TIME magazine had a recent cover which read:   “The Me, Me, Me Generation:  Millenials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents. Why they’ll save us all.”  That heading was meant to provoke reaction, and it did.  However the sentence “why they’ll save us all” does encapsulate my own evolving views on this generation.

Millenials (born 1980-2000) are frequently picked-on and generalized into stereotypes by the media. And I’m a guilty party.   I’ve written several columns about the management challenges they can bring to work such as their need for frequent feedback and their weak critical thinking skills resulting from among other things, over-reliance on drop-down menus.  They also frequently lack professionalism.

And even though I do strive to balance those challenges by pointing out the strengths they bring (team players, open-minded, adaptable, tech savvy), the conclusion usually implies that the challenges outweighed the pluses.  But that’s changing.

The more I work and interact with millenials, the more I find a growing appreciation for their approach to life and work.

Reading their reaction to the article -which clearly hit a nerve- was illuminating.  Far from feeling entitled some are painfully aware that the society they’re inheriting is “living on borrowed time…. in debt ecologically, financially, politically, culturally”.   I was also reminded that this debt is personal due to the unprecedented college debt of this generation.

So let’s cut them a little slack.  They’re inheriting a mess (and I left out global warming).  So why am I increasingly optimistic?  Because millenials are uniquely equipped to solve those huge problems that will require new ways to collaborate (i.e. group sourcing) process information (i.e. meta data), and the ability to feel completely at home inside technology that makes that possible.

These skills will apply most importantly in the workplace, and due to the sheer size of this generation (88 million compared to 77 million baby boomers) it may require us to slowly adapt the workplace for them, not the other way around.

Yes, they’re narcissistic (isn’t’ every generation in their 20’s?), but just like boomer hippies became wealthy establishment types, so will millenials morph into something else.  And that may save us all.

© Copyright Eva Del Rio