Southern Pines, NC: March 29, 2008 — Leadership Consultant and Generation Y Expert, Bea Fields, recently spoke to the Bellevue, Washington, Chamber of Commerce Women in Business Forum on the topic of Leading at the Speed of Y: Attracting, Developing and Leading the Millennial Leader. Along with Scott Wilder, Jim Bunch and Rob Newbold, Fields is the co-author of Millennial Leaders: Success Stories From Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders.

The forum was attended by over 150 women business leaders from the Bellevue and Seattle, Washington areas. Bellevue was recently named as the number one place (out of 100) in the nation to live and launch a business for 2008 by Fortune Small Business. FSB chose Bellevue over others in the top 10 including Georgetown, TX; Buford, GA; Marina del Rey, CA; Bethesda, MD; Portland, OR; Denver, CO; Charlotte, NC; Fort Worth, TX, and Franklin, MA.

Fields is the President of Bea Fields Companies, Inc. She is also the Chairman Elect for the Moore County Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina. “As someone who has provided leadership consulting and training services to over 800 leaders worldwide and has also served on the Board of Trustees for my local Chamber of Commerce, I know the challenges small business owners and Chambers are facing in attracting and leading Generation Y,” said Fields.

Fields’ mission with this presentation was to provide the women business leaders of Bellevue the answers to their most pressing questions about this next generation while providing them with strategies on how to best manage, motivate and communicate with them. “Based on the large number of questions and comments, I believe this mission was accomplished,” said Fields. “Gen Y leadership is a very hot topic, and I believe I provided the audience with a fresh perspective on the challenges Generation Y is facing and how we as can lead the charge in working with them to support them in being successful in the future.”

There is a great article in USA Today from this past week:

Boomers’ hope: That the kids are all right

As always when these articles appear, I noticed some comments by people calling Generation Y lazy (my hunch is this is a Boomer or a Gen X calling Gen Y’s lazy). I believe that we can emotionally support our children by stopping this name calling. With the Millennial Leaders project, we interviewed multiple Generation Y business leaders who are working very hard and who are giving back to the world through establishing non profits and working for organizations like the Peace Corps and Teach for America (if you want to be inspired, read the chapters in our book on Mari Moss and Nathan Rothstein).

So to call these kids lazy is perpetuating a stereotype that feeds a negative message to these young men and women. As a parent of 3 Gen Y’s, I believe that by instilling a sense of contribution back to society and by teaching them that to spend money, you must be willing to work to earn it (right now, that’s the way our economy works…money is a medium of exchange, and it does not grow on trees). And, along the way, we can help our kids build emotional muscles by teaching them that mistakes and failure (let them be late for work, let them make a bad grade) are a part of maturing into adulthood.

Finally, the invention of cell phones and e-mail are not helping this situation with over-involved parents. As parents, we need to resist the urge to pick up the phone at the drop of a hat. It sends the message that we will always be there to bail our kids out, and to be honest…they don’t want this. They are telling us to stop calling their college campuses and their employers. So, as a boomer to other boomers, we can do something about this, and we can start by taking responsibility for helping create this worry and doubt by always giving our kids a pillow to land softly.