About Gen Y

The world is referring to you as Gen Yers, the millenials and echo boomers, and while we know you don’t like labels, your generation has caught our attention.  You are impacting the world in huge ways, and we know your influence is shaping our future.  You are smart, savvy and innovative, and the census gurus are predicting that you will be our largest sector of the world population by 2010. 

Michael Sessions, the mayor of Hillsdale, Michigan is 19, and the new mayor of Pittsburgh, Luke Ravenstahl is 26.   One of the hottest new greeting card companies, philoSophies is being led by founder, Joanna Alberti, age 24, and Ejovi Nuwere, age 24, founder of SecurityLab Technologies is leading the Voice Over IP phone industry from his office in New York City.

These young leaders are just a few of what we call the Connected Leaders, young men and women who are moving into local, national and international leadership roles with a different set of eyes and ears than the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers.  You have never known a life without cell phones, pagers, e-mail, text messaging, instant message chat and MTV.  You have experienced the terror of September 11 and the corruption of corporate America.  Your voice is being expressed through social causes such as the Green Movement, animal rights and and world crises including AIDS, world hunger, and the Tsunami Disaster in Indonesia.  You have seen it all…from My Space to online gambling to graphic websites that lure child predators into the safest of our communities.

As we learn more about you and consider your future, as coaches, we are hearing from many Gen Yers that some of your leaders from older generations are not hearing you, much less understanding you.  We are seeing Baby Boomers (and some Gen Xers) who are clueless about current trends in technology and who are completely out of touch with the changes you are experiecing on a global scale.  On the same note, we are hearing that many fortysomething leaders are feeling as if the twentysomething professionals they are hiring are short on respect and sometimes lack a strong work ethic.  With the Gen Y Project, we want to do something to bridge this generational gap so that each age learns from one another and begins to collaborate to create something new and better for our world.

So, what does this mean for you?

If you are a Baby Boomer or a Gen Xer, we want to challenge you to upgrade your knowledge to get current with today’s world.  Take the time to learn the technology that the Gen Yers are using to communciate, including text messaging, instant messaging, blogging, podcasting and vlogging.  Spend time listening to Gen Y music, observe their fashion and design choices, and above all, get to know this incredible group of young men and women.  Listen to their stories and their language, and take note of what they need and want in life.  They have a great deal to teach you, and you are never too old to learn.

If you are a Gen Yer, we want to challenge you to look to your older generations for leadership and wisdom.  While they were raised in a different time with different issues, these men and women have been through four decades in life, and they have ideas and insights into what is possible for the future of our world.  As once twentysomethings, these fortysomething men and women have been where you are, and their experiences in both work and life can provide you with guidance for your future. 

To begin to communicate more openly and brige this gap, we invite you to start here by joining the Gen Y project.  As we learn more about how to work together, we know that we can collaborate to create meaningful work that will move our world forward with lightning speed.