Lately, news has been interesting regarding social media in the sports world.

For instance:

• The NFL has recently finished a social media policy that prohibits players from using Twitter during games.
• The International Tennis Association banned players from using Twitter to discuss their on-court activity during the US Open.
• The NBA is reportedly working on a social media policy.

So, what does this have to do with the young employees you’re managing?

It’s simple: you’re watching these organizations deal with some of the same problems you’re dealing with. NFL players enter the draft at around age 22 or 23. NBA players can enter the draft after a single year of school. LeBron James was playing in the NBA before I had graduated from college. Up-and-coming tennis players can be very young.

And while one might demand a higher level of professionalism and maturity from people earning multi-millions of dollars than from first-time workers earning eight or ten bucks an hour, anyone who has seen Terrel Owens, Chad Ochocinco, or Brandon Marshall knows that this isn’t the case.

These guys, amongst others, have been case studies in entitled talent, which is a problem front-line managers across the nation are dealing with.

If nothing else, this news tells you that you can take comfort in knowing that you aren’t the only one who is facing these problems.

Then take note of the ways that these organizations deal with their problem children. Look for both the positive and the negative lessons. What did the Patriots do that the Raiders didn’t to make Randy Moss behave? How will the NBA’s players receive the new social networking policy?

Let the big leagues be the testing grounds for some of the policies you’re kicking around. Best part: you can do your research by watching Sports Center.

This isn’t so much a technique for managing Generation Y as it is a helpful hint for effectively using technology (a quality that can come in handy when managing Generation Y):

Once, the CCTV system at my security job broke down, and we had to fix it. After two hours of disassembling and reassembling every component of the system, powering it off and on, and unplugging and re-plugging every single connection along the way, the thing still wouldn’t work.

The rest of the group stepped outside for a minute, so I took the opportunity to Google the error message and the brand of the camera system. Sure enough, the first result contained instructions for solving the problem. Within two minutes, I had the system up and running.

The cool thing about this fix is that anyone can do it. You don’t need training or tech-know-how, you just need internet access and a good feel for the search terms that will return useful results.

Now, I often hear that Gen Y is tech savvy.  And frequently enough, this translates into the youngest in the store or the office getting called each time a computer crashes, a phone doesn’t work, or the Tivo won’t program correctly. But that doesn’t mean that we know how to fix everything right off the bat. Sometimes, we just know which terms to plug into a search engine.

Next time you’ve got a broken piece of technology on your hands, give this a shot before you call up a Gen Y employee or one of your kids. Best case scenario, you fix the problem and can teach the young guns how it’s done next time the problem comes up. Worst case scenario, you’ve taken two minutes and learned how not to solve the problem.

One of the primary complaints about Generation Y is that we exhibit an unparalleled sense of entitlement. If you Google “Generation Y entitlement,” it returns some 57,000 results.

We all know that the truth is not all Millennials are like that - just as it’s the case that not every Baby Boomer has a stellar work ethic. The trick is to find young employees who don’t feel unduly entitled to benefits, pay, seniority, etc.

Many Gen Ys have been given the vast majority of what they’ve ever had. Whether it’s money, a car, praise, or various trophies and awards, they’ve been given these things their entire life, simply for showing up. They didn’t have to sacrifice to get them, they just got them, and there is little anyone can do now to convince them that their attendance shouldn’t guarantee them those treasures.

As working with these people so beautifully illustrates, there is a world of difference between getting something and earning something.

So, when you’re interviewing, ask a potential employee:

“Tell me about a time you earned something. Tell me about what it was, what you did to get it, and what it meant to you.”

If you’ve ever worked to earn anything in your life, you’ll know the difference between an answer from someone who has had to sacrifice and toil to get something he wanted and someone who was handed a prize.

After the potential employee has showed you that he’s acquainted with the concept of earning, ask him this:

“What would you like to earn if I hire you?”

The answer to this question won’t just give you a taste of a potential employee’s ambitions, it will show you what they expect just for showing up, and what they know they will have to earn.

