The cover of Chicago’s Red Eye this morning shows a bright and shiny cartoon smile, over a bright and shiny yellow background. The headline reads, “Gen Happy: Despite life’s biggest stresses, Millennials are carefree and worry-free—and, for some reason, full of smiles.”
Uh-huh.
Ready? I’m calling BS. It’s not that I doubt the results—I’m sure the calls were made and that people responded the way they did—it’s just that the calls were made to ~2,200 people between the ages of 18 and 24, including 1,100 undergraduates. Read: people in college, without mortgages and not yet looking for jobs; people who could very well have an intellectual understanding of what it means to need financial security yet have no real, visceral reaction to the concept. (Now, don’t get all don’t-you-go-stereotyping-all-college-kids on me. I’m not. I know there are plenty of students who work their butts off to pay for their living expenses. But admit it: there is truth to the cliche, “College is not the real world.”)
Below is a review of the study, followed by what managers need to take away from it.
Millennials are Happy… Like Xers are Slackers, Maybe?
My concerns about this study are threefold: first, there is the issue with those 1,100 undergrads. If this group is still coming of age and finding its identity, then they are likely calibrating their happy-o-meters in the chaos of today’s world. Which means they’re really not the same Millennials as those who calibrated a few years ago, before this economic turd sandwich got served up. We have to ask if there is a cultural division within the Millennial generation… as I believe there was in my Gen X cohort.
Second, the data that came back from the 1,100 working adults may not mean much other than people are very good at mentally blocking out major, stressful events when going about their day-to-day activities. Psychologists who study heuristics—little mental shortcuts people use to filter the information that bombards us constantly—routinely find that people block out major crises after a short while, as we did right after 9/11, too. Is this survey really picking up on happiness—or a rebound after the crushing economics of the past 9 months? Maybe people are just tired of being tired?
Thirdly, what’s “happy?” Is it a state of mind that comes and goes? Or a state of being that is constant? Maybe it’s an ideal that increases during tough times as people try to act as exemplars for others? Jean Twenge wrote a book called Generation Me that looked at this issue, too, and she came to a conclusion 180° from the AP/mtvU poll reported on by the Red Eye.
Still, whatever your feelings about the study, if you manage Millennials, then I recommend you use the results to play a bit of “what if.” As in, “What if this is really true—what is the implication of managing a ‘happy’ workforce during a rough and tumble business cycle?”
Managers: Implications of “Happy” Millennials”
This happens to be a topic I know something about. I work with managers to help them recalibrate their perspective of what management means when working with the younger generations, and just as importantly, I work with Gen X and Millennial professionals to help them make the leap from a “doer’s” mindset to a managers (or even an owner’s) mindset. I’ve also done my own research on the subject. Take a deep breath; the answers are simple to understand, but tough to execute:
You have to sell the challenge
As obvious as your business challenges may be to you, your Millennials may not see them. Happy people don’t feel pain, and people without pain aren’t sharp. If you don’t sell the challenge, you’re likely to face turnover and lower productivity as happy ones (read: non-believers) tune out, mentally or physically. That would be bad.
Millennials’ expectations on you are as high as ever
In downturns, managers tend to be a bit more autocratic than they are during upswings. Nothing wrong with that. But be aware that your happy employees, if they’re at all oblivious to the economic turmoil around them, won’t understand that your change in behavior is the result of a change in your environment. They’ll simply think you turned into a jerk. You need to help them understand the your reality—and therefore, their reality—in clear terms that helps them come to the right conclusion on their own.
Think more broadly about your Millennials issue
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: setting strategy of any kind, including human capital strategy, based on birth dates is astrology, not strategy. Generational cohorts are not homogeneous groups; each one is impacted by trends in demographics, economics, politics, technology that cut across generations. And one’s career phase, regardless of age, will have a big impact on his or her perspective.
In short, there’s more going on here than 2,200 20-somethings checking the happy box in a survey.
Managing Millennials to Better Productivity, Irrespective of Happy
If this issue is holding your organization back, don’t settle for a blog post. Email me for details on how I can help you get in front of the trend.
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 
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