Millennial Leadership

By Kamy Eliassi and Terry Thompson

Up-and-coming millennial business manager Kamy Eliassi and baby boomer leader Terry Thompson team up to write Millennial Leadership, a business guide focused on Gen Y leaders and managers.

Eliassi, a higher-up at an international logistics company, is in charge of leading the entire organization—though he realizes he isn't managing to his best potential. His search for a mentor leads him to Thompson, a volunteer mentor who was an executive vice president and general manager at a leading fuel management company in Vancouver, Canada. Thompson's articles on leadership and management fundamentals are combined with Eliassi’s relevant leadership insights for the Modern Millennial to help leaders develop an inspiring organizational culture and achieve life balance.

Suggestions and stories combine in this easy-to-understand, concise management guide for leaders at all levels. While specifically focusing on Gen Y entrepreneurs, leaders, and managers, Millennial Leadership will inspire all who aspire to lead and manage with greatness.

Thompson's mentoring shows the importance of having someone to show you the ropes, while Eliassi's expertise proves that Gen Y managers can find success and thrive. It's a true example of teamwork and how people from different generations can work together in the spirit of mutual assistance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: GlobalView Publishing
• Release date: Dec 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540173430

Kamy Eliassi

Kamy Eliassi studied business economics and accounting at UCLA before becoming a certified public accountant. He quickly moved up from staff accountant to become managing director of an international logistics company at an early age. With over 7 years of executive leadership experience, Kamy’s unique leadership style focuses on leading with inspiration and developing each individual based on their unique personality traits. He currently speaks on the topic of Millennial Leadership and provides management and leadership consulting to companies and their leaders.

Book preview

MillennialLeadershipBookCover.pdftitle.pdf

MILLENNIAL LEADERSHIP: The Ultimate Management Guide For Gen Y Leaders

Copyright © 2016 Kamy Eliassi & Terry Thompson

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover design: Ivan Popov

Interior design: Adina Cucicov

About This Book

Kamy’s Story

I was a Millennial up-and-coming Managing Director for an international logistics company in Southern California. By age 32, I had already been managing 25 people for about eight years. After all of the ups and downs that come with managing people, projects, and resources, I realized I wasn’t really the best manager I could be. So I decided to do something about it.

After some Google searches, I came across SCORE—a nonprofit mentoring organization designed to offer assistance to small businesses and entrepreneurs. They had listed all of their mentors and consultants based on expertise and location, and I read through the profiles hoping to find someone with sage advice.

As a Millennial, it wasn’t enough for me to get a mentor who was also a Millennial—I was hoping to find a Gen Xer or someone from the Baby Boomer generation. This was very important for me as I felt that intergenerational coaching was critical to my success. I wanted to soak in the wisdom of those who came before me, add some of my own insights, and then pass down that wisdom to others who would build on it. During my search, it seemed there was one mentor who had mastered many of the key areas and core issues related to management and leadership, so I contacted him to set up an appointment.

As it turned out, my co-author Terry Thompson was the lucky winner of my mentor draft. He quickly returned my voicemail, and we set up a face-to-face meeting the following week. Terry had recently been the Executive Vice President and General Manager at the leading fuel management company in Vancouver, Canada. He had just moved to sunny Southern California after helping to build, develop, and sell that organization, and it was around this time that he decided to sign up with SCORE to help teach others what he had learned through his experience.

While this was impressive, what really made Terry stand out as a volunteer mentor were the summarized articles on management and leadership that he had written. In total, he had about 55 articles covering a variety of important business topics.

After our first conversation, I felt there was something special about Terry and his articles, so I asked him if we could have a consistent weekly meeting until I had read all of them. He agreed and that eventually led to the writing of this book, which brings us here to you, our reader.

A Note About Narration and Inspiration

This book contains Kamy and Terry’s leadership insights, and it also includes stories from some of their discussions. While Kamy is the narrator and voice of the book, the advice and guidance is primarily inspired by Terry. The co-written book is based on articles originally written by Terry, with many relevant insights for Millennials added by Kamy. The principles shared in this book are focused around a destination theme, which provides a unique framework for understanding the concepts.

