Photo of the situation.
The experience gathered during more than fifteen years in consulting activities led me to contact an extremely diverse spectrum of agents. Namely: small, medium merchants; heads of Universities; nonprofit entities and directors of major companies in terms of employee numbers and turnover.
And if a common point can be found for all of them, it is related to the difficulty that arose after the moment of incorporating a young collaborator. The story has similar forms. "They don't last in the job"; "They want to be Managers right away"; "They can't stand the pressures", just to cite the most used expressions.
Given this, psychology proposes an approach to this problem, reserving the name "Generation Y" for people who currently range from approximately 18 to 28 years old. From there, it places global features and characteristics in order to allow understanding. My proposal will be to add to the above some concepts of psychoanalysis, and serve as a guide to those who have the opportunity to have them as collaborators.
In the first place, and without the intention of arguing with other authors, the psychoanalytic point of view is to avoid immediate classifications, which crystallize a subject and frame it in general coordinates, paying special attention to each collaborator in his particularity. That is to say, psychoanalysis proposes the good to say opposing the segregation that begins with naming, classifying or diagnosing with speed.
Continuing with this, it is valid to rescue that in the same nomenclature of “Generation Y” is the enigma involved, not being the homophony between “Y” and “Why? (why?) ".
So, in daily practice we find some recurring situations:
- Young people with a defiant attitude, autonomous, individualistic, with little adherence to norms and high creative capacity.Young people with no ideals, confusion about their own goals, anhedonia or lack of pleasure in activities, tedium and a feeling of constant reluctance. combination of the previous ones.
Steps to understand the phenomenon
First of all, it is key that the leader must be able to think that the circumstance in which a young person takes a first job brings into play a dynamic that could be called a crisis of desire: the young person who until then found stability in desire of their parents, being "children of" now, in and with work, will have to take charge of their own words and actions, taking responsibility for them.
Thus, there are young people who will reveal a failed or delayed passage to adulthood; and that they make symptoms in the labor framework such as demotivation or untimely abandonment of the organization.
Winnicott in "The Anti-Social Tendency" mentions that some young people "… speak bitterly of their social inability and personal failure. They consider that they have not inherited some gifts to bear the demands and responsibilities of the world of the elderly… ”.
In the same vein, Vilá states that “The nonconformity of the modern adolescent, his life project of becoming an inserted person at the time, has given way to the young man who is regularly dissatisfied and wandering with a DIY biography made based on working in a continuous present ”.
And as a cause, it is not a coincidence that many “Y” witnessed how their parents were kicked out of their jobs from one moment to another. Or else they confiscated their savings, in the midst of the 2001 crisis (possibly one of the worst in Argentine history).
From there it can, and without incurring any kind of force, derive not only a degraded vision from their parents (in a passage from hero to victim) but also from institutions in general: Young people are skeptical, precisely because they disbelieve. His imaginary deck of cards imploded at the family and social level.
Imagine the reader of the child of that moment watching television at the family table, with scandalous images of financial institutions taken by savers and banks attacked by the entity's clients. Looting of supermarkets and snipers-owners stationed on the roofs of their shops. All cooperating to create a dantesque and perennial scenario in the memory of the "Y".
Thus, the complaint that insists on the leaders of "Young people do not respect authority" must be placed in this perspective. It is not possible to withdraw from the influence of the social and historical context of a certain period, which operates as a chisel in the personality in the middle of the process of construction of the infantile youth subject. Therefore, one of its symptoms in early adulthood is, precisely, a non-belief in authority per se. Today the leader must gain authority with his subordinates. And especially if they are young.
On the other hand, at present there are many adults who also disbelieve in authority and position themselves in the family sphere more as brothers than as parents, ignoring the harmful effect for any subject that implies the lack of referents, ideals, points of sight or whatever you want to name them. This leads us to think that the obstacles to relate to authority tend to be repeated by young people, making them symptoms through their tedium, their lack of desire and difficulties to insert and sustain themselves in the workplace.
This is where the Leader's position takes on fundamental relevance and significance.
The Leader's Position
Above said that young people, entering the workplace, go through a crisis of their desire, with some confusion about what they really want for themselves.
