Q. I manage a lot of younger employees and am fed up with their attitude of entitlement. During interviews they ask what I will do for them. They want big salaries, big visibility, and big promotions right out of the gate. Have we become the land of the free and entitled?
A. The younger generation has been raised with constant entertainment, faster than immediate gratification, and hovering parents. Many parents of this generation jumped in with lightning speed to delete any suffering their child might experience. The feet of these children barely touched concepts such as boredom, hard work or respecting authority … and now these children are your employees.
As unfair as it may seem, you find yourself in a position to do remedial parenting. You will need to introduce many of your employees to such basic concepts as following the rules and delaying gratification or you’ll have to fire most of this generation. You’ll run across very few people in this group who had parents who expected them to work hard, work long and not complain.
If you’re a member of this generation and know how to suffer to get what you want – congratulations! The work world will be your oyster and your managers will want to clone you.
When people are promoted into management, they aren’t told they now are the office mommy or daddy. No one sits a new manager down and says, “You now have to learn how to raise good employees.” The same rules that work in parenting, work in raising employees. You’ll need clear rules, clear consequences, praise for specific performance and consistent discipline.
Expect with the younger generation you’ll get lots of whining, shock at not being handed the CEO position, and outrage at their small starting salaries. Since this is a generation that has had their self-esteem coddled, do not insult them by implying that perhaps they aren’t yet worthy of a corner office. Just let them know you aren’t in a position to give them what they feel entitled to but they could work toward those goodies. If they really pitch a fit, calmly point out that they are a commodity, and it is reasonable for them to take their experience and search for an organization that will be able to offer them everything they deserve. In the meantime, you can offer them their current jobs.
Every animal gets accustomed to conditions it experiences for long periods of time. Realize that these employees just didn’t have parents that gave them an idea of what the world would expect.
They often went through home, preschool and college with parents demanding the world conform to the unique needs of their “special” child. Then that child hit your work team. The shock of finding out that they now have to adapt to the world can be quite disorienting to these pampered darlings.
Try to remember that your entitled employees aren’t trying to make your life hell as they resist your laying down the rules. Your employees actually think you are the one torturing them.As Harry Truman once observed, “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”
Even babies will get exhausted after crying for too long. If you can set out your expectations and wait out the predictable entitlement fits of the younger generation, you’ll end up with good employees.
The last word(s)
Q. I’m certain I have my next promotion in the bag and want to buy a new house. Will it help guarantee my new job if my boss knows I am counting on the salary?
A. No. Unless your boss is a cosigner on your new loan, he or she won’t feel responsible to help pay your new mortgage.
