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Ryan Healy is a recent college graduate. He is a founder of 
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I realize our last post was about the narcissism study and the apparent problem of the all too common “you’re special” message, but this whole issue has bothered me so much that I need to make a few more points about it.
Are Baby Boomers beginning to regret how they raised us? I think they are. The same people who raised us to always believe we are special and can achieve anything we want, now have to deal with us in the business world. We are expected to conform to a cubicle and a meaningless job for the good of the company because this is how the current system is set up.
Well guess what? It’s not going to happen! We are not going to conform and throw away our ingrained belief that we can make a difference and can be special. I guess the whole plan to raise us differently has backfired. Rather than whining and complaining about how difficult my generation is or how we expect to much, why not start adapting to and accepting these selfish little “monsters” that you created. Look at it this way — if you’re a Baby Boomer or Gen-Xer and have children, you think they are the most special thing in the world, right? Well, so do my parents and so do my co workers parents, and for that matter so do I!
So were a little narcissistic, to me this simply means we expect a little more out of ourselves and want to show it. If we had the opportunity to show it, we could begin to prove that a lot of us really are special.
I have a fairly obvious solution to this whole problem. Baby Boomer managers should start treating their young talent much the same way they treat their own kids. It makes perfect sense doesn’t it? We have grown up with your peers as parents and you have lived your adult lives with our peers as kids.
How exactly can you do this? First off, I know that in my family, I have always had at least a voice in most major decisions. Whether it was where to go on vacation, where to move or what restaurant we should go to on a given night. Let us help make some decisions in the business world too. Obviously, experienced senior managers have the background, knowledge and expertise necessary to make these important decisions on their own, but what’s wrong with a different perspective, it can’t hurt. Simply letting us say our two cents in any important decision will greatly improve our morale and help us to feel like we are actually contributing.
Another possibility is to have some sort of partner program. A young “up and comer” can partner with a senior level manager. This will establish a personal connection allowing my peers to see the business from a higher level and maybe start to feel a loyalty that is no longer present in Gen-Y workers.
These are just a couple suggestions to deal with the current corporate generational clash. I know there are many more that could make everyone happy. Anyone else have any ideas? Feel free to comment, we love feedback.
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This is a very passionate defense of Millennials on the question of your alleged narcissim. But before I would agree with the charge and then explain it by suggesting that the Boomers and older X-ers are only reaping what they in fact sowed, be might want to look at the validity of the charge in the first place. The charge itself is highly suspect and the people who make it are usually relyong on one large data set, the UCLA Survey of College Freshmen. A valid data base but hardly one that lends itself to the sweeping charges of narcissim flying around over the past several months.
Second point. If we go back to the fellows who started this whole thing, Strauss and Howe, if people actually read their seminal text, Generations, one of the key ideas is the model of recurring Archetypes. One of the rasons the Arhetypes exist in a discernable cycle, according the these historians, is the notion that there are different parenting styles. In a sense,as I read Strauss and Howe, there is a sort of parenting styles dialectic. Each generation raises its children in part as a reaction against the way they were raised by their parents. Boomers were raised, in general, by a generation that relied a lot on a more authoritarian, law and order, style of parenting. So, the idea that the Boomers would give their children more “voice” makes senee according to the S&H model.
In other words, the Boomers didn’t just decide to raise their children the way they did; and the more egalitarian method moves in an historical cycle. Millennials are not the first generation to be raised in a more open, some would say, permissive, environment.
So, let’s all get a grip and along with it a bit of a sense of humor and a dash of historical perspective. There’s enough going on in the world to yell about, we don’t need to be yelliing at each other.
Russ,
Thanks for the response. First I would like to say that this post was not meant to come across as the beginning of a generational yelling match. (although I realize it probably does) Rather, the purpose was to offer some potential solutions to the issue from a new worker or “millennial” perspective.
Moreover, the claim that the charge itself is suspect is completely valid. Who is to say that we should pay any attention to this woman. However, as a member of the generation I do think that as a whole we have this belief that we are “special.” I see no reason to not think highly of myself. The message I hoped to convey was we need to start working on some solutions to keep us involved, excited and loyal to our companies.
Something I have found is that it’s very imoportant for baby boomers to point out that today’s generational issues are not unique — that generational issues have been around forever. And that all generational issues are intertwined.
I am not sure this matters. You could say the same thing about falling in love. Yet each person feels their own experience is important. Or getting children to sleep through the night. Each generation impacts the next generation’s tactics. But still, we each feel our own problems are unique and important.
Each generation gets to focus on themselves, and make their own experience feel unique. It’s part of being human. I don’t know why baby boomers need to always point out how un-unique other generations’ experiences are. Who cares?
A little goes a real long way. You guys hit the nail on the head with the comment of involving Gen Y in business decisions. It is amazing how this one little action can change a person’s attitude. Just listen to what we have to say. We aren’t so egotistical and arrogant that we believe everything we say is going to be the perfect solution. We just want to be heard and considered.
Great job with the blog guys! Keep it up.
We have several young people who are working in our organization. We are a non profit business but a busness non the less. We have 18 people, four of which are under 25. They contue to surprise me with their talent and their frustration. They really think they can do almost any assignment and when they work as a group they can usually get it done, however they often freeze or procrastinate when they have to work alone. When managers are able to spend time with them they fly; the problem is managers are working full time jobs as individual contributors and have very little time to develop the younger people. We are however working on it and spend time thinking how we can improve the support
We have recently talked about mutual coaching with the younger people coaching us senior people around technology and seniors coaching around problem solving and political issues. I am hopeful