If you're in a supervisory role and happen to be a Generation X-er, or even a Baby Boomer, no one needs to tell you that Millennials bring confidence and energy to your team as well as occasional challenges to your management capabilities. But you'd be crazy to dismiss them as "selfish" or just "electronically absorbed," as I heard a Boomer manager do recently.

Having grown up in an era of intense parenting and easy familiarity with technology, Millennials do tend to be achievement oriented and constantly connected. They may see Boomer bosses as too wrapped up in their jobs and Gen-X-ers as cynical and unrealistic in their expectations. Find a way to connect to them, though, and your organization will be the richer for it.

1. Make sure interactions with them are collaborative. Authority is a huge turn-off, and unnecessary authority just looks foolish. Think Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons." Or, from an earlier era, Barney Fife from the "Andy Griffith Show" with one ever-present-never-used bullet in his pocket.

 2. Give them lots of feedback, and connect organizational achievement efforts to THEIR goals.  They expect you to have an interest in their development. Without it, they'll go elsewhere.

3. Be organized about your management. They have little patience for poorly led meetings, insufficient lead time, or failure to follow up on requests.  They will easily label these as old-school entitled incompetence, and you'll quickly lose your ability to influence or motivate them.