Qualities, Attitudes, and Opinions That Young People and Old People Have in Common
1. All of us, regardless of age or station, want to be loyal to someone or something.
2. All of us, regardless of age or station, want others to be loyal to us.
3. All of us become more or less loyal based on our experiences. When we can point to concrete instances in which our loyalty has been repaid, we slowly and steadily become more loyal. When we feel as though our loyalty is not being valued, we become slowly and steadily less loyal. In other words, all of us believe that loyalty is something that needs to be earned and can’t simply be assumed.
4. All of us are struggling to find reasons to be loyal to our employers because all of us have seen too many instances in which the major incentives that foster loyalty are being taken away.
5. All of us get better at things slowly and steadily over time. This is true for absolutely everything we do, both professionally and personally.
6. All of us, Young People as well as Old People, sometimes forget the truth of the statement above.
7. Change is the natural state, and all of us are constantly incorporating countless changes into our daily lives, both personal and professional. None of us is the same person we were a year ago, and none of us will be the same person a year from now. With respect to our professional selves, none of us is working in exactly the same way as we were a year ago, and none of us will be working exactly the same way a year from today.
8. As we experience success or avoid failure, all of us naturally look for ways to replicate that success or continue to prevent that failure. As a result, all of us tend to become complacent with the way we are currently doing things.
Key Concepts: Why Your Younger or Less-Experienced Colleagues Think and Behave the Way They Do
1. Today’s Young People are actually more interested in building loyal relationships than the Young People of previous generations, in part because they have grown up in a hyperconnected world in which an overload of options has made it more difficult to find and establish a position for themselves. Consequently, they are actively searching for people, companies, and ideas to which they can be loyal.
2. Today’s Young People have only ever lived in a time in which the incentives that foster employee loyalty are disappearing, and many of them are wary and skeptical of their employers as a result.
3. Young People have not been working for as long as their Older colleagues and so have had less time to determine whether their loyalty to their company will be rewarded.
4. Many Young People mistakenly believe that because technology has accelerated virtually everything we do, it must necessarily accelerate the pace at which we acquire skills and knowledge. This mistake can be easily corrected by pointing to the process by which they themselves have developed proficiency in anything they consider themselves to be proficient at.
5. Some Young People are more experienced than their age would suggest and expect to be judged based on that experience.
6. Some Young People simply do not have a strong work ethic, either because they are naturally lazy or because they have been raised in a culture that rewarded them regardless of their ability or effort.
7. Because Young People have comparatively little experience with the benefits of your existing practices and processes, they are more likely to downplay or dismiss the value of those practices and processes.
8. Today’s Young People tend to expect changes to occur relatively quickly, often in part because they have only ever lived in a world of constant, rapid change. As a result, Young People will tend to agitate for change more often and more quickly than their Older or more-experienced colleagues—not necessarily because they think current practices are failing but because constant change is the only speed they’ve been trained to understand.
Key Concepts: Why Your Older or More-Experienced Colleagues Think and Behave the Way They Do
1. Because they have been working for a longer period of time, Old People have had more opportunity to recognize that their loyalty will be rewarded and reciprocated.
2. Today’s Old People grew up in a time when employee loyalty was more commonly rewarded, and many of them are still operating with that framework firmly embedded in their minds.
3. Old People have been going through the process of advancement longer than Young People, and for that reason they expect to be respected for the work they have done up to this point.
4. Some Old People no longer have the solid work ethic that has carried them from the beginning of their careers until now, either because they’ve become destructively complacent or because they believe they can skate by with relatively little effort.
5. Because Old People have experienced the benefits of your existing practices and processes, they are more likely to value those practices and processes and less likely to see the need to replace them with an untested approach.
6. Because complacency is a function of time, experience, and repetition, Old People are at greater risk of falling into complacent behaviors than their Younger counterparts.
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