I am passionate about sharing advice for young women looking to advance their careers, especially for those looking towards the C-Suite. I offer suggestions on everything from taking stretch assignments and negotiating raises, to adjusting bad speech habits and dressing like a leader. However, I sometimes wonder if we’re expecting younger generations to conform to our workplace norms at the expense of truly letting their unique priorities and values shine through? 

We can see this tension in our politics through the contrast between Alexandria Oscasio Cortez and Nancy Pelosi – an interesting balance of respecting the knowledge and expertise of the generations before you, while working to incorporate the values of a new cohort, anxious to disrupt the status quo. It’s a conversation that’s popping up in industries everywhere as our workforce become more multigenerational – how can we all work together in a productive way? Stereotypes and negative assumptions about the generation that now makes up 40% of the workforce (60% here at CHOP), run rampant. However, Millennial women in particular, are the most educated cohort in our history and have incredible potential to be a new type of leader. I believe we need to embrace the different values and needs of Millennials and incorporate them into our workplaces, rather than pushing them to conform to the cultures of previous generations. 

Twice a year, I hold an employee town hall meeting — an opportunity for leadership to hear directly from our employees and to understand the things that are important to them. In our most recent town hall, I was struck by the new types of questions that were coming from the audience; what is CHOP doing to promote wellness and work-life balance? What are we doing to ensure we’re operating with sustainability in mind? It reminded me that as our workforce changes, we need to be sure that we’re not simply developing our employees to fit a mold, but that we’re truly incorporating their strongest assets into our culture. We need to be speaking more clearly to them about things like our EcoCHOP initiatives and allow them to feel heard – that we take their concerns seriously and act on them. 
As illustrated in a recent articles in Forbes entitiled Let Them Lead: Millenial Women Are Ready to Blaze a New Trail, these women care deeply about issues like bias, discrimination and inequality, transparency around compensation, work/life balance and self-care. Instead of making assumptions about the motivations behind these values (you’ve probably heard them – Millennials need too much validation, they want promotions without working for them, they want too much time off, etc.) I challenge leaders from older generations to see the immense opportunity embracing these values could bring to your organization. These women are eager to lead, and it’s our responsibility to offer guidance and mentorship without expecting them to simply conform to the leadership norms we’ve established. These are our successors, and we should be working very closely with them to establish the next evolution of workplace culture.