Business leaders: how can you solve the seemingly intractable problem of millennial disengagement? One word: GreatWork. (Ok, that's actually two words jammed together, but we own it!).

Show millennial employees how to do GreatWork, work that's meaningful to them and also creates measurable value for their (your) organization, and they will lock into work like Legos. Your organization's productivity will soar.

In How to Be a Millennial Whisperer, author Spencer Deering provides business leaders a fun and concise guide to doing just that. Readers will learn to understand their millennial employees in order to ramp their productivity at work. As Deering says, “You, too, can be a Millennial Whisperer.”

This book couldn't have come soon enough. Some pundits suggest the problem of millennial disengagement is overblown. They're wrong. Millennials' professional struggles are getting worse not better, and it's grown into the biggest managerial problem of our time.

Deering leverages his unique dual-background of teaching and entrepreneurship to show business leaders the GreatWork path. He unpacks the problem of millennial employee disengagement with dexterity and wit, offering new insights with proven solutions. The result: with Deering's approach, business leaders, managers, and companies have the capacity to (finally!) get their millennials highly productive for the long term.

In the first part of the book – “America, We Got a Problem” – Deering reviews sources for and growing trends of what's hindering young professionals. From grade school to grad school, America's “most talented generation” has been well-educated but ill-prepared to enter the workforce. The outcome: 90% of high performing young professionals don't expect to be with the same employer in five years!

Facts like these make us wince, but Deering's humor keeps it light when encountering the sore spots.

Employee retention is only part one of the problem. If employees stay in their seats but remain adrift, productivity still suffers. Their ascension, however, can be launched once they determine self-direction. To get there, most require greater self-awareness of their talents and drivers at work – and where they can aim them – but they simply don't know how to do it.

In the second part of the book – “America, We Got a Solution” – Deering provides actionable advice on how to show them. Leaders can finally stop using HR Band-Aids or playing the “Engaged Charade.” When you become a Millennial Whisperer your millennial employees will thank you for helping them overcome the biggest professional challenge they face.

They'll start doing work that's personally rewarding and rewards their company too. Then their productivity skyrockets.

Deering's solution may be simple, but it could require a culture change in your organization. Employees must be given the bandwidth to determine what crucial organizational challenges they were born to solve – and then solve them. This will create lasting value instead of a culture of promotion based on faulty foundations. Deering even provides helpful case studies from his company, Supurlativ, that's helped Millennials (and others) discover their GreatWork.

Millennials don't WANT to be disengaged. And business leaders yearn for more productivity. How To Be A Millennial Whisperer solves for both by helping build the sound foundation for a sustained commitment to excellent, meaningful and value-creating work.

Spencer Deering

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