workforce and blames on their ego. Needs of our younger generation are fail to observe by this industry, which conclude with short labor.

One needs to be paid fairly for the amount of work contributed, even if it is only mechanical works that require no initiative. Employees should be treated with respect through salary as well, which many insist to ignore although it was clearly stated in most of human needs theories, the need of security.

In addition, one should be given a clear path to success for the challenge face, and such path should not be recognized as a gift from the company. Company needs to grow talents in order to sustain, and talents need company as a platform to shine. It is a win-win situation. Nevertheless managers often believe there will be another talent coming on his/her way to their organization, but disregard the fact that there are a lot of platforms out there waiting for talents too.

Last, I would like to encourage executive management from service industry to start recognizing our younger generation as individuals. Respect their need of being significant; allow them to implement their own personality into their task. Your customers are craving to interact with another individual, not robots that treat them like king or queen. (Of course, there are still people who wish for such kind of attention, but trust me they are getting lesser.)

Pay your employee equitably, and allow them to fulfill both their career and personal goals at yours. You then will be rewarded financial without trouble yourself with the hack of managing your people.

Strawberry Generation?

I have been hearing a lot of negative comments on the current younger generation work force. Many would refer them as the “Strawberry” generation, which reflects their inability in handling pressure and difficult environment.

Is it true?

I would strongly disagree. Due to the natural of my job, I have been working with a lot of youngster over the last few years, and majority of their age falls under the category of the “Strawberry” generation. But in conflict, I saw their energy and passion in work.

Most of them received at least a certain level of education, which lead them to become better thinker. They have rich knowledge beyond their education field and working industry. They come with great ideas, which are totally out of our mind, and these ideas work well in practical with just a little reality twist. They work hard and truly enjoy their work life. They aim to succeed and they knew what it takes. They constantly create new connection through conversation and Internet with their habits. They are faster learner than us, and the best is that we keep learning without bias.

Let me share one example here;

I got to know this fresh grad Chinese boy from China in Singapore who is working in an international hotel as a front desk agent. This role is totally new to him. He has no experience at all, and he was only in Singapore for less than 4 years to receive education in English, which he wasn’t familiar at all before leaving China. He had only up to 20 days of training with me to learn how to perform his role.

When he was first released to front, his senior teammates criticize him badly when he forgets things, does not follow the SOP completely, does not meet up to their expectation, and etc. He was unhappy. Therefore, he came to me as I was his trainer, and shared this frustration with me.

As a trainer, I can’t blame my senior employees, because they were doing what they believe is right; setting up the standard and following the book. So the only thing I asked this boy is “Did you learn from those criticizes, and are you capable to avoid being criticize on the same task again?” The boy answer me “Yes”. Then I told him “So in such case you have won this bet. You have won the bet for being criticize once on a specific issue to avoid to be nag ever again.” I can see from his eyes that he was not satisfied with my way of handling such issue.

Therefore, I prompted him the next question, “Why do you choose to stay and work in Singapore than return home?”. The young gentleman looked me in the eyes and reply, “I want to return home with experience, so I can earn more salary than others and better support my family”. So I told him, “Then continue to learn and outshine yourself amount the team. You will only return with success after you earn a title here.”

Another month later, I have learned that the boy has been the top performer within the team and has helped the hotel to generate great extra revenue from upselling.

He did not succeed because of my words. He succeeds because he has re-recognized his goal again. At least that’s what I have learned from him through the conversation conducted later.

Our younger work force just needs someone to show them a value, purpose and meaning in their role to motivate them in life. Most them do not want to work for money only and will always seek to further enhance their life with putting everything with a value. Motivate and lead our youngster, we need to learn how to work with them. This is actually much more beneficial for us instead of them at this moment. Do not label them with a tag and excuse ourselves from ignoring their way of living.