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‘ They think they know everything and are always quite sure about it .’ That was from Aristotle in Rhetoric in the 4th century BC ! You can only imagine what Aristotle ’ s parents said about him . (‘ What ’ s wrong with this kid ? All he does is sit around and think !’) The fact is , the old have been hating on the young for millennia .
In 2019 social scientists from the University of California , Santa Barbara published their study of older subjects and their perspective on younger generations . They observed that as we age , we tend to criticize the young for lacking in areas where we perceive ourselves to excel . We also have unreliable , idealized memories of ourselves which we compare to the youth of today .
My mom recently called me out for demonstrating that exact thought process . After complaining to her about my collegeaged son ’ s flakiness , she began rattling off stories of my college years when I was equally clueless . It turns out I wasn ’ t the rock-solid kid I remembered to be . Perhaps I also wasn ’ t the reliable , hard-working employee I thought I was . Could my grandfather have been complaining about me ?
I thought about him during the decade that I ran my own franchise businesses . In the beginning , my employees were my biggest source of stress . It was tempting to blame their entire generation for their incompetence . Apathy , tardiness , ghosting - it drove me crazy . I ’ d joined the ranks of frustrated employers lamenting the days when we , as Gen-Xers , had a lot more to offer ( despite what our Boomer parents thought ).
The turning point came when I replaced my frustration with curiosity . Instead of wondering , ‘ What ’ s wrong with these people ?’ I asked , ‘ What drives these people ?’ I wanted to learn about them and from them . When someone was performing well , I paid closer attention to determine why . What were the conditions that brought out their best ? Was it something innate to them or was it something we could replicate in other team members ?
I developed the same inquisitiveness about my underperformers . I stopped blaming their soccer trophies , helicopter parents , and the effects of screens and social media , and just tried to understand what motivated them . I didn ’ t want to endorse or enable their behavior , but my desire to understand them made me less contemptuous of them . It also made it easier for me to experiment with different approaches to leading them . Slowly , through a lot of trial and error , mistakes , and mis-hires , we saw
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