Simon Sinek traces Gen Z's workplace struggles to 1980s business leaders who prioritized shareholder value over employee loyalty, normalizing layoffs and transactional management. The result: a generation never taught human skills like listening, empathy, and difficult conversations. Leaders' silence after George Floyd showed how rare these abilities had become.
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There was a great disservice that was done to capitalism over the course of the 80s, 90s and 2000s. And that disservice was perpetuated by leaders like Jack Welch.
And basically what they did is they made business in America more about value to a shareholder, an external constituent over a customer or an employee. And remember good old fashioned Adam Smith capitalism, the kind of capitalism that made America great. The kind of capitalism that Thomas Jefferson studied. Thomas Jefferson owned all the volumes of wealth of Nations.
That form of capitalism believed in competition as a means of producing a higher quality product. We now live in a world where, where that's not really true, that when a company, for example, announces mass layoffs to meet some arbitrary financial projection, we see a stock price goes up, go up. This is a big problem.
And many of the inherent deals that were made between a company and its employer, a company and the customer used to be, you know, that we will work tirelessly in our competitive spirit to make a better product from you. And we will work tirelessly to look after our people so that our people give back years of loyalty. And unfortunately, this young generation has grown up in a world where mass layoffs are so normalized, where they've watched their parents or their friends, parents be laid off through no fault of their own. It was not a meritocracy just because the company missed it. Like I said, an arbitrary projection. It's profitable, just not as profitable as we expected. So you get to lose your job as a result. So I can go back and prove to somebody that I balance the books even though I'm doing long term damage to the culture of the company. And that deal was broken, that deal was broken, that I'm going to take care of you and you're going to take care of me. And so it's very funny to me that companies lament that this young generation seems to offer no loyalty to the company.
When they have offered none for decades.
And in the process of business becoming much more short term, much more transactional, and the human element falling to the wayside, we've also seen a decline in a very, very, very specific skill set called human skills. I hate the term soft skills. Hard skills and soft skills, hard and soft are opposite. That means they work in opposition to each other, right? Hard skills, the skills you need to do your job, and human skills, the skills you need to be a better human being. And both of those are important to be a great entrepreneur.
And a great business person. And though we teach hard skills and we teach how to read A balance sheet and what a P and L is. And we teach all of these wonderful things. Unfortunately, we started to treat people like something on a P and L. And what we have to do better is teaching human skills. Human skills include things like listening, like empathy, like how to give and receive feedback, like how to have a difficult conversation. These are vital skills in a modern day that we don't teach, which means our business leaders do not have those skills. And if you want to build culture, if you want to build trust, you need these skills. If you want to manage difficult times, you need to have these skills. Take for example what happened after the murder of George Floyd. And I saw this pervasive the number of leaders after the murder of George Floyd do nothing. Not because they're bad people. It's because they were too afraid to have a conversation about race with their team, fearing that they would say the wrong thing and accidentally inflame a situation or trigger somebody. So they chose nothing. And I don't fault them for it. What they're missing is a necessary skill set. How to have a difficult conversation. Hey team, we need to have a difficult conversation. I'm afraid to have this conversation. I fear I'm going to say the wrong thing or accidentally trigger somebody and I need your help because I'm going to fumble this. But, but it's more important that we have this conversation than not simply because I'm afraid that's how you start a difficult conversation. That is a teachable, learnable.
Practiceable skill set. So one thing that I would like to see more of in our university system to prepare young people as they enter the workforce, whether they choose an entrepreneurial path or not, is to be better equipped with these skills. Because their companies as of now, are doing a poor job of equipping them. And if they are going to be the future leaders, I want them to bring these skills to business to repair the capitalism and repair the damage done by folks like Jack Welch.
