Page 9 - Volume 40-Number 03 05-25-17

How to Provide Feedback to your Millennial Workforce

By James DaSilva

James daSilva is the longtime editor of SmartBrief’s leadership newsletter and blog content, as
well as newsletters for entrepreneurs, manufacturers and other fields. Find him at @SBLeaders
or email him.

Here’s the thing: Millennials are a challenge for older generations in the workplace. Millennials
often feel empowered and opinionated, they are curious and ambitious, and many of them
want to receive and give feedback.
So what? Every generation needs to come in and challenge the status quo, says Kim Scott, a
former Google executive and author of the book “Radical Candor.”
We recently spoke about her book and philosophy, which has inspired her company, Candor
Inc., and how giving and receiving feedback with candor is difficult for everyone -- but
essential to learn. She discussed her advice for managers and leaders in handling feedback
with millennials, as well as what millennials should do with regards to candor and feedback
when first building a relationship with their bosses.

Here are some of the key takeaways for older managers and for millennials.
Older generations shouldn’t shy away from the challenge

Accept that being challenged is natural, and instead of fighting this tendency among
millennials, open up to them, listen, and you’ll see how much you learn. As Scott told me:
“Giving feedback and getting feedback are both really hard to do. And, we’re all taught from
a very young age to avoid these conversations. So, most of us have a parent who told us, early
on, ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.’ And now all of a sudden you
become a manager and it’s your job to say it. Undoing training that’s been pounded into your
head since you learned to speak is hard, legitimately hard. So, I think that’s part of the reason
why managers are reluctant to give employees -- whether the employees are millennials or not
millennials -- feedback is because it’s deeply ingrained in them not to do it, actually.”
The expectation-setting doesn’t end when you enter the workforce, either.

“I think for a long time people were told, when they get their first job, ‘Be professional.’ And
all too many people translate that to mean ‘leave your emotions, leave your humanity, leave
the very best part of yourself at home and come to work like some kind of robot or something.’
And I think that was probably more true a generation ago than it is today.
Part of the reasons that managers are reluctant to give feedback in a way that’s radically candid is

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