Hire the young people who expect to earn money for their work, not the young people who expect to get paid for showing up.

Marketing to young people can teach you valuable lessons about managing Millennials.

Which Wich, a quick casual sandwich concept has a very cool offer here in Colorado. If you take a picture of yourself and a Which Wich bag on top of one of Colorado’s 54 peaks that is 14,000 feet or higher and bring that picture into Which Wich, you get a free sandwich.

Like this.

Now, in addition to being a very cool word-of-mouth marketing tactic (I heard about the plan from a couple of climbers on the top of Torrey’s Peak), I think that this could be a very effective model for managers looking to build relationships with their Generation Y employees.

Imagine that you put up an “Employee Achievement” bulletin board in back. Each period (week, month, quarter, etc.), your employees can bring in a picture of themselves accomplishing something impressive, and you can hook them up with something cool and post the picture.

Off hand, four things I would consider impressive:

• Climbing a mountain
• Swimming with a dolphin
• Accepting a scholarship
• Building a house for Habitat for Humanity

Now, not only are you celebrating what your employees do, you’re getting to know who they are. You’re learning about their interests, their hobbies, and their passions. You’ll be tapping into the same impulse that drives employees to post pictures on Facebook, and you don’t even need an internet connection to do it.

(I’ve seen something like this in the back of my local REI, and that’s a company that for 12 years running has been rated as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For.)

To really take it to the next level, once per period, snap and print a photo of an employee doing something awesome at work and put that on the Achievement Board to recognize their performance at work.

If you ask me, that beats the hell out of “Employee of the Month.”

I was lucky enough to attend a Rockies game and a Broncos game last week, and it got me thinking. You see, the simple truth of every sport is that defense wins championships. If you can’t field a team with a good defense, your time on the field isn’t going to get you anywhere.

So, what does this mean when you’re employing Millennials?

It means that you have to be able to defend your practices to them so that you can win their hearts. Because make no mistake about it: those practices will be under constant attack from an offense that has spent its whole life sharpening its wits to abuse, question, and disregard the procedures you have in place. (Just ask any manager I’ve ever worked for.)

Four excellent defenses for any procedure:

1. Following this procedure will make the young employee more money.

The appeal of this one is easy to see. Sometimes, though, the hard part is drawing a direct line between the three cents of cheese that are saved by using the correct portioning tool and the raise an employee might receive in the future if food cost isn’t too high. Two ways to make that line easier to see: 1. Immediate fiscal gains for following procedure (i.e., gift cards, cash, etc.) 2. Long-term rewards for over-all performance. Set up a prize or some sort of reward that is contingent upon the business’s performance.

2. Following this procedure is the right thing to do.

Generation Y doesn’t just come to the workforce looking to put some cash in their pockets - they want to do it on their own terms. I had a friend who worked in sales for a major national retailer. He was good, and was consistently able to sell extended warranties on products. Despite having the ability to have a similar success with applications for the company’s credit cards, he only got two applications in his entire time there. When I asked why, he said, “I didn’t think it was right to suggest a card with such a high interest rate to people.” So, as a manager looking to get him to work on credit applications, you’d have to do a few things: explain how it’s the right thing to do (it avoids anti-discrimination lawsuits, for instance), that the people who are applying for the card have the information available to them, and that it’s the right thing to do to let them make their decisions instead of him making the decision for them.

3. Following this procedure is easier/more effective than other ways out there.

Speak from your experience. Share times that you tried it a different way and ended up with hours of extra work because of the unforeseen consequences. This one can be particularly convincing coming from a peer instead of a supervisor.

4. Following this procedure is going to better prepare you for your future.

Sure, learning the new program doesn’t look like very much fun, and the old one worked perfectly well. But when businesses adopt new technologies, they typically aren’t the only business doing it. Learning to cope with change is just one a small part of this defense - learning new technologies and their applications is the real meat of it.

I’d love to hear about any others you’ve used in the comments!