In this scenario, if the leader thinks that one possibility of awakening them is through punishment, he will find null results. Void because punishment does not have the effects of yesteryear. As said, the young man disbelieves in authority figures as possessors of punitive capacity. And it sees it not only in its leaders, but also in the degradation and frank cracking of social and political institutions. In other words, the young man is incapable of granting authority to his bosses, because he supposes that he does not deserve it or does not have it directly.
Lacan thought of the Name of the Father function as one capable of separating the child from maternal desire, through prohibitions and empowerments. Through interdictions but also permits. Then, the leader must be placed in the function of separation between Desires of the Parents and Desire of the Subject. But such separation is not possible through sanctions, but rather through a word that sets limits.
It is necessary to anchor the power of new personnel management in this field. In which it places the Leader in the ethical position of the Facilitator. The authority taken in these terms will cause the young person to consent to it, instead of languidly submitting to it.
The Leader as Facilitator must encourage the involvement of these newly entered personnel through accompaniment that has listening as the main tool; and their subsequent call to choose and take responsibility for these decisions.
Listening is conversation, and in that sense you must meet the requirement of bidirectionality: You must not only give slogans but also be willing to receive from the "Y" everything that happens to you while executing said order. If it seems reasonable to you; if the task costs you; if you think it is too easy; if it does not create challenges; if it motivates it or not; among other possible answers…
What's more, you have to understand their communication not only regarding its content but also its special ways. Being lovers of informality, they tend to address themselves openly, directly and without protocols, which does not imply an absence of respect.
Also, it may happen that they are closed or reluctant to dialogue. Here, one must also insist on bidirectionality and it will be the leader who, responsibly, activates that circuit in the other. Many times I have noticed that the silence of the young people does not indicate a lack of answers or symbolic resources, but rather a defensive attitude, as if saying: "You are the one who must make me speak, and for this you must try to trust me."
As appreciated, it will not be easy for a leader (especially when he is from another generation) to have to give account of his directives. He is not used to it and he would never have thought of such a thing. However, you need to put it into practice.
The notion of horizontal communication also acquires a double meaning, as the young person pretends to speak on equal terms with his boss. And it will be precisely based on the effectiveness of this interaction to be able to assume a verticality. Once again: a leader who does not place himself in the place of active listening, like a peer, will not be able to place himself in a place of authority. The young man assumes and accepts verticality when previously he felt the mutual and quasi-reciprocal interaction with his boss.
And it will be a risky Leader who abandons the role of answering everything and places himself in the place of ignorance and the generation of questions in the new employee. "For the behavior to be an enigma it has to (…) be read as such by an adult. "
Furthermore: for this to work the Leader should not apply it to recipe mode. That is, do not take it alone as a technique. To achieve the expected results and that the young person can be guided by the question rather than the answer, it will be the Leader himself who has taken this for himself before. Specifically, no one is capable of transmitting the passion for an activity, if they were not questioned about it before.
The bottom line of the notion of purpose
A few days ago, an indignant boss commented that when he asked a young man to control the expenses of the travelers, reading all the tickets, he replied, "Why do I have to do that?" The boss, according to his own account, was not having a good day at the time either and remembered turning red with fury and blurting out that he had no obligation to explain the reasons. That the orders are made to fulfill them, not to question them.
I know that this scene is part of the daily life of the vast majority of contemporary companies. Cross-linking between people of different ages and work methods can be a valuable asset if the group capitalizes on that difference, or become a liability to contend with.
I need to anchor this image because the second key to the leader is in the notion of purpose, or meaning. My suggestion is forceful: for today's young person, tasks need to have a reason or a good reason to do them. Otherwise, the boy will feel like a foreigner with his work, showing reluctance or even refusing to do it.
"We are before a generation (…) needs to build meaning to live. Young people have become used to the "why"; their parents explained everything, asked questions and received answers. They explained why they divorced or changed jobs or couldn't buy what they asked for, or why they had been yelled at. They have not heard too many "just because" or "because it is so" or "because I told you so." They need to understand in order to move forward, they operate on the "fuel" of sense. But when it does not appear or is scarce around them, they become paralyzed, get out of the way, or resign from the organizations in which they operate ”.
At this point the well-known history of the three stonecutters comes to my memory, of which only one carried out his activity with verve and dynamism: he was the one who claimed to be building cathedrals.
How many times do you insist on what is necessary to generate a shared vision as a powerful engine of identification and sense of belonging. She builds herself little by little every day, showing the reasons that justify each job, and how all the tasks must come together to reach a great goal.