The Generations Defined

To clarify the generational references made in this book, Millennials (also known as Gen Y) are generally defined as adults born between 1975 and 1995.[1] Throughout the book, we talk about some of the differences between Millennials and their predecessors: Generation X and Baby Boomers. Gen Xers—the generation directly preceding the Millennials—are people typically born between 1961 and 1981.[2] Baby Boomers include people born between 1945 and 1964.[3]

Because there aren’t any firm definitions regarding when a generation begins and ends, you’ll notice that there is some overlap between them, and you may find sources that list different date ranges.

Why Millennials Should Read This Book

This book is meant for any Millennial who aspires to lead a group of people, no matter how large or small. The topics we cover will be of value to almost any supervisor, middle-manager, or senior executive. There are nuggets of wisdom for everyone at any age, but the focus of this book is to help develop the next generation of business leaders. The content is in an easy-to-access format with lessons that will facilitate your personal development in any aspect of your life.

It’s interesting to note that more than one in three current US workers are Millennials, and they are now the largest segment of the American workforce and growing. According to a survey conducted by the research group WorkplaceTrends.com and the leadership training firm Virtuali, 91% of Millennials aspire to be leaders.[4] Further, 43% of these Millennials are drawn to lead because they want to empower others to succeed.[5] On the other hand, only 5% said that money was their motivator and 1% said power.[6]

To provide some context for these results, Dan Schawbel, the founder of WorkplaceTrends.com, states that Millennials want to make a difference. They want to inspire the people around them with purpose. They don’t want to do meaningless work.[7]

Research also shows that Millennials want to learn in the most efficient way possible, and this means having access to relevant information that is concise, efficient, and easy to understand. Based on this, we’ve focused our content around the things that Millennials are looking for:

1. We focus on what 91% of Millennials in the workforce aspire to. This includes:

Yblue.pdf Becoming a great leader

Yblue.pdf Building an inspiring organizational culture

Yblue.pdf Implementing and promoting work-life balance

2. We’ve made the content in this book easy to understand and learn. Many people who do take action from the information found in a book only read the summaries at the end of each chapter. Accordingly, we’ve condensed each chapter to include only the most critical concepts delivered in the most efficient way.

3. The book deals with only the key principles. We’ve listed items in order of priority with the proper weight attached to each item. Many books discuss everything under the sun, but we’ve focused our discussion on just those items you’ll need to master to become a great Millennial leader.

4. We’ve made an effort to make organizational culture a more tangible concept. The book defines organizational culture in a way that allows you to objectively measure it. This includes concepts that are important to Millennials and the organizations employing them. We also share ideas for improving your workplace culture that every Millennial leader should think about.

5. The book is co-written by a Millennial and a Baby Boomer. This provides you with sage wisdom that has stood the test of time, and it offers an uncommon level of insight that you won’t find in most leadership books.

But most importantly, the book outlines the guiding principles necessary for becoming a great leader. We hope you will jump on this ride with us and learn something valuable along the way!

[1] The Generations: What Generation are You? CareerPlanner.com. Accessed January 2016. http://www.careerplanner.com/Career-Articles/Generations.cfm.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] The Millennial Leadership Survey. Workplace Trends. July 20, 2015. https://workplacetrends.com/the-millennial-leadership-survey/.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7]Huppke, Rex. Survey Shows Millennials Want to Lead, They Just Need a Hand. ChicagoTribune.com. July 19, 2015. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/careers/ct-huppke-work-advice-0720-biz-20150717-column.html.

About the Authors

Terry Thompson

Terry has over 25 years of senior management experience in the restaurant, leasing, and fuel management industries. His last position as Executive VP and General Manager involved leading a company, shortly after its start-up in 1995, to become the pre-eminent and only national provider of on-site and on-line diesel fuel management services in Canada—with annual sales in excess of $200 million. During Terry’s tenure, the company was named Canada’s 7th Best Company to Work For in a national survey and one of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies. In 2010, Terry sold his interest in the company to a private equity group. He is now a private investor and volunteer business advisor.

