Archive for the ‘Generation Y’ Category

During our fourth and final call in the Flexible Work Summit, Blake Leath of The Blake Leath Group, Ryan Healy, co-founder of Brazen Careerist, and Kyra Cavanaugh, owner of Life Meets Work, shared “Strategies for Stretching Leaders and Teams.”

During today’s call we talked about ways to successfully implement change within your organization, how Generation Y is changing work and leadership, and tips for managing flexible performance. Here are a few of my personal notes from the call:

• Resilience is paramount in a changing work environment and can show up 4 different ways: in individuals, in behaviors (e.g., it can be practiced and learned; meaning & engagement are important), in experiences (e.g., emotional echoes), and in leadership (be engaged, accessible, and get some wins).
• The One Degree Assessment: Look for the right one degree of difference—one thing you could change and do really well, that would make a world of difference within your organization.
• Gen Y employees, despite the common perception that they are disloyal job hoppers, are actually extremely loyal to their team.
• When leading Millennial employees, take extra time to provide clear direction, fully explain expectations, and provide plenty of feedback. It’s also important to provide opportunities for leaders to emerge from groups and teams.
• Want to start a flex work policy in your organization? Take first steps by co-creating a flexible work agreement with your employees. Lay out all the expectations and set a time to revisit and revise after a trial period.
• Which side of the management style continuum are you on? Controlling or Trusting? 
• Work-life balance doesn’t have to be perceived as a “soft” benefit. You can, and should, tie flexibility to profits and productivity—especially in this economy.

If you’d like access to the full recording of the fourth session, head over to www.FlexibleWorkSummit.com and register for the entire teleseminar series (the recording is available until Friday afternoon). 

If you missed any part of the Flexible Work Summit and want to grab the recordings, transcripts, and action guides for the entire series, you can do so here. There is a Home Study version with binder and CDs, as well as a Digital Version with MP3s and PDFs. These packages are available at a discounted price for the next few days.

Finally, I’m offering $100 off of the upcoming Flexible Work Bootcamp until Friday, May 22nd. As a member of the Bootcamp you’ll receive 12-week s of in-depth and personalized training and coaching, along with a lot of extra resources to help you implement flexibility within your organization. We’re keeping the size of the group small so you and your team can get the personal attention you need to implement a customized flexible work solution within your organization. You can find the full details about the program and reserve your spot at the discounted rate at www.FlexibleWorkBootcamp.com.

I don’t care for the term “work-life balance.” It just doesn’t make sense to me. Who wants a balance between work and life? Balance implies a state of equilibrium or equality. That means if we look at a 24-hour period (and I subtract 8 hours for sleep), I’m to spend 8 hours working and 8 hours doing “life” stuff. And if I want to spend more time on personal things, I need to increase the hours I spend working—all in the name of balance. Hmmm… not really what I’m after.

In an old, but great post on why he doesn’t want work/life balance, Ryan Healy, co-founder of both Employee Evolution and Brazen Careerist, talks about blending work and life, rather than balancing work and life. Work and life aren’t separate entities. Why exactly do we feel the need to keep the two separate?

Blending work and life implies a sense of fluidity between work and personal tasks. You adjust and adapt your schedule to fit your needs. Work adapts to fit your life, not the other way around. In a global, technologically advanced society, where we can produce results from virtually anywhere, at any given time, why do we continue to be bound by rigid barriers between work and life?

In naming my company I came up with the term “workstyle design” to partly capture this concept. Workstyle design is an active process of purposefully creating a style of working congruent with your beliefs, values, and lifestyle needs. It’s about designing a work environment that allows you to effortlessly float between your business life and personal life. It creates fluidity between work and life—not balance. 

In his post, Healy mentions that the term “work-life balance” doesn’t even make sense to Generation Y employees. They understand and resonate with blending work and life. I think work-life balance’s days are limited. The future of work is about fluidity of time. When the architecture of time is redesigned, there is room for business, personal life, and whatever else you need.