Yesterday, the following two wire pieces appeared in The Tennessean:
1. "Princesses rule in the movies and at the office - Most workplaces have a narcissist or two who demand the royal treatment."Half of all offices and workplaces have them — people who feel entitled to special projects, entitled to their own timetable, entitled to almost everything anytime they want it. ...
"You see Workplace Princesses in the C-Suite and on the factory floor," said Canter, a San Francisco executive and career coach.
"The question becomes, 'What's in our culture that enables princesses to thrive?' " Canter said. "To me, the princess, whether male or female, is a narcissist. They think it's all about me. It's always how great am I, and what have you done for me lately."
2. "Younger workers crave praise around the office."
While tech-savvy, independent and well-educated, these young workers revel in, even crave, constant praise. ...
"You used to think that no news was good news," said Kent Crossland, director of information technology for PING, the Phoenix-based golf club maker. "Today, I guess no news is bad news. They need attention and feedback." ...
[The Y generation was] raised in an age of "active parenting" and are overindulged, overprotected and oversupervised.
That's why some Generation Y members crave constant feedback into adulthood.
"One of the ways that this generation got narcissistic is that their parents praised them all the time," said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University.
We are reaping the fruits of the self-esteem movement that began a generation ago. Low self esteem was blamed for all manner of disfunctions, from failing grades to juvenile criminality. If the kids just had a higher opinion of themselves, so we were told, then they'd be happier, better adjusted, as less likely to get into trouble.
It was all baloney, of course, but millions of moms and dads and educators bought into it. They heaped praise on children for the most trivial reasons: "Hey, Andrea, you're doing a great job breathing!" Okay, I exaggerate (but only slightly). The result:
For decades schools have embraced the idea that ... unless the classroom was cozy and thick with "warm fuzzies"--an educational watchword--students wouldn't even try. That led to avariety of policies aimed at protecting children's feelings. It also led to grade inflation, an emphasis on groupwork rather than individual effort, the elimination of valedictorians and even the dearth of spelling bees, critics say.
By the time in the late 1990s that even educators and psychologists realized that the self-esteem emperor had no clothes, it was too late to undo the damage done to millions of kids. And now we see the result.
... Kids born in the '70s and '80s are now coming of age. The colorful ribbons and shiny trophies they earned just for participating made them feel special. But now, in college and the workplace, observers are watching them crumble a bit at the first blush of criticism. "I often get students in graduate school doing doctorates who made straight A's all their lives, and the first time they get tough feedback, the kind you need to develop skills," says Deborah Stipek, dean of education at Stanford University. "I have a box of Kleenex in my office because they haven't dealt with it before."
Andrea Sobel (same cite) is the "director of recruitment for an entertainment firm" who observes,
"One of the things the managers talked about is an incredible sense of entitlement for people who don't deserve it," she says. "They'll come in right out of college and don't understand why they're not getting promoted in three months." [Neil] Howe [co-author of Milliennials Rising: The Next Great Generation] blames the attitude on society's high expectations. "We've become a much more child-oriented society around milliennials," he says. "Self-esteem for them meant you're the focus of society's attention."
Dr. Michael Hurd puts the problem this way:
Self-esteem is crucially important, but it's a byproduct of more fundamental factors--the core one being a deeply embedded sense of personal responsibility over one's life. If you act in a personally responsible way and operate continuously on this premise, the sense of control and efficacy associated with self-esteem will largely follow. I have never once met a high self-esteemed individual without this core sense of personal responsibility. I don't expect I ever will.
Dr. Hurd gets it close, but doesn't quite earn the cigar. Self esteem is nothing more than what military leaders call morale. A military unit's high morale does not come from its commander praising them, but from achieving a high level of skill and accomplishment. Praise may then follow, but every commander knows the folly of praising before achievment. It is not really "personal responsibility" that results in high self esteem, but accomplishing things meaningful and difficult. If that gains the respect of peers, so much the better. But first must come accomplishment, then and only then the recognition. Here's some countercultural advice: "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. "
Has there ever been an academic imposed "movement" that has ever worked besides the three R's? It seems that most people realize that our educational systems are dysfunctional, yet they keep voting in the same corrupt schmucks into the School Boards, and voting for more school bonds even when poor results and no results are the product.
I actually remember the "Warm Fuzzies" in 3rd grade. We had a teacher that would give out "Warm Fuzzies" to the students and "Cold Pricklies" (take a guess at which ones I got). They were these little fuzzy paper thin fabric dolls with buggy eyes. All the brown nosing kiss ass kids got them for the most mundane activities. I don't recall ever getting one, though I do remember getting a cold prickly for punching a kid in the gut when he smashed one of my Stompers on purpose.
More importantly, I think this excess self-esteem is the root cause of the mass shootings - besides the fact that guns make it possible, that is. In my day, losers moped, dropped away. Now, they want to take everyone with them on their bummer.
