5 keys insights for working with digital natives

By Michelle Manafy

Neustockimages — iStockphoto

Between all generations lie gaps. Yet today many individuals and businesses face a massive one. The digital native generation -- those who grew up immersed in technologies such as computers, mobile devices, and social networks -- are becoming our dominant employee and consumer base. That means digital immigrants -- those of us who didn’t grow up plugged in -- must navigate an altered landscape to successfully work with them. These insights will help you understand how to leverage the digital native worldview to achieve your business objectives:

1. They live publicly online.

Businesses must address the expectations of those raised in social networking environments, in which they routinely share activities and opinions with a potentially limitless group of friends.

Tip: Capitalize on digital natives’ openness. Understand their inclination to live publicly, and guide those activities so they are consistent with business objectives. Structure employee activities and customer interactions to put this openness to good use.

2. They share knowledge.

Despite much hyperbole about social media and marketing, many organizations limit or ban the use of social networks on the job. This shows a fear of exposure and a lack of understanding of how to channel this generation’s knowledge-sharing inclination.

Tip: Craft guidelines for appropriate use of social networks. Social media and collaborative ways of working can help companies capture otherwise transient knowledge. The old adage was “knowledge is power.” For digital natives, “knowledge shared is power.”

3. They believe transparency yields trust.

Because digital natives live publicly and value knowledge sharing, organizations that demonstrate transparency will attract and retain them as employees and customers. Digital natives make new friends, followers, and fans every day. Remember that it takes a lot of work to maintain a genuine relationship. If digital natives dislike your brand, they will make it publicly known. Luckily, the reverse is also true. Ultra-connected consumers look for organizations that listen, respond, own up to mistakes and maintain authentic relationships.

Tip: To attract and retain this generation as employees, recognize that the best of them monitor opportunities and discuss employers online. For recruiting, this can provide insights into who are the best, brightest, and most social-media savvy. For retention, employers can leverage these same tools to ensure they are competitive in the market.

4. They are timely, not time-managed.

While most people are painfully aware that the line between "at work" and "off duty" is increasingly blurred, digital natives will move beyond work-life balance to a new sort of work-life integration. Work and social activities are with them anywhere, anytime. Digital natives may log more hours at their computers during the course of a day than those in previous generations, but switch back and forth between work and leisure in short bursts. Though this may strike some managers as inappropriate, it helps to realize that while an older worker might head to the break room or a co-worker's desk to clear their head, natives are more likely to catch up on a quick burst of Facebook updates.

Tip: Companies that emphasize collaboration, learning, and socialization will see benefits in comparison to those that focus solely on productivity. Work can be constructively influenced by the expectations of younger workers.

5. They believe in interactions, not transactions.

With all this socializing, one might begin to wonder how any business gets done. But it does. Organizations that develop good social skills will have a competitive advantage over those that don’t. One essential quality is recognizing that this generation is not interested in transactions -- exchanges of money for goods and services. This generation is interested in interactions.

Tip: Unlike a transaction-based system, an interactive one is based upon social currency. Businesses will need to embrace interaction, from marketing to product development and content creation. This generation wants to do business with companies it views as friends and expects to see its ideals and objectives reflected in the companies it chooses to do business with.

While many digital immigrants whole-heartedly adopt digital tools, it is not simply emerging technologies that must be mastered. Lifelong immersion affects the mindset, behavior, and expectations of digital natives. To succeed in business with them, we must understand and build models based on this native culture.

            

Michelle Manafy is director of content for FreePint Ltd. and co-author of Dancing With Digital Natives: Staying in Step With the Generation That’s Transforming the Way Business Is Done.

Do you have expert advice to share? E-mail Kristen.

A Culture of Trust Boosts Employee Performance

If employees don’t trust a company’s leaders, they won’t feel safe—and when they don’t feel safe, they spend all their creative energy covering their -- selves. They don’t take risks. And where there is no risk, there is less innovation and less “going the extra mile.”

John Hamm, author of Unusually Excellent, says “Without trust, people respond with distraction, fear, or paralysis.” This produces behaviors like sandbagging quotas, hedging on goals, and avoiding commitment.”

