3 Ways to mentor Millennials to excel in the workplace

Millennials are a growing group of people in the workplace and providing them with mentors helps them to excel. According to Deloitte.com, “Millennials with a mentor are receiving good advice and feel somebody is interested in their professional development”. When providing mentoring, it’s important to remember that it should tie in with the goals of the company too.

3 Ways to mentor Millennials to excel in the workplace

The key to mentoring is understanding the person who is the mentee and to be able to direct them on the best journey that fits their goals. When mentoring a Millennials, you also need to take into account that their generation may have a “relatively negative state of mind” according to HBR.org.

To overcome the state of mind and to successfully mentor them, let’s look at three ways that will have a positive effect on Millennials. Using acronyms is an excellent way to remember things so let’s use A.C.E.:

1. Appreciate their efforts. When you acknowledge the efforts of Millennials in the workplace, it motivates them to excel with their work assignments. By appreciating the efforts, you are showing that you care about them and that they are very important to the workplace environment. You can show appreciate by letting them know how their efforts tie into the improvement of the workplace environment, or the team’s goals, or eve the mission of the company. Their efforts impact the bottom-line and they need to know how.
2. Cultivate their goals. When mentoring them to set goals, cultivate their originality to come up with goals that fit into their person growth and into the workplace environment. By doing this, you may be creating a way to keep them within the company as they go through personal growth. This also encourages them to engage with others within the workplace. According to Gallup, 87% of Millennials say that development is important in a job.
3. Encourage creativity. Inspiring Millennials to be creative gives them an outlet to feel like their work means something to the company. For instance, you can encourage them to come up with new processes to handle marketing or accounting or internal communications. When you promote their creativity, make sure to be open to giving the helpful feedback to guide their efforts.

As you mentor Millennials, keeping these simple tips in mind can help the mentoring process to excel. Do you have success stories to share about when you have mentored a Millennial? Please feel free to share by leaving a comment below.