Nowadays, you can't correct a person's driving, even as basic as lane changing in an intersection, without it being perceived as an attack on the existing condition - which of course is swell.
Nowadays, even asking someone why they think the way they do about what they just said is seen as an attack on their right to be hunky-dory just spouting.
As a long family history of teachers (and my extended work as a TA, and on becoming first year faculty) there definately is a place for praise and attention leading to higher grades.... with the right students. These are primarily low-achieving (or low-achieving for a complex course) students (I teach chemistry, so many high-achieving students struggle here). I find that if I work with those "who just don't get it" and demonstrate how to study differently, or different ways to look at the same problems (while confronting their work self-esteem issues) I occassionaly help students find their best work.
This does not work with students who think they already understand how the world works.
I think there are two common problems occuring which also feed into this issue (there are probably others too).
1) the consumer-driven childhood. This started becoming very bad in the 80's. Advertising firms have learned how to sell toys/food/sugar as an 'image', those who don't have the image aren't 'cool'. Remembering back to my own childhood, my friends placed a high level of stress on artifical things like who has the nintendo, and whose pThis immediate-gratification society feeds into adults thinking that they deserve success. If they don't get it, it must be someone else's fault (class not prepared well, teacher doesn't make sense etc), or must not be worth knowing. Some of this is recorded well in "Born to Buy".
2) the "My child is perfect" syndrome. I think it's similar to the "1,000 monkeys" experiment. As cities have gotten bigger, parents have started to push their kids to get the best possible opportunities . This starts early with getting the 'best possible private schools/little league teams, those that get in the way, (or tell them that their kids are unqualified) are the enemy, preventing their kids from their deserved fame.
Parents now defend their kids when their teachers 'misbehave', and protect their childs 'bullying'. Parents of 'learning-diabled' students choose to blame schools instead of taking the appropriate courses and upseting their child. Parents threaten coaches if their child isn't left on the field. A bad grade could affect getting into college A. It's more important that their child succeed at any cost than their development as a person.
Take little league world series, they now have it on a 5-second delay because of swearing. The kids on these teams are generally mean, crude and feel like winning is the only answer. Ta-Da! A whole team of 10-year old princesses.
"'You used to think that no news was good news,' said Kent Crossland, director of information technology for PING, the Phoenix-based golf club maker. 'Today, I guess no news is bad news. They need attention and feedback.'"
Folks--here we see, encapsulated in a nice quote, the sheer blind stupidity of the present generation of upper management. "What, you mean you want to know whether you're doing a good job? I mean, isn't a yearly performance review that rates everyone 'average' enough for you?"
Sheesh. "They need feedback", said like it's a bad thing.
DucK;
Agreed. After highschool I took a landscaping job over the summers. The Boss didn't like me because "I didn't work hard enough" and "Didn't know what I was doing". Of course, nobody told me this, because the full time employees were all 40 years older than I was, and help isn't in their vocublary. So I kept doing a bad job. Once somebody explained what I was doing wrong, they were amazed that such a crappy employee could become excellent overnight.
Still, I also belive there is a tendency of my generation (and those immediately proceeding me) to beleive that they deserve instant success. I think our immediate gratification culture has a lot to do with that. My brother-in-law is about to finish college in business, and expects that he'll make six figures in 5 years. He's smart, but doesn't understand that business is more than smarts.
I'm with Duck. (Gen-X)
Yeah, I want feedback. In fact, I recently changed careers because it had become apparent that the yearly review process where I used to work got plenty of lip-service, but was actually meaningless.
Meaning that there would never be a chance to gain any proper recognition for a job well done or initiative taken, and that it was all up to politics.
Instant success is one thing, but another side of that coin is that a lot of folks in my generation simply grew up knowing less. Almost every single practical thing I know how to do is self-taught, b/c my folks had one, and only one priority -- that I learn to take responsibility for my own actions.
Well, that last one is a powerful force multiplier. No complaints.
I'm with Duck, too. "You used to think that no news meant good news" sounds like somebody who cut his teeth before layoffs became more popular among executives than golf. If executives and directors want you to think no news equals good news, maybe they should do a better job of creating a corporate culture where that holds true.
Would anybody be sympathetic to this guy's comments if he was a Captain complaining about the enlisted men in his unit? Seems like he could show some leadership and set the tone for his group, but first he has to accept some responsibility for the culture as it is.
And Dr. Hurd's insights go both ways: how will you achieve genuine 'self-esteem' in your position so that you don't have the need to constantly seek reinforcement when your efforts are constantly undercut, minimized, or micro-managed by your managers?
I know it's a semi-cheap shot, but I just finished watching Band of Brothers again, and I just can't hear any of the quotes from Canter, Twenge or Crossland coming out of Dick Winters, Carwood Lipton, or Buck Compton.
Nice quote from Philipians, too, by the way.