He says leaders become trustworthy by building a track record of honesty, fairness, and integrity. Cultivating trust isn’t just a moral issue; it’s a practical one. Most employees have been hurt or disappointed at some point in their careers by a leader. That’s why leaders are often in “negative trust territory” from the start.

Hamm offers these tips on building trust:

Model trustworthiness. This doesn’t mean you must be warm and personable if that’s not your personality. On the contrary, many trustworthy people can be harsh, tough, or socially awkward. But promises must be inviolate and decisions fair. People who can be trusted are more likely to gain the respect of others than the nicest guy in the room, says Hamm. “You can be authentically whoever you really are. As long as you are fair, as long as you do what you say consistently, you will still be trusted.”

Reveal vulnerability. Allow others to see authentic (not fabricated) weakness or emotion. This helps people relate to one another.

Be transparent. Tell the truth, match your actions with your words, and match those words with the truth we all see in the world: no spin, no justifications, no revisionist history.

Allow good failures. Hamm says punishing failure is one of the stupidest things organizations do, and it happens all the time. “Good failure” is a term used in Silicon Valley to describe a business or initiative that is well planned, well run, and well organized—yet for reasons beyond its control, fails. Good failures occur when you play well but lose. Punishing employees for good failures instills a fear of risk-taking, and stifles innovation.

Instead, says Hamm, strive for a “digital camera” culture. There is no expense associated with an imperfect digital photograph. Just hit delete, and it disappears. No wasted film. So people take many more digital photos than they would with film. If failure is “free,” we take chances, and can get that one amazing picture that we wouldn’t have if we were paying for all the mistakes.

Allow people to bring bad news. Shooting the messenger results in messengers who won’t bring the information you need. They’ll protect their -- selves. Instill confidence that leaders value facts, truth, and speed of delivery over judgments of good or bad.

Beware shortcuts. When victory or failure is in sight, there is a vulnerability to abandoning values in the name of expediency. That can set a precedent and lead to corner-cutting even in operations that aren’t at a critical stage. Plus, when employees see you betraying your values, they see you as less trustworthy.

Recognize whom to coach and whom to let go. You cannot “fix” a thief, a pathological liar, or a con artist. “There are three failure modes that I will decline to coach: integrity, commitment, and chronic selfishness—manipulating outcomes for individual gain,” says Hamm. These are character traits, not matters of knowledge.

But that doesn’t mean we can doubt or distrust someone because their performance disappoints, he adds. “Performance problems should be managed fairly and with little judgment of the person’s character, unless that is the root of the trouble.”

 “Everyone fails to achieve perfection,” Hamm says. So a leader’s goal is to make wrong choices rarely; admit them quickly, completely, and with humility; fix them quickly; and make full recompense when possible.

In a working environment of trust, Hamm says, teams stay focused, give their utmost effort, and do their best work.”

Do you have expert advice to share? E-mail Kristen.

Doing your brother’s dishes

The principles of the office kitchen are well-known:

• Don’t eat other people’s food.
• Clean up after yourself.
• When you take the last cup of coffee, make another pot.

Michal Zacharzewski | stock.xchng

They are also widely violated. Someone working late will “borrow” a sandwich or soda to get through the evening. Someone late for a meeting will leave dirty dishes in the sink. And someone who thinks she’s the only one who could possibly be drinking coffee at this time of the afternoon will leave an empty pot for that fella who’s working late.

Any time one of these things happens, it spurs a round of grousing and, often, a terse e-mail from the human resources department about respecting the kitchen rules.

But a servant mindset allows us to take things to another level.

What if, upon finding our soda missing, we said a prayer for the one who was so desperate (or absent-minded) to have taken it?

What if, on finding dirty dishes in the sink, we were to wash and dry them so the owner finds them clean on his return?

What if, when two cups of coffee are left in a 12-cup pot, you put in enough grounds and water for 10 cups? (Or, if it’s really late in the afternoon, just 4 or 5 cups.)

Jesus was called to serve, and so are we. It's tempting to vent our anger when someone violates the kitchen rules. But preserving relationships with our co-workers is more important than venting anger, which does not bring about the righteous life God desires (James 1:20). A servantlike approach redirects our anger into service for others. And that, in the long run, is much more satisfying.

