Not long ago, while catching up on family and friends on Facebook (ok... I admit it), I happened on a video by Simon Sinek entitled "
On Millennials in the Workplace" in which I was informed that the generation we refer to as "the millennials" are a uniquely broken generation as a result of:
- Collossally poor parenting - including protection from failure and lack of discipline
- Instant gratification as a result of their electronics
- A lost capacity for joy as a result of never experiencing need or sorrow
The result, he tells us, is that we have to especially construct and operate the workplace in order to rehabilitate this broken generation and gently lead them to the reality of loss so that they can learn to have joy,
Wait a minute... my nonsense meter is pegged...
Complaints about younger generations are not new and surprisingly similar.
Socrates(469-399 BC) is quoted as saying "
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
I remember being somewhat wistful because, as a child, I remember the father of one of my fellow Cub Scouts whose notion of encouragement was to effusively praise his children no matter how well (or poorly) they actually performed. Needless to say, my father behaved differently, and, with the clarify of hindsight, I am grateful that he raised me as he did. At the time, I would really like to have always been right.
In my teenage years (yes.. even I once had them), the next mortal dangers were rock and roll, and boys with long hair. Even then, there were helicopter parents whose quest for perfection in their children included working to get teachers fired from my high school because they had the temerity to not give them A's thus preventing them from admission to the colleges their parents wanted them to attend.
Conrad Gessner wrote in Biblioteca universalis (1545) about the dangers associated with a new technology, called a book expressing concern about the "confusing and harmful abundance of books", apparently a diatribe on the dangers of ready access to information.
I note that the use of electronics is not unique to the millennial generation, and that my children (Gen X'ers), as well as my siblings are also addicted to their devices, which has not made them social cripples.
Apparently I am not the only person who thinks Sinek is wrong.
1,2My own children, of whom I am incredibly proud, grew up to be remarkable human beings in spite of, rather than because of my parenting. I can think of some things I did right. I can think of more that I did incredibly wrong (again, realizing my error in rejecting some of my father's methods). Perhaps one of the best things I did was to sit them down as they considered entering the workforce and tell them that an employer owed them nothing more than pay for the work they do as agreed, and that, no matter where they worked, they would always experience instances where it felt like other people were getting away with poor performance, and that they would drive themselves nuts if they worried about it. it seemed to have worked, although they rejected it at first.
In the 12 years I managed hospital pharmacies, I discovered that no education process (including pharmacy school) produced individuals who walked in prepared to do the job I needed them to do. There had to be an on-boarding process that took some time, and required regular check-ins to be certain the new employee was on-boarding effectively. In some cases, I had to cut my losses and try again.
I believe it is not the role of the employer to be
in loco parentis.
Having said that, I observe that the most successful organizations spend a considerable amount of energy helping their employees advance. That was the case when I started my career in 1975, and continues to be the case today. It is in the company's best interests to counsel, discipline (where needed), encourage, and mold their employees both to build up a fund of talent on whom they can draw, and to maximize the value of their on-boarding investment. I have enjoyed mentoring both as a mentee, and as a mentor and find it both rewarding and useful.
So my sense of things is that each new generation brings challenges, but those challenges wind up being similar regardless of the name we give any new generation. The millennials do challenge us, but no less than we challenged those in command when we came to practice. The dialectic between the generations changes both, and usually for the better.
Dennis A. Tribble, Pharm.D., FASHP
Ormond Beach, FL
DATdoc@aol.com
The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my employer or of ASHP.
1 Buckley J,
Why simon Sinek's Vidoe on Millennials Was Wrong
2 Jefferson E Why I am sick of fake theorists lamenting the "millennial problem"