"What’s up with the kids these days?” Let’s face it: this expression is as old as time itself. You can imagine caveman dad saying to caveman son, "We didn’t have the wheel when I was growing up! You have it easy!” Yet now, more than ever, this timeless expression is infiltrating the workplace in response to millennial employees.

For the first time in history, four generations are present in the workplace. Each has their own skill set, communication styles, work habits, and values which inevitably clash and create a challenging dynamic for traditionalists, boomers, generation X-ers, and millennials alike.

Perhaps the biggest clash is that of millennials and other generations. Employees struggle in dealing with this group calling them, "tech-savvy, entitled, high maintenance, silver spoon-fed brats.” The fact is, millennials are not better or worse than any other generation – they are just different. They have an enormous skill set, and they will shape the landscape of business in years to come – if we learn to work with them.

Here are five tips for managing and engaging your millennial employees:

1. Provide feedback – early, and often. Millennials may give the air that they are confident,but this doesn’t mean they don’t want to improve. Millennials want to learn, grow, and develop.Unlike boomers, they will not benefit from only an annual review. They expect to be given constructive feedback on a daily basis. Be open, honest and direct and meet face-to-face. Share your management philosophy and style.
   
   
2. Give them structure. Unlike boomers and Xers, millennials want to be told exactly what todo. Their entire lives, their days have been structured while parents, teachers, tutors, nannies,and coaches have told them exactly what to do. In the workplace, they struggle with taking initiative and prioritizing. Now, don’t give them a step-by-step action plan for each of their tasks, but do schedule "check points” for their assignments, and make time to answer their questions.
   
   
3. Tell them why. Millennials have been taught to ask why. Growing up, when they asked their parents and teachers "why?, they got answers other than "because I said so.” As a result, they genuinely want to know the reasoning behind why things are the way they are at work. When they ask why, they expect an answer. Never give them a project without explaining the big picture. Tell them why it’s important, even if it seems obvious to you. Give definitive reasons for policies and procedures.
   
   
4. Offer career advice. Not all millennials are job hoppers. It is important that you offer opportunities for growth and development according to their individual needs. Show them away that will allow them to change paths within the same company. Encourage them to join industry and professional organizations.
   
   
5. Offer flexibility. Millennials value a parallel life, and work-life balance is incredibly important.They are digital natives who believe that technology allows work to be done anytime,anywhere. Consider flexible work hours and trust them to work from home on a case-by-case basis.

Remember: millennials are not better or worse, they are just different. Take advantage of their positive attitude, ability to multitask, technical skills, and multicultural awareness. Don’t be afraid to defy the golden rule and treat them the way they want to be treated, as opposed to the way you want to be treated.

Brad Karsh is President and lead trainer at JB Training Solutions. An accomplished public speaker and author, Brad has been featured on CNN, CNBC, and Dr. Phil and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, and many others. Brad is an advice columnist for Yahoo! and he is author of Confessions of a Recruiting Director (Prentice Hall Press, 2006). Prior to starting JB Training Solutions, Brad spent 15 years at advertising giant Leo Burnett in Chicago. He began his career in Account Management, working on clients including McDonald's, Procter & Gamble, and Pillsbury. He then moved into HR where he was responsible for hiring and training hundreds of employees.

In the aftermath of the economic downturn, we’ve seen a groundswell of attention being paid to "motivating people to be at their best.” In our conversations with leaders, we hear them trying to counteract the reality of fatigue in a world where organizations have scaled back on their workforce due to layoffs or attrition, and have yet to invest in rehires. The impact on current employees is real: more responsibility, expanded scope of accountability, with smaller teams to actually implement.

Research on motivation and the role of the brain points to many important insights for leaders and managers trying to respond proactively to burn out on their teams. Most importantly, leaders must understand that all motivation—whether at work or at play—shares the same neural pathway. Tapping into that pathway is the job of the leader—and understanding the brain can help. Here’s more about the brain and motivating your team as written in my book, Primal Leadership:

In a technical sense, our guiding values are represented in the brain as a hierarchy of emotionally toned thoughts, with what we "like” and find compelling at the top, and what we loathe at the bottom. The strength and direction of those emotions determine whether a goal appeals to us or repels us. If the thought of helping disadvantaged children, for example, or of working with people at the top of their game, thrills us, it will be highly motivating.

All of this occurs in the brain’s prefrontal areas—the seat of attention and hence of self-awareness—which monitor feelings about preferences. Circuits in that part of the brain, then, harbor our positive feelings, quietly bringing them to mind over and over as we struggle toward a goal. Pleasant thoughts thereby operate as a sort of cheering section, urging us on over the long haul. From a neurological standpoint, what keeps us moving toward our goals in life comes down to the mind’s ability to remind us of how satisfied we’ll feel when we accomplish those things—a capacity residing in the circuitry between the amygdala and the left prefrontal lobe.

No matter what drives our passion to do our best work—whether it be the pure excitement it brings, the satisfaction of learning to do something better, or the joy of collaborating with highly talented colleagues (or simply the money we earn)—all the motivators share a common neural pathway. Passion for work, at the brain level, means that circuits linked to the left prefrontal cortex pump out a fairly steady stream of good feelings as we do our work.

At the same time, left prefrontal-based brain circuits perform another motivational favor: They quiet the feelings of frustration or worry that might discourage us from continuing. This means we can take in stride the inevitable setbacks, frustrations, and failures that any worthy goal brings us. We can see the hidden opportunity or the useful lesson in a reversal and keep going.

How well those prefrontal circuits prime motivating feelings and control the discouraging ones makes the difference between a pessimist, who dwells too much on what’s wrong and so loses hope, and an optimist, who keeps going despite difficulties by holding in mind the satisfaction to come when the goal is met.

How does all of this apply to leaders and organizations? Motivation on the job too often is taken for granted; we assume people care about what they do. But the truth is more nuanced: Wherever people gravitate within their work role indicates where their real pleasure lies—and that pleasure is itself motivating. Although traditional incentives such as bonuses or recognition can prod people to better performance, no external motivators can get people to perform at their absolute best.

The implications for leaders and managers are clear: get to know your people. Understand what in their work is most "naturally” exciting to them, because that is where they will get the energy (through the pumping of critical brain chemicals) and motivation to do the full range of their work. By orchestrating a means for them to do the work they like most—which feeds them on a primal and neurological basis—you can leverage their energy and excitement into the rest of their work. By making a concerted effort to give your people more work that motivates them, you will be well on your way to counteracting the damaging effects of burnout, and moving your team and organization toward resilience and long-term sustainability.

Read more about Annie McKee and her HRPS Global Conference session, Revitalizing Leadership: It Starts with You.