Terry is well-versed and accomplished in all aspects of managing and growing business organizations. These skills and experiences include:

Yblue.pdf Finance

Yblue.pdf B to B development processes

Yblue.pdf Strategic planning

Yblue.pdf Operations

Yblue.pdf People development (particularly managers)

Yblue.pdf Building corporate culture

Feel free to reach Terry if you have any questions. His wise and sage advice is available for many and usually just an email away. Terry can be reached by email through our website www.y-leadership.com.

Kamy Eliassi

After a disastrous start as the backup goal keeper for my elementary school’s soccer pickup games, I took on basketball as a hobby in middle school. Since that also failed to lead to any success (assuming, of course, that scoring an average of 1.2 points per game is unsuccessful), I decided to take on learning as a hobby instead. Eventually, I went on to study Business Economics and Accounting at UCLA and shortly thereafter became licensed as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). After a few successful years running the numbers, I realized that I enjoyed leading and management and decided to take on more management responsibilities at our company. In about four years, I quickly moved up the ranks from Staff Accountant to Managing Director and assumed that position by age 26.

My story is a great one to share with all Millennials who seek to be the future managers and leaders of great organizations. I would have to say my biggest success during that time was increasing our sales by 5,000%. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t 5000%, but considering that our industry was cut-throat, margin sensitive, and fragmented—and considering that I was constantly putting out fires—the accomplishments I made really were quite impressive.

Now that I am wiser and a bit older, I would love to help fellow Millennials become great leaders. In this vein, I now lead a consulting company which helps Millennial business leaders do just that. As the founder of GlobalView Consulting, my goal is to help you bring your mission and refine it into a vision so you can plan and execute on your objectives. All GlobalView clients not only get our unique leadership coaching, which is based on personality traits and behavioral psychology, but they also qualify for our soccer and basketball training lessons! You can reach me at [e-mail]

Acknowledgments

Terry’s Acknowledgments

I owe many thanks to my co-author, Kamy Eliassi, who thought enough of the articles that I originally wrote to, firstly, use them as part of his own personal development and, secondly, to spend considerable time converting them into this book. My appreciation also goes to Sarah Cisco who has done a masterful job of editing.

I am grateful to the brilliant managers who I had the pleasure and honor of working with and who allowed me to develop and practice my own leadership skills. The examples they set and the feedback and insight they gave me were invaluable. These people include Joe Valeriote, Jamie Lee (who provided the IT usage tips in Chapter 9), Don Sadowski, Anthony Salis, and Sean Puchalski.

Thanks also goes to Jason Kipps, who was the first management training person we used at 4 Refuel and who introduced me to some key leadership concepts. I must also give kudos to a number of other people I’ve worked with who provided valuable insights that helped inspire the content in this book. They include Colin Bell, Jaclyn McPhadden, Michael Lansky, and Mike Vanderpol.

Finally, my inspiration for this book—as it is for so many things in my life—is my wife, Shideh. I have learned so much about life from her. Her unconditional support for, initially, the writing of the articles and then the book are just more examples of the fantastic influence she has had on me.

Kamy’s Acknowledgments

I always like to read the Acknowledgments section of a book as it usually leads to learning about the people who provided the initial spark necessary for the author to go forward with the book. In light of this, it’s a true honor to be writing my own acknowledgments.

First, I would like to thank G-d for giving me the time, energy, and focus to work hard and learn the lessons needed to co-author this wonderful book. I would also like to thank my parents for supporting me and sacrificing their comfort and their jobs in order to move to this country so my brother and I could get the best education and experience. It is their sacrifice that has led me to develop the right communication skills to co-author this book.

Additionally, I would like to give a sincere thanks to my co-author Terry Thompson, who not only took the time to write these articles, but also took the time to hold consistent weekly meetings with me to go over the principles. His mentoring helped shape