Motivational Techniques for Gen X

¶ … Motivational Techniques for Gen X and Gen Y

Motivational Techniques and Strategies for Gen X and Gen Y Workers: Implications for Management and Leadership Strategies

Strategies for sustaining and growing the commitment and productivity of Gen X and Gen Y workers is drastically different, and made more complex by the compounding effects of variations in management styles. Active vs. passive management-by-exception styles and the combined effects of transactional and transformational leadership styles each are interpreted significantly different. The values, perceptions and predominant career and life considerations of Gen X and Gen Y are so different a management strategy designed for one will be largely ineffective on the other (Arsenault, 2004). The research, analysis and recommendations provided in this analysis indicate that Gen X and Gen Y have fundamentally different expectations with regard to their existing jobs, their perceptions of supervision, and completely different needs for achieving job satisfaction in their work. In short, their idealized set of preferences for intrinsic job value, supervision approaches and determinants of satisfaction vary at a statistically significant level between Gen X and Gen Y worker generations (Zemke, Raines, Filipczak, 2000).

Defining Gen X and Gen Y Values Analysis

Those born between 1965 and1980 is the generation known of as Generation X (Allen, 2004). This is a significantly smaller generation than the Baby Boomers. Demographic researchers have determined that the drop-off in the size of the Gen X generation is attributable to younger Baby Boomers putting off having children until their careers were stabilized and income was more predictable for raising a family on (Allen, 2004). In addition older Baby Boomers had passed their prime child bearing years and had shifted their attention to their careers (Allen, 2004) (Auby, 2008).

Gen Xers have a distrust of organizations due to many of their Baby Boomer parents being caught in layoffs, losing their jobs in mergers and acquisitions, and in general seeing that the trust between organizations and employees seriously had eroded during their parents' generation. There is also the fact that many Gen Xers have seen their parents' workaholic lifestyles as paying too high a price for financial and material success (Hill, 2004). As a result, Gen Xers strive for self-reliance and independence, see authority as earned rather than given (Allen, 2004) are adaptable, creative and seek balance in their lives over being entirely consumed with their work (Zemke, Raines, Filipczak, 2000). Watching their parents go through turbulent career transitions, many Gen Xers have a skeptical view of organizations and are in general not loyal to them as much as they are to their career area of interest. As a result of this commitment to their careers over a given job, Gen Xers see job hopping as a primary means of career development and advancement (Buckley, Beu, Novicevic, Sigerstad, 2001). Gen Xers value constructive, realistic feedback on their jobs that gives them an honest assessment of how they are performing over vague or only sporadic support (Allen, 2004). For Gen Xers solid performance feedback they can constructively use to improve is essential for their satisfaction, this is why management-by-exception approaches to managing them often fail (Levit, 2009). Gen Xers, being more committed to their professions than their companies, also are known for their technical and skills-based acumen, especially in technical professions including software development and software engineering (Zemke, Raines, Filipczak, 2000). As a result it is increasingly common to see Gen Xers managing Baby Boomers whose skills may have become out of date over time (Salt, 2003), and Gen Yers who are just entering the workforce (Tulgan, 2004). Gen Xers firmly get the concept of knowledge being a critical commodity and catalyst for growth in one's career (Howe, Strauss, 2000). As a result of these unique characteristics, values, motivations and mindsets, Gen Xers are responsible for 80% of all new companies started in the U.S. within the last three years according to researcher's estimates (Auby, 2008).

