Bridging the Soft Skills Gap E-Book

Bruce Tulgan

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 381

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Solve the number one problem with today's young workforce--the soft skills gap The number one challenge with today's young talent is a problem hiding in plain sight: the ever-widening soft skills gap. Today's new, young workforce has so much to offer--new technical skills, new ideas, new perspective, new energy. Yet too many of them are held back because of their weak soft skills. Soft skills may be harder to define and measure than hard skills, but they are just as critical. People get hired because of their hard skills but get fired because of their soft skills. Setting a good example or simply telling young workers they need to improve isn't enough, nor is scolding them or pointing out their failings in an annual review. However you can teach the missing basics to today's young talent. Based on more than twenty years of research, Bruce Tulgan, renowned expert on the millennial workforce, offers concrete solutions to help managers teach the missing basics of professionalism, critical thinking, and followership--complete with ninety-two step-by-step lesson plans designed to be highly flexible and easy to use. Tulgan's research and proven approach has show that the key to teaching young people the missing soft skills lies in breaking down critical soft skills into their component parts, concentrating on one small component at a time, with the help of a teaching-style manager. Almost all of the exercises can be done in less than an hour within a team meeting or an extended one-on-one. The exercises are easily modified and customized and can be used as take-home exercises for any individual or group, to guide one-on-one discussions with direct-reports and in the classroom as written exercises or group discussions. Managers--and their young employees--will find themselves returning to their favorite exercises over and over again. One exercise at a time, managers will build up the most important soft skills of their new, young talent. These critical soft skills can make the difference between mediocre and good, between good and great, between great and one of a kind.

Leseprobe

“Bruce has a remarkable ability to examine today's important management issues and provide useful and ‘hands on' tools to help every organization improve their leadership effectiveness. I really appreciate the unique insight in this book and will be able to use this to tackle this important challenge with our changing workforce.”

Jon Morrison, President, WABCO, Americas

“Once again Bruce has his finger on the pulse beat… As with his previous works addressing generational differences within the workplace, the reader finds him/herself nodding in recognition of the behaviors characterized by Gen Zers. Bruce goes beyond the commentary by providing practical guidance on how employers can work with their young talents to help them develop the soft skills they will require in order to reach their full potential”

Jack Dwyer, VP Human Resources and Administration, ASSA ABLOY, Inc.

“Well researched, practical and immensely readable, Bridging the Soft Skills Gap is destined to be a go-to book for any leader charged with managing during this turbulent changing of the employee guard.”

Joni Thomas Doolin, CEO, TDn2k; Founder, People Report

Traditional rules don't apply in appealing to and engaging our extremely talented younger generation.  This book is a valuable and practical resource for any manager who wants to effectively manage and motivate this important and ever-growing part of our workforce.”

Andy Ajello, Senior Vice President of Diabetes & Obesity Sales, Novo Nordisk, Inc.

“As companies like ours develop new solutions in a rapidly transforming industry, it is critical that we identify, recruit and engage new talent that can help lead these transformations.  Bruce provides a critical tool in this step by step training guide.”

Raymond R. Ferrell - EVP General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Dex Media, Inc.

“This book reflects authentic thought leadership and will be of great value to all executives who are smart enough to buy the book!”

Daniel Butler, Senior Advisor, National Retail Federation; President, Maple Point Consulting

“Bruce Tulgan has done it again.  He has not only well framed the issue of the soft skills gap, but has also given today's managers practical advice for dealing with it.”

Hank Harris, President and Chief Executive Officer, FMI Corporation

“Teaching today's young talent basic soft skills can be a magnificent legacy for seasoned pros. This book is a must-read for managers in any industry, and it is especially relevant in the service sector where soft skills are the face of our business.”

Sharon McPherson, Director of Training & Development, On The Border Restaurants

“Bruce's book is such a timely and relevant read for managers. As always, he masterfully lays out the research as to what makes Gen Zers unique, why we should be excited to have them, and the most effective performance development strategies to motivate and bring out the best in them. The best part of this book is the hundreds of practical and adaptable lesson plans he provides to develop basic, yet vital interpersonal skills to help an early career professional become your strongest contributor.”

Kristen Storey, Organizational Learning Director, Learning & Professional Development, University of Michigan

“HOW you conduct yourself and get the work done will always trump technical skills. This book distills the HOW in a way that can truly transform performance. It is a wealth of information and on-point in speaking to an issue we need to harness in the workplace quickly, and should be mandatory reading for every manager/leader out there!”

