Over the past forty
years of my career, I have been an employer or in a position of hiring for the
companies that I have worked for. One of the things that I have noticed over
the past fifteen years or so is a new crop of graduates entering the workforce with what appears to be a warped reality of their actual qualifications and
abilities. I don’t mean any disrespect in that statement, but I have a real
concern for what is actually going on.
Here are some examples from past
experiences. People who know me know that I am all about encouraging,
promoting, growing, building up, team building, strengthening, mentoring, and
empowering others. So it is of no surprise that I sometimes have taken on some
help that others might not have given a chance. One such person was a young man
who had gotten his degree, had very little work experience, and had been fired
from his last position. After working for me for approximately one month, he came
to me to let me know that he was going to save
the company. That he was only there to help
us with his talents and knowledge. And basically, asked me to create a position for him that would
utilize, fully, all of his gifts. Whoa Nelly!
First of all, the company didn’t
need saving, he hadn’t even learned his job yet, and the position that he
wanted me to create was never going to exist. Strange, I thought. He
approached me a couple of more times about this, each time with his feelings
more and more wounded because I hadn’t acted upon his desires.
Another young lady came to work
at another company I worked for, and soon after she had started her new job, she
declared to others on the team that she
was going to be the next assistant manager. There were actually other people in
line for that position who had been there longer and had proven their
abilities. This young lady was inexperienced in the field, never showed up to work
on time, and went over others’ heads to do what she wanted to do instead of
what was good for the team. Definitely, not management material, yet.
Both people ended up leaving
those companies thoroughly hurt.
Some might say that these two
folks had a major sense of entitlement. There is a lot of that going around
these days, you know. But after really analyzing these two and others who fall
into this category, it appears to me that entitlement is really the aftermath of
something else. A lot of it has to do with failure, or better yet, the lack of
being allowed to fail.
I have had parents pick up
applications for their young adult children, telling me that they will be
filling out the application for them, because if their child does it, they
probably won’t do it right and will miss out on a great opportunity. Hmmm.
On several occasions, I’ve had elderly parents eagerly approach me after I had terminated their adult child and beg me
to give them their jobs back. Groveling and crying, with actual tears, all of which I found quite embarrassing for them and their adult child. All the while,
the adult child never told their parent the real reason as to why they were fired.
And I, as an employer, cannot discuss it with anyone other than the employee
themselves, leaving me standing there looking like the bad guy in front of
these parents.
There are just some things
parents should not interfere with. It’s called boundaries.
What I have observed is that so
many children are not allowed to fail as they are growing up, which is a major
mistake. As a parent, I understand how you want to protect your children from physical
hurts, heart hurts, and major disappointments. So many times, we hear of how
children are given awards, trophies, stickers, and grandiose acknowledgements
when they didn’t actually do the work, give their best, or win, all to spare
hurt feelings. EVERYONE’s a winner! Really? No, that’s not a reality.
Failure is the beginning of success.
We have to fail, experience the hurt, deal with the reality, and learn how to
pick ourselves up, move on, and become successful. It’s a process we have to
learn. Our failures make us stronger.
Sometimes, the first tries are successful. But not everything
starts out as a success! Didn’t you fall learning how to walk or ride a bike?
Was your first business adventure a disaster? Maybe you messed up a little bit
with your firstborn, learning how to maneuver a diaper around them. Or maybe
the first time you took a hard course at school; you failed it miserably. But you didn’t give up! You got up, brushed yourself off, and moved forward.
There have been many recorded
stories of famous folks who failed many times with their ideas, businesses, and
inventions. They had accomplished the art of failure; they learned, became
stronger, more determined, and went on to achieve a great score!
Generally speaking, society, as a
whole, looks down upon failures, leaving the failed feeling unworthy, beaten,
and with the sense that they will never amount to anything. Society has it all
wrong, totally missing the art in it! With the correct outlook, attitude, and
training, even the most catastrophically failed can overcome.
When we are always caught by a safety
net, such as our parents, and are not allowed to experience failures, it
hampers our learning abilities, our growth, and it skews our realities. It slants
our decision-making, it makes us weak, and it gives us a false sense of who we
really are. If we are always being told that we did great when we didn’t, that
we are better than everyone else, when we are not, that we are a winner, when
we were a very poor player with a very poor attitude, we do not receive the
real message about ourselves. We develop a puffed-up opinion of ourselves that
leaves us with an unrealistic sense of our capabilities. And I’m not saying to never
let your small child win a board game from time to time…they need to know what
winning feels like, too!
Several years ago, I taught
parenting classes to parents who had at least one child removed from their home or voluntarily taken out of the home in order to live at another facility
dedicated to giving help, structure, and a hopeful new beginning for these
families. The parents that I taught came from all kinds of backgrounds. But I
discovered that they all had one thing in common: they didn’t ever let their
children fail or be disappointed because they didn’t want to deal with the
meltdowns that their children would have.
Someone once told me, “You are
getting to enjoy your son as a
teenager because you did all of the hard work when he was a young child.” I
really hadn’t thought of it that way, but that statement was true. The parents
that I taught were dealing with some really bad consequences with their teens
because they didn’t want to deal with the breakdowns they had had as small children.
Parenting is hard work, but if you do the tough work while they are little, the
chances are, life will be easier as they age!
The tough work means there will
be some really hard days as a parent, and it takes time and patience to work with a
small child through a failure or a meltdown. They don’t know what to do with
their feelings, their anger, the hurt, and the tears. It is our job as parents
to help them through these emotions. Pre-teaching to your children before an
experience happens is vital and can prevent a breakdown. But if a failure
happens, talk to them, calm them, ask them what they are feeling, kiss the
boo-boos, tell them that next time will be better, get them back on the bike or
the horse, and let them try again.
Yes, it hurts to watch our kids
suffer through life’s snares, but with proper, prudent, diligent guidance, they
will have a better chance to become strong, emotionally healthier adults when
they grow up.
Teach them how to fail forward
and step out of their way! They will have a more authentic reality of who they
are, know what they are fully capable of, have better relationships with others,
and have another great tool to help them make wise choices.
Blessings!
Debra Lee
Speaker/Author of “It Is What It
Is…But It Wasn’t A Tragedy” and “Making Wise Choices…The
Most Important Life Skill To Master”.
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