HOW TO LEARN from MILLENNIALS AT WORK (rather than moan about them and feel jealous)

Women often feel invisible in the workplace as they get older, and women who have been away from work having kids can feel utterly irrelevant when they return.

When I returned, I was blown away by how confident the younger women in my team were. They asked for more money. They said if they weren’t happy. They asked for promotions. They were far more adept at technology, understanding intuitively how to get stuff done quickly and efficiently – even if they didn’t always have the people skills to get along with teams/managers/ clients. And I’ll be honest and say that it inspired feelings of jealousy.

My own career progression had been slow and tedious. I’d spent a lot of time doing stuff that really wasn’t enjoyable. For example, taking biscuits out of their packaging and then ironing it so it could be mounted for a marketing presentation. Doing this for 10 different countries meant in total I had to iron about a thousand pieces of biscuit packaging.

In the beginning, my envy of the younger women didn’t serve me well. I got grumpy. I felt on the back foot technologywise. I knew they had every right to shape their own destinies and demand more. But the question remained: Who will actually make the tea? Will it be me?

Then I spoke to these women. They’d been told they could achieve anything and didn’t let the fact that they were entering uncharted territory paralyse them. They were inspiring. One of the things I’ve noticed about people who age well and seem energised and interesting is their ability to adapt to new circumstances. Millennials show the way. They are agile and they are keen to embrace new challenges, rather than telling themselves they won’t be able to do it.