Enough with the praise already, and start working smarter

Published by Ryan Healy on November 13th, 2007 in Productivity, Work/Life | 36 Comments

According to Sunday's 60 Minutes segment, Millennials are nothing but a bunch of narcissistic, praise hounds who want nothing to do with hard work. Judging by the dialogue we've created on Employee Evolution and the insight of our Millennial peers, CBS needs to do a little more research.

This whole deal about constant praise is getting on my nerves. Who really wants to hear they did a great job on an Excel spreadsheet that took all of 20 minutes to create? Who wants confetti thrown at them by little clowns running down the hall? Do you really want to hear, "Great job today!" before you go home every night? I certainly don't.

Managers, please check the empty praise at the door. Instead, bring your young employees some honest guidance and feedback, and bring lots of it. We're in our early to mid-twenties. We spent the past four years navigating a college life that doesn't even come close to preparing us for the real world. How can we possibly know how to handle new and difficult situations at work? And how can we possibly know if we are doing things correctly without a little help?

Constructive criticism goes a long way. Sure, it's not always fun to hear that I did a poor job of preparing a PowerPoint presentation, but if nobody tells me, how can I ever improve? Managers who are too worried about offering some constructive criticism are not only doing a disservice to their company, but are doing a disservice to their employee's futures. Deserved praise, helpful guidance and constructive criticism all go a long way, as long as you're honest, your employees will respect you. And genuine respect is the only thing that will truly breed loyalty.

Now that we have the praise issue taken care of, let's talk about our lack of work ethic.

It's probably true that kids aren't taking jobs as early as they used to. And yes, this can probably be blamed on the pressures of needing a ridiculously impressive resume littered with extra-curricular activities to get into college these days. But all those team sports, volunteering experiences, business clubs and world travels are breeding a new kind of work ethic. It's called smart-hard work.

If employers took a look around the blogosphere they would find a huge number of 18 to 25 year olds discussing the intricacies of Lifehacking, the art of productivity and the best ways to minimize their times spent checking email. Results are what really matter, and Millennials innately understand this. Being a hard worker is a great trait to have, and it will certainly take you far. But being a smart-hard worker will take you much farther.

A hard worker will work his tail off for eight hours a day, and no doubt stay late to do extra work whenever asked. A smart-hard worker will take advantage of technology and figure out how to get eight hours of work done in six hours, convince his boss to let him work remotely and spend the next two hours updating his blog, making business connections online and going to the gym to keep in shape.

And a smart-hard worker is smart, mind you. So he will work 'til all hours of the night when it is absolutely mandatory to get the job done – not just to impress the boss and get to the corner office.

I admit, Millennials are in the midst of adapting to the real world, and it's no easy transition. So give us feedback, give us guidance and please tell us when we did a bad job. We want to learn from the people who have been in our shoes.

But don't forget to notice our knack for efficiency, productivity and ability to work for results rather than hours. It's all about getting the job done and having a life. People have been trying to figure out how to do this for years; I think we're finally on the right track.