Are You A Gen Y Superstar? 10 Strategies For Becoming One of the Best of the Best
January 9th, 2009 by 
beafields I meet superstars every day, and we usually spend time talking about how they can become better at what they do. Generation Y embodies the superstar image, motivation, and expectations. The Gen Y Superstar exudes confidence, competence, strong communication skills and a willingness to excel towards personal and professional goals. At the same time, superstars can feel a sense of low self confidence and doubt. These A players of an organization need to be able to express their thoughts and ideas with the understanding that they will be heard.
So, if you are a Gen Y Superstar, here are the 10 most common suggestions I can share with you to help you stay ahead (and stay sane at the same time!)
1. Develop mental toughness by putting yourself in new, challenging situations.
2. Devote yourself to self improvement in the four main life domains: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
3. Focus on your own improvements, not on the successes of others. While it is always great to have a competitor serve as a benchmark, if you are constantly focusing on their achievements, it can take you quickly off your own focus. Stay dedicated to your own improvement.
4. Get connected with your inner drive…not the pressures of status or the demands made by other people
5. Work with a mentor or a coach, and ask for feedback, both positive and objective criticism. Take that feedback to heart, and work to improve yourself.
6. Stay focused on the long term vision for your life, career and family. While short term goals are great, staying focused on the bigger vision can help you keep your head in the game on days when life gets tough.
7. Spend time with the people who are the “best” at what you want to achieve, and shadow them for two days. I recently read a suggestion about amateurs who want to become professional golfers. The advice was to not make a decision until you have played golf with a superstar. This is the only way you can truly discover how incredibly accomplished a superstar truly is.
8. Perform each task in your life with excellence. Sloppy, casual errors will send the message that you just don’t care about becoming one of the best of the best.
9. Be dedicated to reinvention. Simply because you were great yesterday doesn’t mean that you’ll be great in 10 years. When I talk about reinvention, I always talk about Cher. She is a performer who never let her age get in her way of being a superstar performer. She keeps bouncing back again and again with new songs, new tours, new costumes which are relevant to the current times.
10. Each time you succeed, celebrate with friends and family members or treat yourself to time doing something you love to do. I know you have heard this before, but have you celebrated a recent success? Hey…you deserve it!
Posted in success | 
4 Comments »
January 9th, 2009 at 7:04 am
Hey Bea – Is this really specific to Gen Y? I mean, it seems like these 10 principles can be applied to all ages.
If these are 10 common ways that superstars can improve, my question is: For you to define a Gen Y’er as a “superstar,” what traits or characteristics do they share? And what are they doing different than their peers?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks, Bea!
-Andy
January 9th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Hi Andy,
Great question.
A few colleagues and I are looking at Gen Y as a group of young careerist who embody the superstar. Many are so much more high achieving than previous generations, and while these traits can be used for any superstars, I (and others) believe that Generation Y as a whole will be greeting multiple opportunities to grow and develop beyond what is currently a very high level of greatness.
We define the Generation Y Superstar as this: Generation Y embodies the Rockstar image, motivation, and expectations. The Gen Y Rockstar exudes confidence, competence, strong communication skills and a willingness to excel towards personal and professional goals. At the same time, rockstars can feel a sense of low self confidence and doubt. These A players of an organization need to be able to express their thoughts and ideas with the understanding that they will be heard. The Rockstar does not have five, eight or ten years to make their footprint in any organization. Immediate progress, responsibility and access are required to have them stay focused and engaged.
You can learn more about this topic in our upcoming course: http://the7sides.com. We will be talking specifically about the Gen Y superstar.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Bea,
It’s really simple to put Millennials (Gen Y) up on a pedestal and give lofty tips on how to become the best of the best – but it’s another thing entirely to *be* one of those Gen Y’ers in the trenches, living under the thumb of a Baby Boomer boss who treats us very much like their children’s disrespectful punk friends.
You can try to act like a rockstar – but more often than not, your ideas get censured or filtered, your intentions are mistaken, and you get threatened or fired… no matter how good you may be. I think it’s harder for us than you can imagine to keep up that rockstar spirit.
I’m not raining on your parade by any means – we are a rockstar generation, a lot of us have energy and drive and multitasking down to an art, but try telling our employers that “we don’t have 8 years to dedicate to you” and the only place our tunes will be playing is in the unemployment line.
I think the real issue here is how we can keep true to our rockstar spirit without “selling out” to the man or bowing down and becoming the man’s beotch. We’re completely misunderstood as a generation – the only one to get us right is Don Tapscott.
To be honest, we’re at a severe disadvantage at the moment if we present ourselves as anything but a perfect, shining cog in the machine to 90% of the companies out there – but only in this bad economy. When the good times come back around, though… we’ll be bigger than Woodstock!
I guess my point is, it was a good article – and sound advice, but, let’s have a practical, less-feel-good article about fixing the inequities of an age-ist system and how Gen Y can survive with our rockstar status intact.
-Nick
PsychoticResumes.com
April 26th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
[...] Are You a Gen Y Superstar? 10 Strategies for Becoming One of the Best of the Best – Bea Fields (Millennial Leaders) The title is pretty self explanatory, but what I like about the piece is that it isn’t the same re-hashed cliches, and it’s not specific to Gen Y. You’ll do yourself a favor by reading these list and applying a few nuggets to your life today. [...]