FR3 Minutes #1 | Leading Millennials In Your Fitness Business
Your millennials want to work with purpose and make an impact on people’s lives but if we don’t lead them, give them opportunities and recognize them, they are more likely to leave us than tell us what they want.
Here are 4 reasons why millennials can be challenging to manage and lead:
- Their upbringing – they have become accustomed to being acknowledged for effort! They had school opportunities because mum and dad complained and they now learn in the workplace quickly that mum and dad can’t help.
- Technology – tech feeds them dopamine. An email, a text, a like, growth in Instagram numbers all give us all a hit of dopamine. Problem is, this is addictive and also mind-numbing. When stressed, millennials turn to a device to see if they have a new Insta heart and that makes them feel better. The problem is too many don’t know how to turn to a person and ask for help when stressed.
- Impatience – instant gratification is their life! Millennials these days don’t even know how to ‘date’ someone, they just swipe right! Job satisfaction and deep relationships are not instant. Millennials need to learn to love, experience joy and other feelings that take time!
- Environment – millennials are in environments where we care more about numbers than the people. We are not helping them build their relationship skills, their cooperation skills, overcoming a reliance upon technology as a crutch, understand not everything comes instantly and appreciate the joy, love & fulfilment on working on something for a long time until the successful end.
Here are my suggestions on leading millennials:
- Set a long-term exercise goal. Set a long-term – 6+ months – exercise goal with your millennials. Coach them to achieve.
- No mobile phones! Not just in meetings but before meetings, so they connect and talk – ie build relationships!
- Give awards for best performance – ie a gold medal for best performance. And never ever give a bonus if they don’t hit it the goal! I mean it . . . if you set a target of 10 and they hit 9, then they get nothing and explain why.
- Start each staff meeting with each staff member sharing ‘how they feel’ about different topics. Ensure everyone is listening and everyone has a turn at speaking
- Work your arse off. You need to build confidence, teach social skills and build trust with your own slow, steady and consistent behaviour.
Here is my key message for you: your role as the business owner is to provide – organically or manufactured – interactions to occur between your millennial staff.
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Justin is the Managing Director of Active Management, which he began January 2004. He offers coaching to businesses worldwide in everything from start up and design to marketing and sales systems. Justin also facilitates four Australian and New Zealand ‘fitness industry roundtables’ events, which allows him to see a huge cross section of business models.