How to Turn ‘Kids These Days’ Into Top-Performing Teams

By Scott Greenberg

When I was 13, my dad let me start working regular hours at our family ice cream store in San Diego. The business was managed by my grandfather, who learned how to lead people while in the U.S. Army. You could tell. He had a very topdown approach to managing employees. He told people what to do and expected them to do it.

What worked for leading soldiers during World War II didn’t for leading teenage hourly workers after school and on weekends. They never responded to his leadership style the way people did in the military. He found this deeply frustrating.

“I don’t understand,” he’d complain. “I’m paying 100% of their check. Shouldn’t they give me 100% of their effort? I just don’t get kids these days.”

Theoretically, my grandfather was right. It makes sense that both parties should fully commit to their side of the employer-employee arrangement. But anyone who’s led hourly workers knows that’s just not realistic. Funding employees’ paychecks doesn’t necessarily motivate them. That truth has led to an echoed complaint since the concept of hired labor: Younger generations are softer, lazier and more entitled than their predecessors.

I present keynote speeches and workshops to business leaders and always try to speak with audience members before my sessions. I ask about their challenges. Invariably, the conversation goes something like this:

“So, what’s the most stressful part of running your business?”

“Employees.”

I anticipate this answer because that’s what I usually get, but I always ask them to expound. Their follow-up response is typically something like:

“Young people these days are so disloyal and entitled.”

“We just can’t find enough people.”

“They flake on interviews.”

“They’re constantly calling out.”

“They’re so unmotivated.”

“They never last.”

“They’re so thin-skinned.”

I hear these comments from my clients in retail, restaurants, hospitality, franchising, and most certainly remodeling, construction and manufacturing — all sectors that rely on young hourly help. In every industry, when it comes to managing frontline employees, they struggle.

Many bosses forget when voicing these complaints that these same comments were once made about them.

In 2013, Time magazine published a cover story called “The Me Me Me Generation” that described millennials as “lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents.”

New York magazine ran a similar cover story called “The Me Decade.” The decade it referred to was the 1970s. Forty-five years prior, in a piece called “The Conduct of Young People,” Hull Daily Mail printed, “We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.” And finally, “Young people are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. They think they know everything and are always quite sure about it.” That was from Aristotle in Rhetoric in the 4th century BC. The fact is, the old have been hating on the young for millennia.

In 2019, social scientists from the University of California Santa Barbara conducted some interesting research examining this dynamic between older and younger generations. They interviewed older subjects and got their perspective on the young. They observed biases based on the older person’s current confidence level in a given area and their subjective, idealized memories of their youth. According to the study’s abstract, “Two mechanisms contribute to humanity’s perennial tendency to denigrate kids: a person-specific tendency to notice the limitations of others where one excels and a memory bias projecting one’s current qualities onto the youth of the past. When observing current children, we compare our biased memory to the present, and a decline appears. This may explain why the kids-these-days effect has been happening for millennia.”

More reliable than these scientists is my mother. After complaining to her about my college-aged son’s flakiness, she began rattling off stories of my college years when I behaved with equal cluelessness. I couldn’t argue with the evidence. Apparently, I wasn’t the rock-solid, responsible kid I thought I was. It made me wonder. During my first few jobs, was I not the reliable, hard-working employee I remember to be? Did I contribute to my grandfather’s frustration?

I sympathized with him during the decade I ran my own retail business. For many years, my employees were my most significant source of stress. It was tempting to blame their entire generation for their incompetence. Apathy, tardiness, ghosting — it drove me crazy. I was clear about my expectations when I hired them. Why weren’t they meeting them? 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 approached that question — why weren’t they meeting my expectations? — with curiosity and not just judgment. I needed to clear my head of frustration and stop with the generational comparisons. That increased self-awareness made it easier to observe my employees more objectively and better understand them. I realized my expectations were unreasonable. Like my grandfather, I thought training my team, treating them with respect and paying them fairly entitled me to loyalty and top performance. It didn’t. They needed more. They needed reminders. They needed coaching. They needed time. It wasn’t enough to manage them. I had to nurture them.

The process began with a little soul-searching. I’ve often found solutions to business problems in the mirror. That requires humility. The ego is the enemy of leadership and an impediment to self-improvement. I put mine aside and started reflecting on my management style and how I might be responsible for the generation gap. I pondered questions such as:

What assumptions have I made about my team members?

What biases do I bring to my management?

How have my upbringing, my values, and my view of workplace norms impacted how I see my team?

Asking myself those questions put me in check so I could think differently — hopefully more objectively — about my young employees. I dispensed with all assumptions and asked important questions, such as:

What do my workers care about?

What drives them?

What triggers them?

Is money as important to them as I think, or do they have other priorities?

I held group and individual conversations to explore these questions. I also conducted a blind survey among my team. I really wanted to understand my employees in hopes of increasing my influence and boosting their performance. It’s a logical way to proceed. Companies spend millions of dollars learning about the marketplace they want to serve. Doesn’t it make sense to invest time learning about the labor marketplace you want to lead?

With the data I collected, I was able to make changes. I offered them the additional acknowledgment they wanted. I explained the connection between the work they were doing with me and their own long-term goals. I spent a lot more time building culture. It was a series of small adjustments to my management and the workplace that made a world of difference. Only then did I discover what my team could really do. With these same employees, we saw increased sales, improved customer service ratings, higher employee satisfaction (which I measured) and longer retention. I got the performance I wanted from my team. It just took better management from me.

Employee underperformance may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility. Your team shouldn’t have to accommodate you. They won’t. You need to accommodate them. You’re probably updating the technology and tools you use in your operation so you can remain productive and competitive and keep up with the times. Think of management as a form of technology. It needs to be continually updated so you don’t fall behind.

Since Time’s cover story in 2013, millennials have gone on to advance their careers, start families and mature as effectively as every generation before them. Despite growing up with participation trophies and screen addictions, today, they run corporations, perform surgeries and even govern countries. They’ve become powerful, independent contributors to society. As they increasingly become the primary leaders of the labor force, we can expect to hear them complain about the incompetence of Generation Z.

So, are younger employees today really as lazy and entitled as we older folks believe them to be? It’s the wrong question. Instead, we should ask what we need to do on our end to earn their devotion and grow them into the team we want them to be. And if we’re not willing to do that, then perhaps it’s not our employees who are entitled.

Scott Greenberg is a business speaker, writer and coach who helps leaders and teams perform at a higher level. His new book is Stop The Shift Show: Turn Your Struggling Hourly Workers into a Top-Performing Team. Find more information at www.scottgreenberg.com.

FOR YOUR BOOKSHELF

Stop the Shift Show is an essential guide for managers and business owners looking to transform their hourly workforce into a top-performing super team. This book offers practical strategies and techniques for effectively managing and coaching hourly workers, including:

• Determining your managerial style and avoiding common mistakes.

• Building trust with your team to create a positive work culture.

• Motivating employees to perform at their best and go above and beyond.

• Developing effective coaching techniques to help team members grow and improve.

• Creating a sense of purpose and ownership among employees to foster a high-performing team.

• Overcoming common challenges in managing hourly workers, such as turnover and scheduling issues.

Whether you’re new to management or an experienced leader, Stop the Shift Show provides valuable insights and actionable advice to help you elevate your team’s performance and drive success for your business. With its engaging writing style and real-world examples, this book is a must-read for anyone looking to build a high-performing team in today’s competitive marketplace.

Get the book at www.scottgreenberg.com/books/stop-the-shift-show-book.