Thinking Like a Boss Gives Millennials Career and Leadership Success

Forty-one and 43 percent of Millennial Leadership Study participants find themselves respectively deficient in the technical expertise and the industry experience skill sets that precede leadership. Four, 53 and 68 percent of survey participants respectively give University coursework, mentoring and online classes as the type of training that develops effective leadership skills. Eighty-three percent of Millennial Leadership Study participants have reservations about management-heavy businesses and indicate preferences for pursuing career paths in companies “with fewer layers of management.”

Fifty-one and 66 percent of survey participants imply thinking like a boss by respectively claiming as theirs the most important leadership skills of communication and relationship-building.

Thirty-nine and 50 percent of Millennial Leadership Study participants respectively judge career advancement opportunities jeopardized by intra-company trends toward inadequate communication and toward insufficient leadership development. 

A reluctance to conform and a tendency to question process keep millennials from accepting precedent as a reason for how and why to get things done.

Dan Schawbel, author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules for Career Success, looks at millennials thinking like a boss from the perspective of the survey’s leader. He mentions in his bestselling, career success-related book: “Today’s leaders want to create their own rules. They want to innovate and change how work is done.” He notes information-sharing as a top leadership skill since honesty is a trait that people value in leaders and “We’re all sick of spin and buzzwords.”

Information-sharing offers optimum impacts when leaders hold regular team and special one-on-one meetings, keep office doors open, and recognize team members by face, name and responsibility. 

Team-building through frequent meetings, member recognition, open-door policies and practices, and supportive shares promotes members thinking like a boss and serves as a top leadership skill. Whitney Wolfe of Bumble dating app and Tinder social discovery application quantifies team-building as “You can’t lead with fear. Results are better when people feel encouraged.”

Lindsey Pollak, author of Becoming the Boss, recognizes top leadership skills, for information-sharing and team-building, in the union of being oneself yet being open to improvement. She states that “This generation is more supportive toward different types of leadership” since executive-coaching and mentoring overcome reluctance to deliver bad news or speak publicly.

Meredith Bryan thinks that all three top leadership skills contribute to “honing an effective and individual leadership style” for collaborative yet individualistic, passionate yet purposeful millennials. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Brooklyn-based writer Meredith Bryan's article on millennial leadership skills appears in the May 2016 issue of Self magazine.
"Win at Life: Think Like a Leader," Self, May 2016: art8amby @art8amby, via Twitter April 12, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/art8amby/status/719941040006770689

Infographic from The Hartford's 2015 Millennial Leadership Survey presents training priorities identified by millennials.
infographic for The Hartford's 2015 Millennial Leadership Survey: CC BY 2.0, via SIM @SIMInt, via April 17, 2016 @ https://twitter.com/SIMInt/status/721831915905544193

Career and workplace expert Lindsey Pollak finds millennials as ". . . more supportive toward different types of leadership . . ."
photo by Tom Wool: Mark De Riz @MarkDeRiz, via Twitter September 30, 2014, @ https://twitter.com/MarkDeRiz/status/517027272763920385

Millennial entrepreneur Whitney Wolfe shares in Meredith Bryan's millennial leadership skills article that "You can't lead with fear."
Whitney explains that "Results are better when people feel encouraged."
TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016, Brooklyn Cruise Terminal; Photo Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch; Wed., May 11, 11:01:02: TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/techcrunch/26954840405/

Bryan, Meredith. May 2016. “Take the Lead.” Self. New York, NY: Condé Nast.

“The Millennial Leadership Survey.” Workplace Trends > Media Room > July 20, 2015.

• Available @ https://workplacetrends.com/the-millennial-leadership-survey/

Pollak, Lindsey. 2014. Becoming the Boss: New Rules for the Next Generation of Leaders. New York, NY: HarperCollins. 

• Summary available @ http://www.lindseypollak.com/books/

Schawbel, Dan. 2015. Promote Yourself: The New Rules for Career Success. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press paperback.

• Summary available @ http://danschawbel.com/books/