Melissa Feck, Vice President, Human Resources, Health Care Association of New York State

“Bruce Tulgan's book provides great insight, ideas and resources for a manager leading the new college graduates in the workforce.  Adjusting to a regular schedule and leaving the freedom of college and youth is a challenge for many - they lack many soft skills.  Bruce provides specifics to help the leader guide the new employee to learn key skills in the context of the work which helps them be successful without losing their desire to be unique.” 

Sue Hiser, Program Director, Leadership Development, Ohio Health

“Bruce Tulgan has done it again. Bridging the Soft Skills Gap doesn't just describe the challenges I see every day with my talented young team - it provides real tools for their development. Businesses and their valued young employees will benefit from these resources and reap long-term rewards.”

Janet Kyle Altman, Marketing Principal, Kaufman Rossin

“If you want to learn how to teach, inspire and lead today's young talent, read as Bruce magically mixes actual life examples with solid leadership principles. This book will give you complete knowledge of what you need to know to lead today.” 

Doug Sterbenz, EVP & COO Westar Energy (Retired); Present to Win, National Speaker and Leadership Coach

“Many managers lament that Millennials lack soft skills like professionalism or followership but then struggle with how to address the gap. In his now well established style, Bruce Tulgan's latest book offers detailed, practical training lesson plans for each of a dozen soft skills. “

Alan Krezco, “The Artist formerly known as” Executive Vice President and General Counsel (retired), The Hartford

“After reading this book, I just keep thinking, ‘It all makes sense now!’ Incredible insight into understanding the next generation of talent in today's workforce. This book has forced me to think about how to restructure on-boarding and training efforts that will result in more successful and productive employees and teams.”

Sheri Petrie, Training & Coaching Consultant, Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group

“This remarkable book is a must have for any manager with young talent to lead. With extensive scripts and step-by-step lesson plans to improve what Tulgan calls the ‘missing basics,’ it provides everything a manager needs to turn a mediocre younger worker into a truly valued, key player.”  

Deborah Orlowski, Ph.D., Senior Learning Specialist, Learning and Professional Development, University of Michigan. 

“This is one of the best books I have ever read when it comes to teaching “soft skills” to a group of young employees in the workplace. To bridge the gap between Gen Z and their supervisors, managers, leaders, and executives and create a collaborative workforce both groups are provided with specific skills sets through exercises and concepts.  The book is a must read for those who want to increase their productivity and workplace morale.”

Steve Hanamura, President, Hanamura Consulting, inc.; Consultant, speaker and author

Bridging the Soft Skills Gap

HOW TO TEACH THE MISSING BASICS TO TODAY'S YOUNG TALENT

BRUCE TULGAN

Cover design: Wiley

Copyright © 2015 by Bruce Tulgan. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Tulgan, Bruce, author. Bridging the soft skills gap : how to teach the missing basics to today's young talent / Bruce Tulgan. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-1-118-72564-1 (cloth); ISBN 9781119138150 (ePDF); ISBN 9781119138167(ePub) 1. Soft skills. 2. Generation Y–Employment. 3. Business etiquette. 4. Personnel management. I. Title. HF5381.T757 2015 658.3′124 dc23

2015016765

This book is dedicated to my beloved agent, the great genius

—Susan Rabiner

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

PART ONE: THE SOFT SKILLS GAP

Prologue: Meet the Newest New Young Workforce

Chapter 1: The Soft Skills Gap

The Soft Skills Gap: Growing Steadily from Gen X to Gen Y to Gen Z

Something Much Larger Is Going on Here: The Post-Boomer Generational Shift

Gen Zers Are the Ultimate Non-Conformists in an Age of Non-Comformism

The Soft Skills Gap: The Missing Basics in Today's Young Talent

Face the Hard Realities of the Soft Skills Gap

Chapter 2: You Can't Hire Your Way Around the Soft Skills Gap

Staffing Strategy and Hiring

On-Boarding and Up-to-Speed Training

Performance Management and Talent Development

Ongoing Training

The Human Element: What Role Are You Going to Play?

