And We Say Millennials Have a Short Attention Span???

I'm sure at one other time I have written about the bad behavior of other generations in this blog. I have noticed that everyone is always so quick to point out the flaws of Millennials and very slow to consider their own. Last night I had an experience which once again reminded me that maybe we are a little less than accurate about our interpretations of Millennials compared with other generations.

Case in point...I was at an event yesterday giving a presentation. The audience was made up of young Millennials (high school seniors) and their parents. Also in attendance were a few other professionals. Safe to say a majority were young people but other generations were certainly represented. Here's what struck me. At one point I looked around the room to see all of the Millennials fully attentive and listening to the speaker. They weren't distracted by cell phones or each other. Then next to me is a gentleman who was in the Baby Boomer generation sitting playing games on his blackberry throughout the entire presentation. Now I could understand a little if he had work to do but he was playing solitaire. Not discretely but quite obviously. Now Boomers please don't think that I believe that everyone is just like that, although I would argue that we stereotype Millennails into one grouping so why would it be unfair to do the same to other generations? This isn't by any means the first time I have seen Millennials behaving in a totally appropriate manner while other generations have behavior that is less than desirable.

So what does all this mean? Well the moral of the story is DON'T GENERALIZE AND SAY ALL MILLENNIALS ARE DISRESPECTFUL AND DON'T KNOW HOW TO BE PROFESSIONAL!!! Clearly there are people in other generations who can behave poorly too! We all have our moments, but the key is we have a tendency to be more critical of Millennials because they are so different from us. Maybe it's time we started looking at ourselves and asked what kind of role models are we?

Want behavior to change? BE A GOOD ROLE MODEL and live the kind of behavior you want to see from young people!!!