Last Friday, many news outlets picked up an interesting story. The Community Services Director in an Ohio community canceled this year’s Little League All-Star Game citing “child development studies” that say these sorts of games need to be banned. Parents were outraged. Last month, there was a controversy in Durango, CO when the High School principal wanted to discontinue the tradition of honor students wearing white robes at graduation as a symbol of their academic achievement. Fortunately, in this case the principal listened to the input of the outraged parents and the tradition continued, as well it should.
There is now an entire generation – the Millennials – who have grown up in a culture where everyone is wonderful, where only positive feedback is present, where everyone gets an award for just participating in an activity, and where outstanding achievement in school, athletics, or any other endeavor tends to get downplayed so as not to make others who did not achieve at such a high level feel bad – or worse yet, where everyone gets an “A”. So these twenty-somethings are entering the workplace expecting to get rewarded for just showing up.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a Baby Boomer. I grew up in an era when sometimes you tried out for the team, play, orchestra, or choir and DIDN’T make it; when teachers arranged seats in the classroom according to class rank; and when not everyone got into the college they wanted or got hired by the company where they really wanted to work. In other words, there was competition. And yes, a competitive environment can have serious flaws. However, this nonsense of not recognizing achievement because it will somehow segregate people has to stop. The reality is that in the workplace people get performance reviews – at least annually – and not everyone should get rated at “greatly exceeds standards”. Unfortunately, the twenty something’s saying “I’ve never gotten anything less than an ‘A’ in my life” will not cut it. This participation award mentality has created an entire generation who find negative feedback and dealing with adversity difficult. And adversity is exactly what businesses will have to deal with in the future. It would be a much better world if schools, community programs, and families helped young people find their talent instead of having them falsely believe everyone is great at everything.