Gen Z can’t work alongside people with different views because they ‘haven’t got the skills to disagree’ says British TV boss
Gen Z can’t work alongside people with different views because they ‘haven’t got the skills to disagree’ says British TV boss
Channel 4's chief exec blames social media and the pandemic for Gen Z’s deficiency in essential workplace diplomacy.
If you remove the gen z distinction: yeah. People have lost the ability to acknowledge there are other world views than their own.
Sometimes it is a good thing. "Agree to disagree" on a person's fundamental right to existence is one of the may things that has made the world so fucked up.
But also? People in general spend so much time surrounded by The Algorithm and having every aspect of their media and news consumption catered to them that it makes a massive disconnect. When youtube or even lemmy/reddit always shows you what you want to hear, someone doing the opposite is not only a personal insult: it is an attack on your very reality.
And while it likely impacts gen z and younger millenials more: one of my co-workers is a boomer ass boomer who was mostly hired as a favor to an influential person at one of the companies we are trying to get as a client. And it feels like every other sentence out of his mouth is "you are being intentionally obtuse" because he cannot fathom a world where he is not right and an expert in everything he thinks about.
And you can see it in most threads where people have an actual discussion. People LOVE to say "I think you are being disingenuous" or "you are being argumentative" because it is easier to call someone else a liar than it is to realize they came to a different conclusion.
No, it's more that the boomers/older Gen X treats any sign of even polite disagreement as attacks on their very character. Many of them simply cannot accept that their views are outdated, and any challenges to their view is a disrespectful slight.
It's very telling that many of them still complain about millennials as children ruining everything to this day, when the oldest millennials are in their early 40s, and they are somehow shocked that Gen Z is even more progressive and vocal about their views than us millennials.
Look, I don't care at all what views my coworkers might possess. And that's the problem. Because when one of these fuckwits starts going on a bigoted rant at work, I do NOT want to hear it, and I surely don't give a damn about it. So yeah, no, we can't work alongside fuckwits. If they knew how to shut up, we could.
The problem is that the things they “disagree” about are sometimes basic scientific facts, like climate change, or beliefs which strongly affect people’s lives negatively, such as racism, anti-lgbt bigotry, or economic views like “it’s just fine to pay people such low wages they can barely afford to live and will never be able to buy a house”.
Some guy says some thing. This is no different from an out of touch boomer saying kids these days don't want to work.
nah never had that issue and I'm pretty fuckin opinionated. As a chef I argue more with old heads than gen z or millennials.
old fuckers think they know everything
Gen Z seem to lack the skillset to know their place. -boomer boss
Interesting way of saying "they won't bend over and spread their arse cheeks".
When the "disagreement" is that your nosy Boomer Karen coworkers mis-gender you or disapprove of the way you live your life or think it's NBD that by the time you're their age we're going to be in the "find out" phase of the biggest disaster to hit Earth's biosphere in 65 million years, the problem isn't really with Gen Z.
Out of all the Gen Z bashing headlines I've ever seen... this is the only one I am inclined to agree with. It doesn't even have to be a politically motivated disagreement; I've met too many young people that once you disagree with them on something, try to completely avoid talking to you and also do not take criticism of any kind well.
Maybe there's a degree of truth to this, but the issue doesn't only apply to Gen Z... I've had plenty of overgrown children in their 40s and 50s lose their shit in the workplace when the slightest bit of pushback comes up about anything. I'd say this is more of a general communication skills problem these days
Uh, that's because the different views are fucking wild bad, and they're not just putting up with it.
Eh, this generational conflict stuff is nonsense. For years I’ve run teams of boomers, X, Y, and now Z. Have I had to punt some younger folks because they couldn’t work past some not-work-relevant difference with someone else in the office? Sure. But that’s not a Z thing at all.
Anyone who can’t check their personal baggage at the door and get work done as part of a team ends up being shown to the sidewalk. There’s no generational component to this, it’s happening to everyone of all ages.
If the social contact was the same as it was when today's old people were young, then today's young people would be much more willing to put up with shit.
Take the world’s Big Four consulting firms, for example: Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and EY are all offering incoming junior hires soft skills training, including lessons on how to speak up in meetings.Thats how you het taken off the fucking assignement.... Jfc
Calling highers ups on what is likely purposeful corruption is no way to move up lol
No matter of fake training will fix this dynamic
It's fucking hilarious seeing a bunch of septics in here without a scooby about Channel 4 deciding it must be full of bigoted managers that the gen Z won't tolerate. When it's always been one of the most progressive channels in the UK and has been allowing diverse voices to shine for years.
Y’know, I watched enough kids get shuttled to-and-from school in Chelsea tractors by their onni-present parents that I could actually believe this is a trend. Kids can’t develop resilience if you don’t give them any independence.
Setting aside the fact that this is a generalization and thus naturally overstating things, I don't doubt that there's some truth to this.
There's a sort of rigidly intolerant moralizing that arose on the internet over the last decade or so, most exemplified by Tumblr, and gen z was right in the middle of it.
It puts me in mind of the Victorian era, with a group of people who absolutely and unequivocally condemn anyone and everyone who violates their rigid sense of propriety, or more precisely, the stereotypes that they substitute for those people. Of course, the biggest difference is that they have a completely different set of rules to which they insist that all submit - instead of a religious morality mostly concerned with sex they have a secular morality mostly concerned with social behavior. But they share that absolutism - the smug certainty that their way is the only way and that any who believe otherwise are not only wrong, but due to the fact that they believe otherwise, so monstrous as to be unfit to even judge.
That last is the trap - the thing that sets that extreme of moralizing apart and keeps it going when it takes hold. Those who come to believe in it end up believing not simply that they're right, but that believing as they do is the defining trait of people who are fit to judge the matter, so they then can and do reject any and all differing views out of hand on the basis that the mere act of holding a different view means that one is obviously an inferior being, and since one is an inferior being, whatever one believes is and can only be wrong. It becomes a closed loop, in which people aren't even capable of considering different viewpoints.
And that's presumably the quality that's being characterized, and with some accuracy, as them not having the skills to disagree.
I'd note though that this is just one manifestation of the problem. It's a new version of it, made possible by social media, and it appears to be notably widespread, and particularly in a relatively narrow age group, but the dynamic itself is likely as old as human civilization.
Hahahahahahahahaha. And WHO DOES?!?!?!
Social skills for all of us took a hit from the pandemic, but Gen Z truly got screwed. Combine that with whatever internet echo-chamber of choice, and no wonder they're less tolerant of differing opinions and struggle to communicate.
I have some young friends that got out of high school right before the pandemic hit. They seem perfectly fine. But the young folks I run into in public seem to have real communication issues.
And that's not just some old GenX guy's opinion. I'm seeing more and more articles and comment on the problem. Employers are noting it, universities are trying to deal with it. It's real.
EDIT: Oh god. The comments here. "Yeah, we're just not putting up with your bullshit you fucking Boomers!" Sigh...
I'm reading this thread comments and it seems that Gen Z has decided that it can't be their social skills - it must be the other older generation that is flawed.
Interesting.
Also a lot of comments how older generations have character flaws that do not exist in their own generation.
Even more interesting.
I guess gen Z is just the best generation so far, according to themselves. :)