What’s really behind Gen Zers’ work dysfunction

Struggle can teach you all sorts of lessons about life, and those moments of strife can contribute to the development of your character — while the path of no resistance builds no resilience, so that when faced with situations that deviate from your expectations, you’re more likely to falter.

The future of corporate America rests on the brittle shoulders of Gen Zers who are struggling with the weight of realistic workplace expectations.

But why are they fracturing more so than previous generations?

In the March 2024 Freedom Economy Index survey, a joint venture between Public Square and Red Balloon, Gen Z received a labor-market report-card grade of “F” in “reliability,” “divisive and toxic,” “mental health,” “workplace lawsuits” and “fits workplace culture.”

Of small business owners surveyed, 68% rate Gen Zers as the “least reliable” of all their employees and 62% say Gen Zers are the most likely to cause division and toxicity in the workplace.

This survey includes the opinions of 80,000 business owners who seem to all agree that a major part of the problem with Gen Z in the workplace is their sense of entitlement.

“Entitlement; they want higher-end coffee, large pay increases every year, promotions, perks, benefit upon benefits, more remote work even though they may be underperforming already with 2 days’ per week remote,” stated a surveyed business owner.

“Expecting promotions for simply showing up every day,” bemoaned another.

 “Unjustified expectations and entitlements.”

“Employers need Gen Zers to step up, particularly with huge numbers of baby boomers retiring,” Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of RedBalloon, told me.

“But, Gen Z is getting a failing grade in the workplace, particularly on reliability and being able to participate in a meaningful, teamwork-oriented way. Add to that Gen Z’s workplace mental health challenges, and employers now say they’d rather be understaffed than bring these problems into their workplace.”

Once you become an adult, I believe, you’re responsible for altering the trajectory of your life — but I simultaneously recognize that if you’re handicapped by a faulty upbringing, you have more challenges to overcome to head toward prosperity but less knowledge of how to navigate there.

No one is born entitled — so if Gen Z is entitled, the next logical question is, “Who raised them?”

We complain about them being the children who got participation trophies — but the last time I checked, children aren’t the one handing them out, the adults are.

Many parents have the best of intentions when it comes to smoothing their child’s pathway in life, but we’ve made it so that our kids have no grip on reality and lose their stride when a mild gust of disappointment impedes their progress.

The endeavor to make their children’s lives easier only handicapped them as adults because their parents overvalued protection and under-appreciated resilience.

In the process, we also lied to our children by placing them on a pedestal, instilling a false sense of importance that would inevitably clash with the outside world, forcing them to realize how they are just as insignificant as the rest of us.

Being a parent is an important and unique role; we’re responsible for another life.

So if an entire generation of young adults seem to have similar shortcomings, it reflects the same shortcomings of the people who raised them.

Entitled parents who avoid accountability, who always lay blame at a third party instead of themselves and who believe they’re beyond reproach wind up raising their reflection and avoid looking in the mirror when their spitting images resemble the monster that raised them.

Yet I don’t believe we should give up on Gen Z or wag our fingers at them.

Every generation has its challenges, and my son faces challenges that I never faced growing up and vice versa.

As a father to an 18-year-old Gen Z adult, I gladly accept the unfairness of tacit responsibility if my son were to fail to be an upstanding citizen — because my life objective was to raise him to become a better man than me.

Just because my son is an adult doesn’t mean he no longer needs guidance or an ear to air out his frustrations with adulthood.

If you’re a parent of a Gen Z adult, stop trying to be your child’s “friend” and embrace being a parent who is prepared to mentor: They’ll have an endless number of friends, but they’ll only have one father or mother.

Adam B. Coleman is the author of “Black Victim to Black Victor” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. Follow him on Substack: adambcoleman.substack.com.