The generation born between 1981 and 1999 are commonly referred to as Generation Y or Gen Yers (Allen, 2004). This group continues to be one that gets an exceptional level of demographic, psychographic and trending analysis, and as a result is one of the more well understood from an empirical research standpoint (Sayers, 2007). Gen Yers are also the fastest growing group of the American population today (Allen, 2004) and are projected to be more ethnically diverse, more technology-savvy and capable of working in more globally collaborative work teams as well (Howe, Strauss, 2000). As with Gen Xers, Gen Yers see the potential to increase their marketability and gain independent through a continual pursuit of knowledge (Howe, Strauss, 2000). This is a significant point of differentiation between Gen Xers and Gen Yers however; the latter expect their jobs to have an element of continual learning and knowledge enrichment included within them. Admittedly Gen Yers have elevated expectations as to what their jobs need to offer in terms of knowledge and the ability to continually increase one's marketability and value in the labor market over time (Alch, 2000). Researchers suggest this is due to the fact that more personalized teaching techniques including scaffolding (Najjar, 2008) where individual student strengths and weaknesses are used in the development of learning programs during the educational careers of Gen Yers now define their expectations for job enrichment (Howe, Strauss, 2000). For those managing Gen Yers in more entry-level positions this presents a formidable challenge. These advanced approaches to nurturing individualized learning with a strong emphasis on academic achievement has also led to Gen Yer's realizing early on in their academic careers the critical skill set of collaboration (Buckley, Beu, Novicevic, Sigerstad, 2001). This is quite different than Baby Boomers who value individualized achievement at times over collective accomplishment (Arsenault, 2004). As a result of Gen Yers being more focused on creativity and continuous learning to maintain their ability to compete in the careers, meaningful work and the self-development are paramount concerns to them (Buckley, Beu, Novicevic, Sigerstad, 2001). Many Gen Yers have as their most significant academic accomplishment those tasks completed in highly collaborative teams as well (Alch, 2000). As a result of these collaborative skill sets engrained in many Gen Yer's throughout their academic careers, combined with the technological savvy and expertise many of them have, this generation is expected to fundamentally re-shape workplaces throughout their careers (Alch, 2000). Gen Yers understandably have a high degree of confidence in their social and communication skills and recognize the value and strength of diversity. These values, perceptions and experiences of Gen Yers make the completing of meaningful work their top professional priority followed by being part of a strong team that share common values, and lastly, the potential to meet their own personal and professional goals (Allen, 2004). Gen Yers are unique in their valuing of strong team association as the second highest priority for work requirements (Allen, 2004).

Motivational Strategies for Gen X and Gen Y

One of the most significant variations in motivational strategies between Gen X and Gen Y workers are their relationships with their managers. Gen X workers in general have less of a generation gap with their managers, many of which are also Gen Yers and baby Boomers, than Gen Yers do (Arsenault, 2004). In studies of how effectively managers are navigating the differences in the needs of Gen Xers vs. Gen Yer's a glaring fact emerges that for the most part managers do not differentiate or attempt to enhance jobs for these generational groups despite knowing it would lead to greater satisfaction (Tulgan, 2004a). For the Gen Y worker, this is what often leads to job hopping to find work that has meaning, both from a professional development standpoint and societal one as well (Alch, 2000). Gen Yers are much less patient with their talents and skills not being effectively utilized to accomplished shared objectives than their Gen X counterparts. When the Herzberg motivation-hygiene model (2003) is used to analyze the significant difference between Gen X and Gen Yer's on job enrichment and the opportunity to do meaningful work one of the more difficult paradoxes for managers of these two generations of workers also becomes evident. Herzberg (2003) observed that young employees have the passion to prove themselves and are highly motivated to work diligently at new tasks yet lack the opportunities to translate their motivation into accomplishment. As a result, Gen Yers have more unmet needs from a management standpoint and often seek new positions to challenge themselves more than entry-level jobs allow for (Herzberg, 2003). One such experience is that of a recent university graduate from the University of Chicago who graduated with honors in software engineering and had built entire Intranets while in school, and who was given the task of maintaining code for other programmers at Microsoft on the Windows Vista operating system. While prestigious to be part of an operating system team, the Gen Yer felt completely unchallenged and quickly realized Microsoft's culture allowed innovation in shorter, more intense bursts than Google for example. Google and their rule of 20% which states one day a week, or 20% of any developers' time can be invested in projects they find innately interesting is now responsible for over 50% of their products and a very low turnover of Gen Yers in their workforce (Christensen, Anthony, Berstell, Nitterhouse, 2007). Clearly the University of Chicago graduate wants to go to Google as a result, and this scenario plays out in high tech companies globally all the time, as managers fail to realize the unmet needs of Gen Yers in their companies.

