Saturday, May 5, 2018 | 2 a.m.
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For a long time, baby boomers have lived with some broad generalizations about what makes millennials tick. The story goes that they are social media-obsessed, impatient and narcissistic people who lack the stick-to-itiveness to cross a finish line. They want to have fun, travel and rain on our parade because they know better.
After working on a project that allowed me to probe the experiences and aspirations of 29 millennials, I now challenge these views.
“At My Pace: Twenty Somethings Finding Their Way” is a result of this project where men and women in their 20s wrote candid pieces that revealed their comings of age and the lessons they have absorbed along the way. I also administered a survey so I could profile the group’s attitudes and preferences. I am going to knock down just a few of our stereotypes:
They just want to have fun: In story after story, contributors share a longing to improve the world. Purposeful living drives them — whether it is teaching in underserved communities, using a law degree to advocate for immigration and sex worker rights, or using yoga and meditation as a way to heal. This group was not as focused on “me” as we typically think. Even contributors who were doing more mainstream work were searching for ways to extend its effect.
They lack stick-to-itiveness: It is true that these contributors have done a fair bit of wandering, but often it is because they are in search of the path that will combine meaning with an ability to support themselves. Finding paying work that matches their interests is the most commonly identified challenge, and they wander to see how close they can get. Many 20-somethings still need to pay back student loans, so some pragmatism drives them.
Strong managers and more education can right the ship: Because many of us come with a fix-it mentality in terms of how to help our 20-somethings find their groove, we frequently veer to what helped us — good managers and more education.
Yet this group’s experiences tell a different story. They believe they can learn at least as much from their peers as their managers. They hold that peers understand them better, and that managers are not very available and are often self-serving. As for education, while this group is college-educated, they maintain that their best source of learning is life itself. They prefer to place themselves in challenging environments and figure out how to make the lemonade.
Interestingly, many do anticipate further schooling because they believe advanced degrees are necessary to hold the positions they seek. Education is viewed as a means to an end.
They look forward to planting a stake, and will no doubt lead the world quite differently.
My hope? That with an open mind, we can abandon stereotypes and seek a real understanding, making “generation gap” a phrase that stays in the ’60s when it was created.
Jill Ebstein is the founder of Sized Right Marketing, a consulting firm that helps Fortune 500 companies use the customer voice to develop workable strategies. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.
