Managing and Motivating Employees in Their Twenties

Younger people are especially hungry both to learn and to receive affirmation that they are doing a good job. I've found the best ones are generally much more motivated by incremental education and acknowledgement than they are by a modest bump in salary. Of course, the same qualities that make younger colleagues so responsive to the education and praise you offer may also make them susceptible to negative feedback loops, so be mindful of the context into which you toss them.

The best managers of younger employees are people who would otherwise love teaching for a living. They prize helping others grow and tend to overexplain their reasoning for decisions. Rather than assuming that twenty-somethings possess enough experience or perspective to read between the lines of their choices, these managers take an extra few minutes to lay out pros and cons and diagram their rationale. Three short minutes of explanation usually make excellent junior employees excited, since they feel the immediate benefits of gaining insight into decision-making processes. It also makes them better at working for you and your company, because it teaches them how you think.

Really excellent managers of really excellent young people also set up regular teaching sessions for them on different parts of the business. Top companies do rotation programs for promising younger talent. It's hard to support systematized rotation in small companies. But small companies can set up mini-workshops to expose highly promising younger employees to different parts of the company. Early investment of this kind yields payoff fast.

Here are some other good ways to motivate and teach young employees:

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