Holiday Lesson in Speaking Millennial 101: Breathe a Daily Dose of Contribution

Tis the season! Though most holidays lessons surround consumerism, including the inane Black Friday extravaganzas, and fighting with family, it is also the season of volunteering, charity work, and giving.  We call it Contribution

And with those themes in mind, it was is important to once again defend the next generation and remind business leaders of one of the most under appreciated Millennial traits: their need to give back: Contribution.

You may not know it, but Millennials are big on donating both their time and their money.

In 2013, 60% of Millennials donated in some way and on average supported three charities. In terms of donations, Millennials donated on average almost $500 that year.

And remember, this is the generation with the worst financial prospects in recent history. Yet, Millennials are finding ways to give on top of student loans, stagnant wages, and rising costs of living.

Not only that, they truly believe their time, effort, and money will make a difference. According to the 2017 Millennial Impact Study,  70% believe they can affect positive change in the world.

Though Millennials want to assume the responsibility of fixing the world, they know they can’t do it alone. And that comes through in their approach to employers and their brands. They push hard and demand their Contribution efforts to be supported by both their employer and the brands they love.  And if hey don’t Millennials jump ship, and quickly, and with their friends. And that my friends cost businesses big bucks.

Millennials Need their Employers and Brands to Join Them in Contribution

Millennial’s believe they can change the world through their actions and they want their employers and favorite brands  to feel just as passionately and act socially conscious through yes,: Contribution.

The Harris Interactive study discussed above showed that 55% of Millennials said that a brand’s CSR reputation  sometimes affects (34%) or has a strong effect (17%) on their decision to make a purchase. Another study found that a staggering 80% of Millennials wanted to work for a company that cares about how it impacts and contributes to society.

Making the connection between Millennial’s emphasis on feeling engaged at work and their desire for their work to be meaningful, companies have increased their investment for developing and increasing their CSR policies in an effort to attract Millennials as professional talent and consumers.

How Brands and Employers can Meet the need for Millennial Contribution

Employers and brands can’t just talk-the-talk when it comes to CSR:  Millennials and Gen Z expect concrete and authentic examples of ways that companies and brands are thinking about the environment and their communities.

And this is a great thing! There are several different ways to get your brand involved with nonprofits and provide the opportunities to give that Millennials love.

Become a Corporate Partner
Becoming a corporate partner with a non-profit is a total win-win. With a partnership in place, your employees will have far easier time knowing how and when they can help, a big barrier to volunteering for 45% of Millennials. And for the non-profit, it means a bit more stability, resources, and visibility, all which help them further their mission.

Organize Team Building Around Giving
Happy hour isn’t the only team building activity out there. Encouraging and supporting volunteer groups is a great way of getting people spending time with each other outside of the office. Whether co-workers form their own giving coalition or it is a once a year get together, helping others is a great environment for bonding with colleagues.

Get them Involved
Millennials don’t just want to give money.  They want to be part of the change and actually feel they made a difference.  They measure themselves based on that giving and it means something real to them.  Provide them with opportunities to lead through direct impact and the doing.  They want to become leaders in Contribution.  They need to be able to have a tangible relationship with Contribution that is derived from an experience.  Make sure your Contribution plans include real experiences they can touch and feel and are memorable (video and social media won’t hurt) and make sure they are authentic and transparent.

Integrate with Important Causes
Whether you are a company like Intel that can donate 141 million dollars to energy conservation projects or a small coffee shop offering free coffee for a bucket of plastic picked up off the beach, there a thousands creative ways that you can integrate giving into your business model. Pick a cause that matches well with your company and begin brainstorming what you can do everyday to support your cause.

Millennials want to be engaged in meaningful work that impacts and they want to see, hear feel, and taste that they are impacting the world in a positive way.  Integrating giving, volunteering and outreach opportunities is a great way to provide a sense of working for a greater cause in the office.  By the way, please let them lead that charge they will not let you down.

And plus, a workplace where everyone is focused on helping other makes for a pretty stellar work environment.

Using Your Story to Connect with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and then went on to become the greatest basketball player of all time.

Amazon.com started with one guy selling books from his garage and then went on to become arguably one of the most powerful companies on the planet.

J.K. Rowling’s story about a teenage wizard was rejected by 12 publishers only to go on to become a brand worth $25 billion dollars.

You have likely heard one, if not all, of these stories. Why is that? Because storytelling is a uniquely powerful tool for humans.

From explaining which berries are safe to eat to which brand of shoes to buy, stories have played a critical role in human history. They become part of our culture and motivate people unlike anything else. But we seem to have forgotten the most important aspect of storytelling: it isn’t just for billion-dollar brands. Each of us has our own unique story and we can use that superpower of telling our story to appeal to, connect with, create trust, build relationships, and empower others.

