One of the greatest roadblocks to self-growth is one-dimensional thinking
lifestyle1 week ago
I sighed. Really, Forbes? Another article about the flaws of Gen-Z? ‘3 Reasons Gen Z Is Getting Fired From The Workplace — A Psychologist Explains.’
But when a column topic falls into your lap, what’s a writer to do? And it’s not because I ‘lack motivation’.
At least the article’s author is a real psychologist, and he makes three claims. Why react, you may ask. Well, I want to know what the olds think of me.
The first is that we lack motivation, but that is not our fault. I agree with this, that our reluctance to work hard stems from direct knowledge of how our parents were mistreated by their employers, or in seeing it on a more macro level with the 2008 financial crisis, or in the pandemic and how poorly vital workers were being treated, just as we entered the workforce.
It’s nice to see that broadly, the science agrees with my lived experience, and harkens back to something I’ve mentioned a few times — why am I going to pull myself up by my bootstraps when people are rarely rewarded for it?
This section goes on to talk about the basics of what we want in an employer — cares about the world and its employees, and won’t exploit us. Anything else, an employer is getting what they pay for. I liked this line: “This perceived lack of motivation may be a form of self-preservation, a reluctance to pour themselves into a system that has not offered much stability in return.”
Next comes communication, specifically the premise that we are speaking ‘a different language’. We have plenty of interpersonal skills, we just have no evidence these legacy employers want to have their cake and eat it too, understanding everything and appealing to everyone. “Missing office face time at a crucial point in their career development” is a fair point, entering the workforce in 2020 as most of us did, and the author doesn’t trip into the same pitfall, pointing out how reluctant our employers often are to offer a middle ground.
I do feel the piece could go deeper here, which is a common failing of these legacy media outlets that try to ‘understand’ Gen-Z; meanwhile, we’re telling you what we want and need, and you’re acting like it isn’t all over the Internet all the time what we want and need.
Sidebar: Plenty of companies will always have open job postings to apply for to artificially inflate certain growth numbers, and will happily waste your time in an interview when they have no intention of hiring you. It JUST happened to me.
The third is an old favourite, the rejection of ‘all work no life’. I’m not rehashing it, because the author says nothing new about our desire for balance — what I will say is what I’ve mentioned only once before, that so much can be done in my workday at 28, compared to the workday of someone who was 28 about 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
I don’t waste time taking coffee breaks, taking an hour for lunch, driving across town for a meeting, or sales cold-calls and emails using a phone book. I do all those things, but on top of working a full eight or 10 hours in a day, four to six days a week, with as many plates in the air as I can handle. My bank account thanks me for it.
Aside: I’ve been thinking about the reaction to this column, positive in all ways, and my attempts to use it as a forum to understand my people. I may not even be Gen-Z technically (according to my twin sister), but I feel I am in my heart, and barriers are an illusion anyway.
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