Gentelligence: About Those Millennials

Megan Gerhardt • January 10, 2021

Happy New Year! 2021 is the Year of Gentelligence. The book is coming out in June. and I’m dedicating this winter and spring to sharing tools and ideas to help you build up your Gentelligence. Our 2021 Gentelligence lessons start with a better understanding of the Millennials. (And just so you know, I love Millennials. I did a TEDx talk about it, so you know it’s true). A force to be reckoned with, they upended the way many workplaces had been thinking about younger talent and brought generational differences back into the forefront of conversation (and headlines). Gentelligence tells us that we can only begin to learn and teach a generation if we take time to understand them, and how their generational identity has contributed to how they see the world.

Happy 40th Birthday, Millennials!

This past week on my social media, I wished our oldest Millennials a happy 40th birthday in 2021. That’s right–while so many enjoy using the term “Millennial” to refer to all young people, they are not forever suspended in time. Born 1981-1996, they will be 25-40 years old in 2021. Still “young”, relatively speaking, but not “punk teenager” young. Not “kids these days” young. So the first Gentelligence lesson of this year is to stop using the word as a sweeping term for young people that disagree with you (doing this makes us no better than those using the “OK Boomer” retort, and we can all do better).

More insight on the Millennials: I often am asked why this generation are called “Millennials” if their birth years don’t include the actual…Millennium. (There’s much debate about generational cutoffs, but I like to nip that in the bud and use the Pew Research Center‘s ranges on this. As with any subject, research and insights cannot move ahead if we are stuck forever in arguing what framework to use. Generations are determined using a lot of factors–formative events in society and culture that are likely to result in different collective experiences for those growing up during different periods of time. It’s an art and also a science of sorts. So I’m calling for everyone interested to just get on board with the Pew Research Center’s guidelines and end this nonsense so we can move on). Everyone with me?

Drawing Lines

Back to the Millennium. I love the school of thought behind generational cutoffs. Because we want a generation to represent a group of people who have experienced formative events during a similar life stage, we think about the things that will likely change how they grow up, the challenges they will face, and the opportunities they will have.

Among other notables, 9/11 and the turning of the Millennium are some of the key events we believe have influenced the early years of this generation. Our oldest Millennials would be coming of age at the turn of the Millennium. To determine a cutoff, we had to determine how old would one need to be at the turn of the century to remember it. It was decided that 4 years old was a reasonable age. Those 4 at the turn of the century would be about 5 when 9/11 occurred. And so the cutoff for the Millennial Generation was established for 1996.

Entitled or Proactive?

Interesting, right? Every generation has these kinds of formative stories, and understanding them can help us develop a greater understanding of why different generations may have a different lens through which they see the world. There’s a quote I love by Elwood Carlson, who said, “Generations help us understand the context in which your life has unfolded.”

Millennials developed a strong reputation for being outspoken and demanding–the most frequently used word used to describe them has been “entitled”. Yet if we dig deeper into the zeitgeist of the world when Millennials were growing up, we can see where this reputation may have come from, and we may also be able to step back and reframe our judgments about it.

Older generations were raised with more of a “children should be seen and not heard” mentality. This approach to parenting was long gone by the time the first Millennials were born. They were the children of Baby Boomers who had worked hard to accomplish career success (and often the monetary success that came with it). The Boomers wanted to give their kids opportunities they didn’t have had as children of the Greatest Generation (who struggled to rebound economically after the Great Depression and WWII).

To Whom Much is Given, Much is Expected.

What would be possible for our children if they were given every opportunity for education, development, and success??? It was a way for the driven and optimistic Baby Boomers to unlock yet another level of achievement and success–by raising fully developed and highly successful children.