Controlling the expenses of the travelers is necessary to provide transparency to the organization as a whole, and the person in charge of carrying out this task is ensuring nothing less than the health of the company. And that is important.
The "Y" are Justice
Few things outrage young people more than a feeling of being treated unfairly or unequally. Or that his companions are being treated that way. The assumption of claiming positions is in the DNA of these boys.
As in adolescence, there is a spirit exacerbated by ideals, of which Justice is one of the most important (not surprisingly, secondary school student centers are the hotbed of future social and political leaders). The adolescent is a revolutionary, Piaget would say, while the adult is a doer.
This also refers to the figure of the "beautiful soul", created by Hegel and updated by Freud in one of his most relevant cases. Specifically, in the face of repeated analysand complaints, Freud asks her at one point a question that will mark a milestone in the psychoanalytic universe: "What do you have to do with this?"
The concept of the beautiful soul allows us to illustrate when someone assumes an absolutely vindicative position with respect to the external world, which he constantly blames for his regrets and in the same movement, the subject does not get involved as the cause of anything.
This point is vital for leaders to understand in all its dimensions, because it is a characteristic of this generation: the difficulty of taking responsibility for their own actions, from a narcissistic position that is sustained by reporting and detecting flaws in the Other, call yourself boss, company, work system, etc.
Warn the leader of this trend and you will deny less with your novice collaborators, who not only demand justice from your company, but from the world in general. Don't take it personally, but do take care of it. Engage your young staff, urging them to make their own decisions and to bear the consequences that flow from them. The vigorous development and construction of real autonomy in young people is needed, since the fact of being independent is more a mirage than a reality.
If among the most basic recommendations for leading personnel is to act fairly, when it comes to young personnel this becomes a categorical imperative. Furthermore, in my experience as an interviewer of numerous young people who changed jobs without notice, most placed this factor as the main driver of their resignations.
They worship the heterogeneous
The different that can also be understood as diversity, in a broad sense.
Starting from the most basic, I could say that the current young person's brain is configured to perform different actions simultaneously. Boredom is one of the greatest monsters to be defeated for the "Y", and also for whoever wants to lead it. The latter will be obliged not only to tolerate the performance of several activities together (against his idea that if one thing is not done at a time, errors appear) but also to generate them in the instructions. Qualifying a job as fun and engaging for a young person fully involves this factor.
On the other hand, heterogeneity is also required at link levels. If the previous generation, the X, was the pioneer of teamwork, it will be the Y that asks in addition to this, that the members that make up the group be diverse: women, men, with different educational backgrounds, different sexual orientation, among others.
In summary, we can observe, first of all, that in addition to being indispensable, it is possible to lead young people and obtain from them their unique talents and values. And that to achieve success we must understand no more than four things.
- The leader must invent his authority, updating what he formally has by means of flexibility but accompanying and setting limits. The young person will only show enthusiasm for those varied tasks that have a clear purpose. The leader must be equitable, but insist that The “Y's” take responsibility for their decisions, avoiding feeling constantly judged. The best youth teams are made up of very diverse members.
Lacan, Jacques "Function and Field of the Word and Language in Psychoanalysis".
It is interesting to point out here that absenteeism does not find the same incidence in young people as in adults. The writer believes that the path chosen by young subjects is resignation rather than non-attendance at the workplace.
"The Wandering of the Young". Vilá, Françesc. Oct. 2005. ELP Barcelona Conference.
Agreeing that granting authority to another person is an exercise of the freedom of the subject. I mean, something you can choose or not.
"The relationship with authority in adolescence: new perspectives". Tizio, Hebe. Nov. ´08. Lecture series "A look from Psychoanalysis on current issues", organized by the ELP Library of Campo Freudiano-San Sebastián Headquarters.
"Emergency exit: conduct disorders". VI Current Discussions. José Manuel Alvarez and Mari Cruz Fernández. January ´09. Barcelona.
www.lanacion.com.ar/1661962-el-desafio-de-entender-a-la-generacion-y
Freud, Sigmund. "Fragment of analysis of a case of hysteria" ("Dora" case), Three Essays on Sexual Theory, and other works (1901-1905). Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed Amorrortu.
A surprising image of this ability is provided by the PC used by a young employee when his boss looks out: no less than 8 open windows: five specific, two from social networks and eventually some other like You Tube.