Become a Teaching Style Manager

Take It to the Next Level

Chapter 3: Unlocking the Power of Soft Skills

Drill Down: The Missing Basics

Unlocking the Power of Soft Skills

Unlocking the Power: The Rest of This Book

PART TWO: HOW TO TEACH THE MISSING BASICS TO TODAY'S YOUNG TALENT

Chapter 4: How to Teach the Missing Basics of Professionalism to Today's Young Talent

How to Teach Self-Evaluation

Self-Evaluation: Lesson Plan 1—Introduction

Self-Evaluation: Lesson Plan 2—Evaluating Yourself on Ability, Skill, and Will

Self-Evaluation: Lesson Plan 3—Evaluating Yourself on Productivity, Quality, and Behavior

Self-Evaluation: Lesson Plan 4—Evaluating Yourself on the Key Soft Skills Competencies

Self-Evaluation: Lesson Plan 5—Drill Down on Understanding the Key Soft Skills

Self-Evaluation: Lesson Plan 6—Explore Your Own Successes with the Key Soft Skills

How to Teach Personal Responsibility

Personal Responsibility: Lesson Plan 1—Introduction

Personal Responsibility: Lesson Plan 2—All the Factors That Are in Your Way

Personal Responsibility: Lesson Plan 3—Considering the Most Common Factors That Get in the Way at Work

Personal Responsibility: Lesson Plan 4—Response Power

How to Teach Positive Attitude

Positive Attitude: Lesson Plan 1—Considering Theories of How to Be Your Best at Work

Positive Attitude: Lesson Plan 2—Defining “Good Attitude” Behaviors with Your Team—or Any Individual

Positive Attitude: Lesson Plan 3—Considering Common Bad Attitudes

Positive Attitude: Lesson Plan 4—Considering Good Attitude Behaviors

Positive Attitude: Lesson Plan 5—For Individual Employees Who Need an Attitude Adjustment

How to Teach Good Work Habits

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 1—Introduction

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 2—Self-Assessment

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 3—Self-Improvement Planning

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 4—Wellness

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 5—Planning a Wellness Initiative

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 6—Self-Presentation

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 7—Using a Time Log to Start Living by a Schedule

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 8—How to Make a Basic Project Plan

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 9—Taking Notes and Making Checklists

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 10—Doing a Time/Motion Study on Yourself

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 11—Spotlight on Follow-Through

Good Work Habits: Lesson Plan 12—Going the Extra Mile

How to Teach People Skills

People Skills: Lesson Plan 1—Interpersonal Communication

People Skills: Lesson Plan 2—Self-Assessing Interpersonal Communication

People Skills: Lesson Plan 3—Learning to Use the “People List”

People Skills: Lesson Plan 4—Putting More Structure into Your Communication

People Skills: Lesson Plan 5—Putting More Substance into Your Communication

People Skills: Lesson Plan 6—Preparing for Meetings

People Skills: Lesson Plan 7—Email Best Practices

People Skills: Lesson Plan 8—Communicating Remotely

Chapter 5: How to Teach the Missing Basics of Critical Thinking to Today's Young Talent

How to Teach Proactive Learning

Proactive Learning: Lesson Plan 1—Proactive Learning

Proactive Learning: Lesson Plan 2—Open Mind

Proactive Learning: Lesson Plan 3—Suspend Judgment, Question Assumptions, and Seek to Learn

Proactive Learning: Lesson Plan 4—Question Assumptions

Proactive Learning: Lesson Plan 5—Research

Proactive Learning: Lesson Plan 6—Study Skills—Building Knowledge

Proactive Learning: Lesson Plan 7—Practice Skills—Building Skill

Proactive Learning: Lesson Plan 8—Contemplate Competing Perspectives to Build Wisdom

How to Teach Problem Solving

Problem Solving: Lesson Plan 1—Introduction

Problem Solving: Lesson Plan 2—Preventing or Avoiding Problems Before They Happen

Problem Solving: Lesson Plan 3—Ready-Made Solutions to Commonly Occurring Problems

Problem Solving: Lesson Plan 4—Common Denominators and Underlying Principles

Problem Solving: Lesson Plan 5—Applying the After Action Review Tool

Problem Solving: Lesson Plan 6—Using the After-Action Review Tool to Learn from Others

How to Teach Decision Making

Decision Making: Lesson Plan 1—Introduction

Decision Making: Lesson Plan 2—Information Analysis: Simple Pros and Cons

Decision Making: Lesson Plan 3—Cause and Effect: Positive Outcomes

Decision Making: Lesson Plan 4—Cause and Effect: Negative Outcomes

Decision Making: Lesson Plan 5—Applying the After-Action Review Tool

Decision Making: Lesson Plan 6—Using the Decision/Action Tree

Chapter 6: How to Teach the Missing Basics of Followership to Today's Young Talent

How to Teach Respect for Context

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 1—Introduction

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 2—Reading the Structure, Rules, Customs, and Leadership

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 3—Where Do You Fit?

