What All Millennials NEED But Can’t Get Quickly

Dear Young Professional,

One of the things I like best about you is your belief in that you can accomplish BIG things. There is one thing that you are missing that can help you fast track your way to success. It’s EXPERIENCE.

Experience is how you build tacit knowledge, and with only 24 hours in a day you can only pack in so many experiences. What is tacit knowledge? Tacit knowledge is unwritten, unspoken, and hidden vast storehouse of knowledge held by practically every human being, based on his or her emotions, experiences, insights, intuition, observations and internalized information.

A Millennial Mentor can help you capture more experiences. How? More on that in a minute.

First, what do I mean by Millennial Mentor? A Millennial Mentor understands you look at your life as ONE life. You don’t have a work life separate from your personal life. That’s why your days are seamlessly blurred between personal and professional activities. Even if you have chosen a career with traditional “norms” of generations before, you still approach life holistically.

Depending on whether you are in a mentorship program, or considering working with a mentor, finding the right fit is important. The question is, would you benefit from finding a mentor that is focused on the millennial life and the answer is “It depends”.

Do you have a network people in your life that honestly share experiences, stories you can learn from regularly? Maybe you have a work mentor that can help with your career paving, and you rely on friends or others for personal advice.

If your support system is giving you impartial information to build your tacit knowledge great! If they are helping you to see a variety of perspectives, stay with it!

If the answer is no, or you are considering working with a mentor here’s some sage advice to help you:

• Find someone where your agenda is their agenda, they should genuinely want to see you set and reach your goals.

• Confirm they have the experiences (success and failures) that you can learn from by asking them to tell you a story:

• Tell me about a recent setback and how you recovered?

• What’s the most important leadership lesson you’ve learned and how is it valuable?

•  Does this person personify traits you want to be known for e.g. professionalism, leadership?

• Use your mentor as a sounding board, ask situational questions:

• I’m considering a career transition. What do you see as the pros and cons

• I’m considering a career transition. What do you see as the pros and cons

• Capture insights for skill-building:

• What new skills do I need to move ahead?

• How do you approach risk-taking?

I encourage you to continue to build relationships with people that are open and honest to share their real-life experiences to help you fast-track your life goals.

Fondly, Aunt Kris