This led to kids being enrolled in classes and sports earlier than we had ever seen before. Mommy and Me classes, Itty Bitty Soccer, early language immersion, three-year-olds taking Spanish. This began to breed a bit of competition and FOMO (fear of missing out, for you less hip kids) in this generation, and in their parents. Little Jimmy needed to be in town for the summer or he couldn’t be on the Little League team! And if he wasn’t on the Little League team, he wouldn’t be ready for junior varsity! And that would mean he might not play baseball in college! So he better start at age 4, and mom and dad needed to drive him to practice every night and cancel summer vacation so he wouldn’t be behind or miss out on the opportunity.

Trophies for Everyone!

Thus the era of the “trophy kids” was born. Everyone expected to make the team so they wouldn’t miss out on opportunities. This was also the beginning of “helicopter parents”. Parents hovering just close enough to make sure their kids were included and treated like the special people they were. While well-intentioned, this level of attention and intervention resulted in a generation with almost no free time to be bored. It also meant they had little chance for failure, or to develop the same kinds of resiliency that had been built into past generations.

By the time these kids applied for college, the pressure was pretty intense. When I (a Gen Xer) applied to college in 1994, you basically just needed to have a respectable ACT score and a high school diploma to get into the school of your choice. By the time the first Millennials went to college, they needed to show a steady record of extracurriculars and leadership ability. 18-year-old bilingual soccer team captains who were proficient in the flute and volunteered for Meals on Wheels had become the norm.

As a professor, I was asked a few years ago to help review the applications for a prestigious full-ride scholarship to our university. I was both humbled and terrified. These kids had started non-profits. Developed sources of clean water for third world countries. Ran for office! All before age 18. What was I doing with my life? (Was there any hope for my teenager, sitting at home playing X-box?)

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that the children that were so highly invested in arrived at universities and workplaces ready to be heard. The children whose schedules and needs drove the priorities of the family? They grew up into driven adults with high expectations for their own development and contributions.

You Say Entitled, They Say Proactive

They were the most educated, invested-in generation we had ever produced, and wanted to bring that same level of intensity to their careers. For older generations that had been expected to start at the bottom of the corporate ladder and work their way up, this thirst for advancement and development looked a lot like entitlement. But to our Millennials, it was simply being proactive and receiving the same level of attention and involvement they had experienced throughout their lives.

This was the dynamic I first stepped into when I began doing generational consulting in the early 2000s. Managers (most of them Baby Boomers) were tearing out their hair trying to figure out how to understand and lead “those Millennials”. Yet ironically, many of them were the parents of children the same age as their young employees. They admitted they had raised their own Millennial kids with similar drive and expectations of the world around them. But when these needs came instead from their employees, it was a completely different animal, thus setting the stage for years of angst and generational tension in the workplace.

But those Millennials are no longer kids. They are now the ones hiring and training an entirely new generation of employees. The future of generational dynamics will be determined by today’s Millennial managers, who stand to be leading our companies for decades to come. Will they embrace the generational differences the Zoomers will bring their door? Or dig in their heels wanting things done the way they have always done them? Stay tuned.

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Why Generation A Might Just Be the...Analog Generation

