Developing Millennials: Generational Differences Versus Developmental Stages

This was a research poster presented at the SIOP 2019 annual conference and created by Gabrielle Metzler, Kirby White, Kayla Logan, Sarah Morris, Sean Campbell, Anna Barthel, and Robert McKenna.

Authors analyzed the developmental leadership journey of 1,095 millennials through the framework of both generational theory and developmental stages. Holistic results are presented on millennials’ calling and purpose, attention to self and others, networks, personality, foundational and desired experiences and lessons, learning strategies, and life fulfillment.

This was a class project that turned into a published research poster and conference presentation. My co-author (Tim Bromley) and I extracted the titles and abstracts from 200,000 peer-reviewed articles and used text analysis to compare the linguistic properties (authenticity, clout, analytic, etc.) between top and bottom publishers.

The most surprising difference was that top publishers had significantly less “authenticity” in their writing. Unsurprisingly, most publishers were very high in “analytic” writing.

The topic of my Ph.D. dissertation was employee engagement, and my research specifically focuses on a quantitative comparison of the major engagement theories. Some argue that engagement comes from the job tasks, some say it comes from employer/colleague social support, and others think it’s more about employee personality. Which is true? Read more to find out.

I worked with a major social media company as they built the foundation for a 10+ year program to reduce the GHG emissions from their supply chain. Originally hired to manage a few dashboards, I took the initiative to develop an end-to-end data ecosystem and report center, which reduced the time spent by stakeholders inputting data and increased the resolution and credibility of the data the team relied on for critical decision making.

I worked with a large cloud computing provider to develop the strategy, workflow, and content to engage their network of suppliers to reduce their GHG emissions.