Seven Keys to Coaching Today's Millennial Generation Athlete--Jeff Janssen

You might be familiar with Beloit College's annual Mindset List linked below. The list shows how this year's incoming class of freshmen, most of them born in 1990, have a vastly different world experience than that of their 30, 40, 50, and 60 year old coaches.
http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2012.php

This article is designed to help you better understand what motivates today's Millennial generation of athletes (those born from roughly 1982 to the present), how they are different, and what you can do as a Gen Xer (born 1961 to 1981) or Boomer (born 1943-1960) coach to continually adapt and stay connected and relevant to your team.

Heres how this group differs from past groups:

1. Special 
-They have been taught they are special and vital to the success of the family, team, and community.
-They have recieved far more focus and attention from adults so they feel entitled.


2. Sheltered
-Most Millennials have been protected and sheltered from birth.
-They have always had laws and gadgets to protect them.
-This has prevented them from experiencing, learning from, adapting to, and overcoming the important and inevitable hard knocks of life.
-Because of this sheltering, many are crushed when they receive less than an "A" for a grade, get cut from teams, and receive negative feedback.

3. Confident
- Millennials tend to be a more confident generation when it comes to their ability to achieve the American dream.
-they sometimes forget that success is not going to come instantly but must be worked at consistently and is anything but a linear journey.

4. Team-oriented
-Millennials are the most interconnected generation yet.
-Between emailing, texting, and staying connected through Facebook, peer networks are a huge part of their daily experience.
-They have strong team instincts and like to stay connected with their social group on a regular basis.

5. Conventional
- Millennials tend to embrace the more traditional values of their parents.
-They are much less likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana than the generations before them.
-"Millennials describe closer ties with their parents than in teens in the history of postwar polling." Many are in continual contact with their parents and share tastes in clothes, music, and other entertainment.


6. Pressured
- Millennials are feeling much more pressure to succeed than generations before them. They believe the stakes are high and the price of mistakes and missteps are more consequential than in the past.
-Many are overscheduled and overwhelmed (Private lessons, camps, tutors)

7. Achieving
-With higher standards, Millennials are highly focused on achievement
-They "are on track to becoming the smartest, best-educated adults in U.S. history"

- Millennials are much more influenced by their parents. And many Millennials have extremely short-attention spans if you not physically or mentally engaging them in some type of activity.

ADVICE FOR COACHING MILLENNIALS

1. Help your Millennials understand that adversity is inevitable, temporary, and helpful in the long-term.
2. Help your Millennials understand that getting better is a long-term process.
3. Understand that there are dozens of things that compete for your Millennials' attention and time.
4. Don't lecture - Edu-tain.
5. Provide opportunities for young Millenials to engage in free athletic play.
6. Develop your parents into allies, not adversaries.
7. Help kids fight their own battles.
8. Remember that people are people.