As courtesy to the two companies I have had the opportunity to intern for I will refer to my previous employers as Company A and Company B. The business conducted by each is irrelevant to this discussion. At each job I was interning in their marketing departments and my day-to-day consisted of basic intern “busy work”. It was the way in which each employer assigned that “busy work” that we will examine.

Company A and I began our relationship the summer after my sophomore year. My boss was in his mid forties and had held his position for around 5 years. He was a very nice man and well liked on a personal level in the office, but the way he chose to give assignments bothered me in ways the other older employees did not seem to care about. Everyone in the office received personal emails from the boss outlining their responsibilities for that day. My issue with this method was that while I had a comprehensive list of my tasks for the day I had no idea how my work would fit in with the rest of the team’s work. After reading this email I would spend most of the day trying to understand the relevance of these tedious tasks I was performing. Attempting to find the meaning of my work was almost like pulling teeth. Whenever I asked my peers about their work they never seemed to know its relevance to the project either. Was I crazy for wanting to know why I was doing all this work? It sure seemed that way, since my co-workers (all Baby Boomers) never questioned anything. They simply performed their tasks, handed them in, and called it a day.

Company B brought me on for the summer following my junior year. Again I found myself in an office dominated by Baby Boomers. My boss, a woman in her early forties, had a very different approach to giving out daily assignments. Instead of private emails sent to each employee, our department held daily morning meetings. The main focus of these meetings was to give everyone in the room an idea of how their individual work was benefiting the team. She commonly referred to our projects as puzzles. Understanding that each of us had a few pieces of the puzzle that needed to be put together, made us feel like we all had important tasks to complete. Again let me reiterate that my work for Company B was not any more interesting than the work I did for Company A. I understood being an intern meant wearing bank clothing and doing tedious number crunching and seemingly “busy work”, but when I looked at the project as a puzzle it made my work seem more important. After all, the puzzle could never be completed if my pieces were not included.

I did not realize this generational gap until I read Mark Murphy’s Managing Generation Why?. The article discusses this vast generational gap and what Baby Boomers can do to be more effective managers of Generation Y. Here’s an exert that explains it well:

“First and foremost, anticipate that your Generation Y employees are going to want the big picture. By knowing this, you can pre-empt questions by providing details of how their work fits in with the work of other workers, the department, organization, or outside world. Make what they are doing meaningful and relevant. Creative managers have a knack for making every job important.

Second, understand that Generation Y workers want to know the significance of what they are doing. If you can anticipate their questions, then certainly pre-empt them by providing the reason. But, because these are often unanticipated questions, give yourself time to respond. If you don’t know the answer, it is fine to say, ‘I don’t know, but I can find out’. It is also more than ok to give them permission to search for the answer themselves, or to try to change things (with you guiding the process, of course).”

So if you are a manager attempting to bridge the gap between you and your younger employees, take my experiences and the words of Mr. Murphy into consideration. Happy employees are more productive employees, and making Generation Y happy is as simple as explaining their relevance to the project.

Elias Chininis is a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology studying Business Administration, with concentrations in Marketing and IT. In his free time he enjoys learning about leadership development.

The first type of leader we will discuss is the Avoider. A manager who makes a low emotional connection and assigns tasks that are not very challenging can be called an Avoider. They are making little or no effort to motivate their employees at this point and will reap comparable results from their work force because of it.

Managers that give their employees very challenging work but do not take the time to establish a strong emotional connection will be considered Intimidators. These types of managers are feared by their employees, which makes it difficult to have a comfortable work environment.

In opposition, employers who build a strong emotional connection but do not challenge their employees can be called Appeasers. These managers find it more important to be liked than respected in the office. Employers may see a drop in employee performance in correlating with their lack of expectation.

Now that we have discussed the pitfalls of the employee employer relationship, let’s discuss what type of leader all managers should strive to be. Finding the sweet spot between emotional connection with your workers and challenging them in the workplace is what we call a 100% leader. It is important to build both sides of the employee employer relationship so that the employee feels appreciated and challenged. Stimulation on both ends of the spectrum will help the employee to achieve goals they never would have set without the positive feedback and challenges given by their employers.

In review, if you don’t challenge people and you don’t build an emotional bond with them, you’re an Avoider (you’re also not doing much that could be called leading). If you challenge people to exceed their limits, but you don’t have much of a connection with them, you’re an Intimidator. If you connect with your folks, but you don’t challenge them all that much, you’re an Appeaser. And if you issue great challenges while still building intense connections with people, you’re the ultra-desirable 100% Leader.

Elias Chininis is a Business Administrations major at Georgia Tech. In his free time he enjoys learning about leadership development.