Whether you are preparing for job interviews or trying to cut through the noise as you start a new business, identifying, refining, and sharing your story is the most effective way of getting the attention of others and getting them to connect with you on a personal level.

Identifying Your Story

I know what you are thinking, I hear it from clients all the time. You’re  thinking I don’t have a personal story and by the way I hate talking about myself in private, let alone in public.  There is nothing really that special about me, after all, I have never traveled the world or climbed Mt. Everest or saved a school bus full of children. What interesting story could I possibly tell about myself that will make a difference?

What is important to realize is that telling a good story doesn’t require anything miraculous. Just make it authentically you while focusing it on your audience and you will win every time!  Just watch any great comedian: a comedian can make a thousand people laugh hysterically talking about mundane things that we all do everyday. Your personal story can be equally as ubiquitous and powerful as a comedian’s joke.

The key to developing a powerful personal story is to identify the things that make you unique and that demonstrate the value you can bring to others via a personal relationship, client or an organization.

If you aren’t sure where to start, you can begin by answering a few simple questions about yourself:

  • Who Am I?
    Where was I born? Where do I come from? Who is my family? What is my background? What am I grateful for? And what or who has made me who I am? What makes me, well, me?
  • What Is My Experience?
    What work have I done? What am I inspired and motivated by? What am I passionate about?  What have I had to overcome and what are my triumphs?
  • What Value Do I Bring?
    What am I good at? What are my special skills? What has made me unique and special? Why do people love me, and what do I do to maintain that? What kind of attitude do I have? What can I do for others? What makes me successful that is not about my technical experience?

We spend everyday with ourselves and sometimes we forget what makes us special. After answering these questions, a few unique personal events, values, and passions should emerge about yourself that that you may have forgotten. These will form the foundation of your personal story which is pure connection currency.

With all the pieces of your personal story laid out in front of you, the next step is to assemble it into something that can really pack a punch.

Assembling Your Story

After thinking about the above questions, you should have an idea of what your personal story might be. But it might still be a bit raw, a random assortment of personal facts.

To create a fully-formed, powerful, personal story, you need to take those personal facts and turn them into a narrative that shows your strength, skills, passions, and values.

Your personal story should be the answer to the following question: how would you explain your personal story in a way that is brief, interesting, and that people can connect with?

Your personal story isn’t a script per se, but instead a framework or outline for how you present yourself. As an example, maybe you have overcome a difficult childhood experience that now fuels you to help others. Your story would explain why that particular event fuels you, what you learned from it, and how you are using that experience to help others.

While this example story would be unique to you, anyone could connect with it because everyone faces challenges at some point in their life. Overcoming challenges is a part of the human experience. And that is the purpose of your story: to give people a chance to connect with you over a shared experience and foster a genuine relationship

Share Your Story Every Day

From recent college graduates to ex-Marines, I work with people all the time who have an amazing personal story, who know they have an amazing story but, before working with us, simply never tell it.

And this is tragic because their stories are so powerful. I, for one, use my personal story everyday to motivate my colleagues, pitch potential clients, connect with my current clients, or just start a conversation at the gym. It is my offering to others for them to latch on to, connect and identify with, and use as a way to bridge the gap between others.

Your story can do the same. Whether you are speaking to an interviewer or a potential client, your listener is going to feel differently about you if they feel they share a genuine connection with you. You become “the guy who overcame X…” or “the young women who successfully did Y.” And that is exactly what you want.

Storytelling is an art and the people I coach to help develop their personal story put a lot of time and effort into developing it into something that maximizes its punch. It can take over 100 times practicing your story to get it right.  After they put the work in, telling their story becomes natural and a critical tool that they can use in an endless number of situations, helping them to make important connections every single day.  It is the absolute secret to getting the guy, the girl, the sale, the promotion, the win, the mentorship!

Go friggin tell your story, please!

Wake Up Law Firms! The Number One Perk Your Millennials Want is “Real” Mentoring

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Some  might refer to the law industry as “traditional.” I prefer the term “antiquated.”

Stringent  hierarchies, a focus on “paying dues,”  limited career paths, and the dangling of future rewards in return for years of unfulfilling grunt work are all staples of the legal industry; all are holdovers from a bygone error that included smoking in the office and Mad Man cocktail lunches.

And in response to these outdated industry practices, Millennials are choosing to take their talents elsewhere.

The fact that Millennials are leaving  the industry is not a head scratcher. Millennials have made it clear they want to feel valued at work. They want their work to be impactful and meaningful. And they  want to feel that they are growing and learning as professionals. And law firms miss the mark on all of those career characteristics.

Luckily, it doesn’t have to be this way. Progressive firms are using mentorship programs as powerful tools to re-engage their young talent,  increase Millennial job satisfaction, and increase their retention rates of young staff.

If your firm is feeling the Millennial woes, mentorship programs may be the solution you have been looking for.

