MSP Leaders Offer Advice for Managing Young Staff

Four veteran leaders from MSP 501 companies at last week's MSP Summit in Atlanta shared advice for working with younger employees in a panel called "Leadership Secrets for a New Era in Managed Services."

The panel included three CEO-founders, including moderator Rich McKinnon of DVBE Technology Group, plus a vice president and an executive vice president. They discussed how they teach and motivate younger workers, including those who entered the workforce during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the importance of mentoring and communication has grown.

“Style of leadership has changed since when I first entered the workforce,” said Chuck Canton, CEO of Melville, NY-based Sourcepass. “As you see more Gen Z and millennials enter the space, everyone is extremely informed. Information as at their fingertips and there’s a lot of inherent skepticism from that. The best way to get folks to understand what the mission is, is to really spend a lot of time on the 'this is why we're doing this.' If you ask someone to go across the desert, they want to know why they’re being asked to cross the desert, and do you have enough provisions and water to get there? And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. We want people challenging what we’re doing.”

Neil Medwed, VP of Houston-based Meriplex, said younger workers are less patient when it comes to wanting promotions and more responsibilities.

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“Younger generations want to go from entry level to the top in a year,” he said. “I don’t want to use the word 'entitled,' because that’s a negative connotation. But my generation understood you’re going to work your way up from Level A to B to C, and so forth. Not all of the younger generation − but many of them − feel that they want to move up much more quickly than my generation did.”

He said Meriplex, which has around 700 employees, emphasizes mentoring to make it easier for younger workers to advance faster. Meriplex had more than 160 internal promotions last year.

“With the talent and the mentoring capability that we have internally for that newer, younger employee, they can reach out to subject-matter experts within our walls to learn more and more and enhance their knowledge,” he said. “They want to be able to do bigger and better projects more quickly.”

Triton Networks EVP Ron Lovern said he and Triton CEO Robert House have an intern program for students in the Dallas area. They pay for training and education for their staff. He tries to help younger workers create long-term career goals.

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“What I talk to them about is, ‘What do you want to be? Where you want to grow?’” Lovern said. “If you want to come in and you want to be a developer, you want to be a tech, that's great, but you really should be looking and moving toward being the architect. You should be the engineer or the next level. We actually encourage that. As they increase their knowledge and skills, we pay them accordingly. And as they get to a certain level, then we're doing certain bonuses and things like that for the additional certifications. And that's a big part for us, because our customers rely on us to be the experts.

“So we're real big on the education piece," he continued. "We're big on the mentoring, but the biggest part about this is creating a culture of ownership and accountability.”

Communication Key for MSP Leaders

Awecomm CEO Brent Yax said three-quarters of his Troy, Michigan-based MSP employees are under 25. He said communication is crucial when dealing with younger workers.

He said when he started as a consultant, “you just put your head down, did the work and there wasn’t a lot of feedback, support or training. You built it on your own and learned as you grew. Now I think the biggest change is the way in which we recognize and provide feedback, and how we have some of those conversations. I meet more individually with everybody. I try to make sure that I understand who they are and what they're looking for. We also have some systems in place for badging and leveling up for skill sets. But ultimately, it's more of a feedback-heavy system. You just need to make sure you're open with people, you're having conversations with people, you're giving correct feedback to progress toward the goals that they want, and really understanding their relationship with the company.”

Medwed agreed about the importance of communication for effective leadership.

“If you’re trying to have people follow you, it causes confusion if they don’t know where you’re going,” he said. “So, be clear with your teammates about what you’re trying to accomplish. Be clear about the whys and how it affects them, and good things will certainly happen.”

Canton said the workforce has changed for younger workers after COVID-19.

“Coming off the heels of the pandemic, there have been a lot of bad habits, getting behind a computer screen, forgetting that relationships are what built this industry,” he said. “We have to get a lot of the new arrivals into the workforce accustomed to that.”