Gen Xers on the other hand are less likely to move from a job purely based on an imbalance of the Herzberg motivation-hygiene model (2003). In effect these unmet needs Gen Yers have only exacerbate the generation gap between themselves and their managers. Ironically managers who have Gen Yers in their work teams reporting to them often misinterpret these unmet needs as the need to be left alone and for independence (Avolio, Bass, 2004). As a result many turn to management-by-exception strategies that rarely provide solid feedback, and do not attempt to structure jobs for their optimal levels of fulfillment for Gen Yers (Kelan, 2008). What managers construe as the need for independence, Gen Yers interpret as indifference (Arsenault, 2004). An example of this is when a seasoned vice president of marketing was sent to Linksys, a recently acquired division of Cisco, to run all of analyst and investor relations, documentation, product marketing, public relations, and first-level customer support. The staff had over twenty employees, with over 80% being Gen Yers. The seasoned vice president of marketing had spent the last five years managing fellow Baby Boomers and a few Gen Xers, all of which were in sales and highly autonomous marketing positions. As a result the vice president had become very much of a believer in management-by-exception, relying on transactional leadership techniques including incentives and having strong transformational leadership ability in smaller teams. Yet the Gen Yers misread the management-by-exception approach as arrogance. This immediately created a lack of trust for the vice president of marketing and also set off varying reactions from the mostly Gen Y staff. From anger for lack of support to apathy as they interpreted their boss as only caring about his career, the department's morale eroded fast and key Gen Y de facto leaders of the group left. Others complained and eventually the vice president of marketing was replaced as productivity froze and conflicts escalated. What the vice president of marketing failed to realize was that Gen Yers did not respond to the occasional discussion of bigger bonuses or even of the enhanced Cisco benefits of stock ownership and stock options, all of which were major motivators for Baby Boomers and some of the Gen Xers he had managed in the past. This vice president of marketing failed because of perceptual blindness but also because he chose to rely on benefits and perks of being a Cisco employee and less about concentrating on the individual development needs each employee had. As empirical research indicates benefits are for the most part irrelevant as motivators to gen Yers (Clark, 2007) who are seeking work with greater purpose, and the opportunity to contribute as part of a collaborative team.

Effective management of Gen Xers and Gen Yers requires the ability to quickly navigate between a more active management-by-exception strategy as the exception, not the rule (Avolio, Bass, 2004). Instead, Gen Xers respond more to leadership that is a hybrid of transformational and transactional, with focus on the latter aspects of rewards for exceptional performance. Gen Xers are therefore consider rewards for exceptional performance of more value than their Gen Y counterparts. Where a manager's skill is tested however is balancing transactional leadership for Gen Xers and highly transformational leadership for Gen Yer's. Too much of a given focus on one or the other to the wrong group and morale can be impacted over time. Scaffolding (Najjar, 2008) is such a powerful learning strategy when coupled with the Internet that Gen Yers have over time set their minimum expectation levels at having this level of personalized mentoring and development. For any manager to meet these expectations, it takes an exceptionally high transformational leadership skill set and enough emotional intelligence to interpret situations and react to them appropriately (Arsenault, 2004). An example of this can be seen in a software start-up that was creating accounting software for small businesses who would lease access to it over the Internet. The development teams were predominantly Gen Yers who saw themselves as extreme programmers and software engineers, often working all night long on complex problems. The leader of the team was a Gen Xer who had extensive web development expertise, an exceptional work ethic and quick, sarcastic wit. He was perfect for managing a group of Gen Yers. Instead of promising big bonuses, stock options, or benefits (Clark, 2007) this manager instead gave the programmers a chance to earn excellent reputations in the industry by owning an entire application from initial coding to launch. He allowed them to run all aspects of development and for a Gen Yer; this was just what they wanted: meaningful work and independence. He also was tough on their programming skills and quality of work produced, and helped them learn new shortcuts in programming. He was implicitly trusted and soon the team had its own culture emerging which was completely different than the rest of the company. Within two years the team had produced over 50 modules, at one point outpacing marketing's ability to launch them and sales' ability to sell them. What happened was that the Gen X manager realized the Gen Y developers needed purpose and a bigger mission to go after and he gave it to them. He also realized they enjoyed working and at times competing with each other, and this brought the quality fo work for the entire team up. In short, the Gen X manager had tapped into the top criteria Gen Yers had for their careers and the result was exceptional productivity and most importantly, meaning in their work for Gen Yers.