The Science is In, Real Mentorship Programs Work

Mentorship. It isn’t flashy, it isn’t trendy,  and it isn’t very Instagramable.

But it is  the most sought after workplace perk for Millennials and law firms almost universally do not offer it.

Reflect on your own workplace for a second: how often do you have scheduled time for associates to work with, learn from, and be mentored by partners?

Likely, not often, if at all.

Forget about the clickbait headlines you have read about Millennials. The truth is Millennials crave interaction with senior staff. They are eager to learn. They want to feel they are directly contributing and playing an important role in the firm’s success. And they want to develop their professional skills.

Mentorship programs fulfill all of these needs. Firms that use mentorship and coaching programs find that their Millennials have “…better retention, increased job satisfaction, fewer mistakes, and more rapid acculturation…” when they participate in these programs.

These programs are known by many names — development Initiatives and advisor programs being two — and there are a variety of ways they can be structured. But they all aim to connect young talent with senior staff in a structured way that allows all generations to ask questions, transfer knowledge, and improve each other as professionals

So what do these programs look like in action? Below are a few ways firms are integrating mentorship in their workplace culture.

Traditional Mentoring

Traditional mentoring is essentially the apprenticeship model that has been used throughout human history.

Young talent at your firm is teamed up with senior staff to work on projects together and allow the mentee to see how work at higher levels is done.

Your young talent sees firsthand how a senior partner thinks and problem solves, they experience the daily challenges a partner faces, how partners grow the business, the way they deal with clients, and they work on projects that are more substantial than the ones an associate may be tasked to do on their own.

These programs are simple in theory, but execution can be challenging for those who have never created an effective mentorship program before. Busy schedules make it difficult for participants to stick with the program. Consistently tracking and measuring progress can be difficult without proper tools and procedures in place.  And without any way for the program to gain real traction, results often end up disappointing or nonexistent.

At launchbox, we know these challenges well, allowing us to design programs that specifically avoid these shortfalls from the start. Making sure both parties understand program expectations, setting aside formally scheduled times for the program, and helping to fully-integrate the program into the workplace culture have yielded powerful results for our clients.

Mentoring Networks

Mentoring networks are version 2.0 of traditional mentoring.

To create a mentorship network, you take the traditional 1-on-1 mentorship model and expand it to a diverse network of peers and mentors that a single associate can reach out to. An ecosystem is created that is integrated into the culture of the firm where associates have a network of contacts that they can contact for advice, support, and guidance.

Platforms like LinkedIn, Google Groups, and Slack have made these networks exponentially more powerful. Facilitated by program leaders, mentees can form important professional networks with senior partners across a single firm or industry at large, regardless of their physical locations and increasingly less dependent on time availability.

Studies show that adding additional mentors increases the benefits young talents reap from mentorship. With multiple mentors, mentees experience greater career satisfaction, higher retention rates, and far greater career prospects than those placed in a traditional mentorship model. They also receive more well-rounded mentorship, including both “psychosocial” and career support from multiple perspectives.

The problem for most firms is that executing these ecosystems is difficult.

Mentoring programs span an entire network of people, increasing their complexity and requiring full integration in your firm’s company culture.

At launchbox, we have seen the difficulties firms face that come to us with a mentoring network program they have implemented  on their own without the right infrastructure in place. The results are underwhelming.

But firms whose programs we have helped design and execute have seen the power programs like mentoring networks have not just for their young talent, but their senior staff as well.

Reverse Mentorship  Programs

Thanks in part to the constant headlines about Millennials being ill-prepared, self-entitled, and whiny, you wouldn’t think that a Millennial associate would have much to offer an experienced partner.

But they do. If partners are willing to listen.

Reverse mentorship programs flip the traditional model of mentorship on its head. Associates are given the opportunity to teach and mentor partners in the latest theories in law, cutting edge digital tools, and platforms to help improve client and staff experiences alike, and generally catch them up on the last 20 years.

And more often than not, partners enjoy these opportunities as much as their younger colleagues. They get a real kick out of connecting with younger talent in the firm and learning how younger generations approach their work.

To see the potential impact a reverse mentorship can have on a firm, look no further than Marin County Bar Association Barristers “Reverse Mentoring” program that was recently awarded an Affiliate Star of the Quarter. It is a perfect example of a program that was well thought out, structured, and executed.

Whether or not they want to admit it, law firms are at a fork in the road. Down one path, firms maintain the status quo and watch as young, energetic, highly educated talent continues to walk out of the door.

Firms need to join progressive industries like technology and begin to listen to the wants and needs of the younger generation.

The old way is easier, but leaves the future of the profession less certain. Embracing a new approach to mentorship takes thought and effort, but leaves hope for the industry to evolve and survive.

It is now up individual firms and industry leaders to decide which route to take.

Interested in implementing one of the programs mentioned above? Contact us at 858.314.9867 or info@launchbox365.com.