Six lessons for building successful virtual teams

The office of the future is no office at all. Many of us work from our homes, hold client meetings at coffee shops, and have a business address that’s a post office box. Without an office, we frequently rely on phone and e-mail to communicate with collaborators.

But Darleen DeRosa and Rick Lepsinger warn that the vision often falls short of reality. “Virtual teams” may be popular, but they’re not always successful.

spekulator | stock.xchng

DeRosa and Lepsinger wrote Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance to help businesspeople create teams across distances. They say too many companies treat virtual teams the same as teams that share the same location.

“Frankly,” says DeRosa, “that just doesn’t work.” Leaders who understand the different needs of virtual teams are the ones whose teams succeed.

DeRosa and Lepsinger’s company, OnPoint Consulting, studied 48 virtual teams to find the success factors of top performing teams. Surprisingly, 27 percent of the teams were not fully performing. The authors identified these pitfalls:

• Lack of clear goals, direction, or priorities
• Lack of clear roles among team members
• Lack of cooperation and trust
• Lack of engagement

The authors identify these points of success:

1. Focus on people. Compensate for the inherent lack of contact by supporting team spirit and trust.

• Develop a team web page where team members can get acquainted.
• Use communication tools like instant messaging, Facebook or Twitter to create a virtual water cooler.
• Build a collective online “resource bank” to share information and experiences.
• Create ways to virtually celebrate successes as a team.

2. No trust, no team. Task-based trust is one factor differentiating top performing teams. In virtual teams, trust seems to develop more readily at the task level than at the interpersonal level. DeRosa says trust “doesn’t simply develop because a team has been working together for a while.”

• Make sure teams meet face-to-face at least once early on to build relationships and learn about one another’s capabilities.
• Empower team members to make and act on decisions. Beware of micromanaging.
• Proactively manage conflict.

3. Soft skills are essential. Virtual teams that have been through team-building and interpersonal skill development activities perform better than those that have not. Selecting team members based solely on technical skills without considering interpersonal skills is a mistake.

• Include characteristics like effective communication and collaboration in the selection criteria.
• Use team-building sessions to strengthen relationships and create momentum.
• Assess development needs for team members and team leaders and conduct training on these areas.

4. Watch out for performance peaks. Teams who have been working together for more than three years tend to be more successful than teams working together for less time, but many teams peak around the one-year mark. After that, performance tends to level off or decline.

• Clearly define team roles and accountabilities.
• Review and refine processes regularly.
• Periodically examine the level of team performance. Collect feedback from various stakeholders to assess the team’s performance.
• Identify barriers to high performance and steps that can be taken to overcome these barriers.

5. Create a “high touch” environment. The technology that makes virtual teaming possible it is not a perfect substitute for human interaction. Arrange for virtual team members to meet in person at least once a year. “Virtual teams that invest in one or two such meetings per year outperform those that don’t,” says Lepsinger.

• Use electronic bulletin boards to create a sense of shared space.
• Choose communication technologies that are most appropriate to the task. E-mail is good for sharing facts, while conference calls are better for sharing ideas and plans.
• Use videoconferencing. Teams that use video technology outperform those that don’t.

6. Leadership matters. Leadership is the factor most important to the success of virtual teams. Virtual team leaders must be especially sensitive to interpersonal communication and cultural factors. “Organizations can avoid this performance barrier by selecting team leaders who not only have the necessary technical skills but also the soft skills required to effectively lead in a virtual environment,” says DeRosa.

• Set clear goals and direction and revisit these as priorities shift.
• Engage team members in developing strategy.
• Provide time for team building.
• Provide timely feedback. Be responsive and accessible.
• Emphasize common interests and values, and reinforce cooperation and trust.
• Create a system to easily integrate new team members.
• Teach the importance of conflict resolution.
• Celebrate team achievements and successes.

Lepsinger says, “organizations start virtual teams in response to an opportunity or problem without planning or proper follow-up—never a recipe for success.” DeRosa adds, “Better planning could dramatically improve their odds for success.”