Coaching: the no.1 key to unlock Millennials’ engagement at work

Millennials worry and care about their impact in the world. Is their company in line with their core values? What about the organisation’s purpose – is it adequate to their own personal one? Coaching allows for both to be aligned, making sure they become leaders who are inspiring, authentic, and who strengthen cohesion, identity and a feeling of belonging in the workplace.

It’s time we reviewed the leadership styles within organisations: millennials who account for over half of the workforce today want a “coach”, not a “boss”.

Most of the companies have started to understand this need and adopted a management style based on inclusion, engagement and involvement, less so on control (too many leaders aren’t even aware they’re doing this! Red flag. Big one.)

Find out if you’re a micro-manager using this test I’ve developed based on 16+ years of experience: Uncover your mind blind spots (scoreapp.com)

Millennials are looking for accessible leaders whom they can easily talk to about success and failures with. To keep engagement up, it becomes essential to approach this generation with a “coach” attitude rather than putting on a really old-fashion “boss” cape.

In fact, just look around. Companies who have a fairly strong coaching culture are encouraging “coaching” behaviours and train their leaders and managers on key coaching principles.

Right, so what does it look like?

Giving feedback + recognition

Millennials need frequent feedback, seek explanations on what is going well and improvements. For a manager, this means being available, listening well and building trust one step at a time.

Although regular feedback is a proven method to increase employee engagement, its quality is just as important. Giving constructive feedback to a collaborator, highlighting the positive points along with areas of improvement is a good start. Encouraging that same person to define concrete measures to improve their performance is a great additional step.

Managers and leaders using coaching skills empower employees more and generate more engagement, more motivation and more performance within their teams. Less focused on micro-management and control, energies are expanded for the benefit of growth and change management.

Personal development opportunities

Millennials are very open to self-reflection, understand themselves better and challenge themselves in order to grow and develop new skills. Mentoring and coaching are two types of approaches that appeal to them. Are you providing this to your team? If so, what level of depth are you offering them?

Preparing emerging leaders to take on their role in a complex world

63% of Millennials feel unprepared & apprehensive when taking on a new leadership role.

Remember when you started? How were you feeling? Fanfare and drumrolls or were you actually feeling overwhelmed and thrown in cold water, expected to know how to swim?

As millennials prepare to take on managerial functions, it is essential to prepare them to deploy these responsibilities. Many studies have demonstrated that for millennials, opportunities for development and continuous growth, especially through coaching, are a key element.

Work-life balance

Many organizations are thinking about possible solutions to make work more flexible. Coaching will complement these concrete actions with a reflection on priority management, stress management that may result from it. This is a direct link to the purpose bits we’ve mentioned earlier on. If we believe that our professional growth starts with ourselves, then we’re putting us in the driving seat. We should do the exact same thing for the remaining hours we’ve got in the day. Work-life balance. From 9-to-5, to 5-to-9. It’s a mindset shift we all need.

Final words

Access to coaching is an opportunity for development for the entire triangle: the coachee (me), the team (us) , the organisation (it). It’s an integral part of a strategy to attract, develop and retain young generations. Still often reserved for high ranks in the organization chart of many companies, access to coaching can nevertheless take different forms: external coaching, internal coaching and managers/leaders trained in coaching techniques.

So long, leaders!

Mags

What qualifies me to offer this advice?

I’ve worked in the FMCG industry for over 16 years across a variety of large companies, formerly as a Head of Brand, and have seen the good, the bad and the ugly of leadership.

There are thousands of emerging leaders getting into roles where they’re not being supported to given the development to be great leaders.

My mission is to help them mind the leadership steps, making self-awareness their number 1 strength.