Rethinking Millennials

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Talking recently with a middle-aged, middle-American businessman, I found myself bristling at the refrain: young people are so entitled, they don’t know how to go the extra mile at work. This from a gentleman who, by all accounts, is a tremendously compassionate person (e.g. he volunteers with inmates and makes it a point to do ‘good works’ in his community).

Curiously, Millennials seem to be getting a particularly bad rap. Of course, every generation holds myths or fears about subsequent generations. Somehow they’re not as strong or giving or studious or serious as we are. With the world going to hell in a hand-basket, things will get worse when the Millennials take charge because frankly, they’ll be too busy taking selfies to solve any of the world’s problems.

Sound at all familiar?

In the moment, I couldn’t find a diplomatic way to disagree with this man, to call out what I believe to be this “entitlement” Millennial Myth. If you happen to find yourself doing a little Millennial-bashing too, how about we all take a breath and compassionately consider what’s going on in the United States:

• Millennials have faced 17 to 30 percent unemployment (depending on their skin color).
• Millennials have watched many of their parents get laid off, and lose significant value in their homes, and/or 401Ks.
• Millennials have experienced rapid exposure of government lies (for instance, Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction; NSA spying).
• Millennials have witnessed the greatest wealth gap expansion in our nation’s history.
• Millennials have access to trust-breaking information about all manner of institutional misconduct, from government to religious bodies, public universities to Boy Scouts.
• Millennials are the best educated Americans to date yet many currently find themselves unable to conceive of the American Dream—things like buying a home or having “as much” as their parents.
• Millenials have been impacted by 9/11 and the endless images/replays in ways previous generations did not see violence and war.

Amazingly, according to poll results, Millennials are somehow remaining optimistic about their futures. But economists are less so. In her recent New York Times magazine piece , Annie Lowrey reports that from economists’ perspectives, “there is a persistent fear that they [millennials] have entered a permanently lower earnings and savings trajectory. Even if the generation recovers, even if it ends up wealthier than the one before it, the scars will be deep and long-lasting.”

One of my favorite authors of all time, Pearl S. Buck, said this:

The young do not know enough to be prudent and therefore they attempt the impossible – and achieve it, generation after generation.”

How hopeful! I’m working on getting much better at shifting and addressing this “entitlement” judgment. I’ll choose this refrain:  please, Millennials, attempt the impossible!

Let’s start calling one another on this Millennials’ bad rap when we hear it, replacing myths with compassion, shall we?

#InCourageLeading, Jone

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