Peer to Peer Magazine

P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 1 9 57 We also have questions For and About GenZ and Millennials. The 2018 Deloitte Millennial Survey and "The State of Gen Z 2018" by The Center for Generational Kinetics take broad looks at some of those questions. My own research and Innovation Workshops provide a glimpse into the questions and responses of GenZ and Millennials in legal tech, with a focus on Professional Development and Mentoring, and how those questions tie into engagement, empowerment, creativity and productivity. The question for you is, how does your legal tech organization compare, where do you excel and where could you improve in these areas to succeed in engaging your next leaders? Professional Development With the fourth industrial revolution underway (Industry 4.0), the trends to robotics, automation, cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud computing and cognitive computing are changing the nature of work. The question asked to young workers – "Are your leadership skills being developed by your current employer?" Across all the research. more than 60% of millennials say they are not. They are clearly uneasy about not being developed to prepare for the inevitable changes in their roles. Ask a millennial if it is essential to a company's long-term success that they develop strong interpersonal skills – they answer "Yes". Ask if their current company offers help and support in developing those skills – they answer "No". Do you provide opportunities to engage new employees in initiatives? How much focus is there on professional development? At Olenick we run a Talent Academy for new hires, a bootcamp to prepare new hires for the real world of working on quality assurance projects. In one of our innovation workshops, we asked people who had been through the Talent Academy and have 6-12 months experience now on projects, to identify a gap in the Talent Academy training, and create an educational session to fill that gap. They identified that Technical Writing was something they didn't feel as prepared in. We developed a creative and interactive session on that topic for the next Talent Academy, with one of the workshop participants delivering part of the session. What an impact for the professional development of the new Talent Academy students, the workshop participants who created the session and saw it to fruition with one of their peers delivering it!! If we fail to develop our employees, we will lose them. Helping them prepare to fit in Industry 4.0 and how they will upskill to help futureproof your organization, will give them purpose in their work and will increase their enjoyment with their jobs. Growth into Leadership In law firms especially, the professional staff are the "hidden middle", who are hungry for leadership development. The number one skill we know is needed for today's leaders to possess to remain effective leaders into the next decade is adaptability. Leaders in Industry 4.0 more than ever need to be adaptable. Investing in employees by training them to be leaders demonstrates the kind of commitment GenZ and Millennials crave. The question here is what opportunities do we give young workers to be leaders? Do we model good leadership by growing their leadership skills or do we wait and drop them into it with no preparation? Ask "How much coaching and mentoring support do we provide?" The better that answer, the more you reassure young workers there is a real commitment to their future in the organization. Mentorship Those millennials intending to stay with their organization more than five years are twice as likely to have a mentor than not. What kind of mentoring are we talking about here? I've been finding out. Millennials answer a resounding Yes to the importance a FORMAL mentoring program plays in their minds? But…. mentoring for GenZ and millennials doesn't look the same as traditional mentoring. Have Millennials taken a traditional approach to anything ? When they are asked what level of mentorship they currently receive?, only 40% say they receive what they need. Last month I spent some time with a group of millennials and borderline GenZ, talking about mentoring. I asked, "What kinds of mentoring are they experiencing?" Their answers fell mostly into Traditional mentoring: • Expert passing on knowledge to an individual • Long-term benefits of enhanced performance, career satisfaction and advancement. We explored less traditional mentoring methods that millennials are reporting as effective: • Micro Mentoring: Smaller, more informal opportunities for mentoring. Example - Twitter or LinkedIn reach outs for expertise in a certain area. • Group Mentoring: Multiple experts and/or multiple learners in a group setting. The example was the workshop we were experiencing, which they think of as a kind of group therapy. We moved on to a Mentoring Exercise. We paired them up - one mentor and one mentee. For five minutes the mentee answered the questions, "What is one specific skill do I want to develop over the next year?", "What action will I take to develop it?", and "How will I know and show that I have achieved my goal?". Then they switched roles. The sound and ener level in the room started out low, then it started to grow. I asked for their thoughts afterwards: • "I can learn as much from a peer mentor as from an expert.

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