By Megan Gerhardt • February 13, 2026

It has been said that everything old becomes new again on a long enough timeline. There's a fascinating generational trend I've been seeing among younger Gen Zs and the oldest of Gen A (Note: I am not calling that generation Gen Alpha, because that name is nonsensical and outdated already, and that generation is barely in their teens. More on that soon)--a craving for low-tech, no-tech, screen-free experiences. Gentelligence focuses primarily on generational dynamics in the workplace, and I do predict this will have implications for where and how these generations want to work. Despite the chaos surrounding back-to-office policies and experiments, our youngest members of the workplace (and our soon-to-be newest employees) are showing signs that they value time away from screens. I first noticed this last year among my own students, who were overwhelmingly setting change goals in my change management class focused on reducing screen time. Versions included "cleaning up my sleep routine" (putting the phone away at least 30 minutes before bed, eliminating blue light before bed, reading physical books), "reduce my weekly screentime", "stop doomscrolling", and "impose limits on TikTok and Instagram time". It was a sign that it was no longer just their parents or older generations who wanted them off their phones; they wanted themselves off their phones, too. For a wave of young people raised in an era of tech overload, it seems we have reached the point of maximum saturation, and they are pushing back. As one of my students astutely mentioned to me last year, "There are no boundaries now...our generation is just trying to figure out how to put some of them back." I've doubled down on the need for this in my teaching, having conversations with students about how to ethically use AI as a thought-partner while balancing protected time for our most scarce resource these days: deep thinking and connection. It was this need, coupled with the overwhelming research showing the improved retention and learning that occurs when students handwrite their notes and put away their laptops in class, that led me to declare our classroom a laptop and phone-free zone. We still use slides to guide conversations, but there are no longer 30 laptop screens popped up in front of them, distracting even those who are trying hard to focus. Surprisingly, I've had very little pushback. I was concerned they would feel like I was forcing them backwards, but collectively we seem to be exhaling. The discussions have never been better. As our younger Gen Zs reach young adulthood and our oldest Gen As become teenagers, they are emerging from a kind of social experiment they entered unwittingly — a life that has never known a world without constant screens. They are realizing how different they feel when they unplug. Gen Z and Gen A even have a term for this: touching grass. That's right, when the default is constant tech immersion, they had to come up with a phrase to represent the intentional effort it takes to step away. Whenever possible, I try to engage in some real-time generational anthropology, just to explore my hunches and (when possible) debunk stereotypes. Gentelligence is all about being curious rather than judgmental, and I am most definitely curious about these early signs that our younger generations are seeking a better balance between their tech and non-tech worlds. Last month, I was in Chicago for a keynote and found myself in a trendy food hall over lunch. There were little shops surrounding the food hall, including one of my all-time weaknesses, a stationery store . Pens! Journals! Paper! Notebooks! (I, too, love the analog. After indulging myself in a number of vital paper goods, I was tucking into a sandwich in the food hall and saw a (literally) noteworthy sight: a table of early 20-somethings, gathering on their lunch hour and...writing in their journals. Multi-colored pens, stamps, and conversation were plentiful. There was not a phone in sight. That in and of itself was remarkable. It turns out that stationary stores are experiencing a resurgence . Knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and sourdough baking are also all having a moment. Physical books ( and bookstores! ) are making a comeback. A few weeks later, I was at another event, this time a very trendy commercial interior design conference, where we were discussing ways to design spaces that promote intergenerational interactions (yes, it was as cool as you might be thinking). I saw a young designer at the cocktail hour and walked over to introduce myself. I asked if I could pick her brain on something, as I figured it was part of her JOB to be up on the latest trends. I asked her whether she was feeling a personal pull to use less tech, or if this was something she had seen among her peers. That's when she told me about Analog Bags . (I won't go down that rabbit hole here, but feel free to explore the link and know that I am absolutely creating my own Analog Bag as we speak). At that same design conference, a book was recommended to me: Megatrends by John Naisbett. The gentleman who suggested it said it changed his life. He thought I would find it interesting, given my interest in generational trends, behavioral cycles, and, of course, my classes in change management. I ordered it as soon as I got back to my hotel room (fun fact: it was published in 1982, so you'll have to find a vintage copy!). I've been devouring it, and among the many eye-opening insights was the observation that " the more 'High Tech' we become, the more we need 'High Touch.” Now, Naisbett was referring to the high-tech era of the early 1980s, when personal computers were entering the scene, but the relevance of the comment almost 45 years later, in the age of AI, was not lost on me. Those who have lived their entire lives as products of high-tech are now blazing the trail to meet their need for high touch. Let this be my formal declaration (for whatever it's worth) that I predict our youngest generations will lead us back to a balance between tech and high-touch: they are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, and their message is clear. They are living, breathing embodiments of a life flooded with endless tech, fake news, constant connectivity, dopamine hits, and input dictated by algorithms, and it appears they may have had enough.