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 4—How Can You Adapt?

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 5—Context- Limiting Factors

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 6—Complicated Relationships

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 7—Positive Contexts

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 8—Negative Contexts

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 9—Dealing with People with Bad Attitudes

Respect for Context: Lesson Plan 10—Dealing with People with Great Attitudes

How to Teach Good Citizenship

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 1—Introduction

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 2—The “Respect for Others” Model

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 3—The “Best Interests” Model

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 4—The “Civic” Model

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 5—The “Communitarian” Model

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 6—The “Common Sense” Model

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 7—The “Solid Standards” Model

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 8—The “Personal Sacrifice” Model

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 9—The Theodore Roosevelt Model

Good Citizenship: Lesson Plan 10—Create Your Own Model

How to Teach Service

Service: Lesson Plan 1—Introduction

Service: Lesson Plan 2—Common Myths About “Service” in the Workplace

Service: Lesson Plan 3—Realities About Service in the Workplace

Service: Lesson Plan 4—Myths Versus Realities in the Workplace

Service: Lesson Plan 5—The “Be a Great Employee” Model of Service

Service: Lesson Plan 6—The “Service” Approach to One-on-Ones Between Managers and Direct Reports

Service: Lesson Plan 7—The Service Approach to Meeting Attendance and Participation

Service: Lesson Plan 8—Helping Your Boss Monitor Your Performance

Service: Lesson Plan 9—Putting Yourself on a Performance Improvement Plan

How to Teach Teamwork

Teamwork: Lesson Plan 1—Introduction

Teamwork: Lesson Plan 2—Defining the Dimensions of Teamwork

Teamwork: Lesson Plan 3—Your Role in Relation to the Mission

Teamwork: Lesson Plan 4—Coordinating, Cooperating, and Collaborating with Others

Teamwork: Lesson Plan 5—Supporting and Celebrating the Success of Others

Teamwork: Lesson Plan 6—Identifying Your “Go To” People and Building Relationships with Them

Teamwork: Lesson Plan 7—Becoming a “Go To” Person for Others

Teamwork: Lesson Plan 8—Using Influence to Get Things Done

Teamwork: Lesson Plan 9—Consider the Lessons About Teamwork from This U.S. Air Force Special Operations Team

About the Author

Index

EULA

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

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Acknowledgments

This book is the product of more than twenty years of ongoing research on young people in the workplace. At this point, all told, hundreds of thousands of individuals have contributed to our surveys, interviews, and focus groups since we first began our workplace research in 1993. First and foremost, I always thank everyone who has participated in this research over the years.

Thanks also to the very many business leaders who bring me in to learn from and help your managers facing real challenges every day in the real world. To the hundreds of thousands who have attended my keynote addresses and seminars: thanks for listening, for laughing, for sharing the wisdom of your experience, for pushing me with the really tough questions, for your kindness, and for teaching me. My greatest intellectual debt is to the managers who have participated in our seminars—I've learned so much from helping them wrestle with their very real management problems in the real world. Special thanks to those managers whose real stories appear in this book; I've mixed up the ancillary details to help keep the stories anonymous.

Welcome to Dr. Bennett Graff, our new chief of operations at RainmakerThinking. Thank you for your confidence in this enterprise and the excellent contributions you are making every day to our mission and our business. We are going to do great things together, Bennett.

To our very dear old friends and my interim management team, business partners Chris Glowacki and Kristin Campbell and their entire family to the furthest extent of consanguinity, but especially Lily, Albert, Herbie, and Stella: Thank you for your friendship and your family and your contributions to this enterprise. I am very grateful. We love you all, every one.

To Susan Ingraham, my longtime executive assistant (and one of the most reliable, considerate, even-tempered, and good-hearted people I have ever known): Thank you so much for everything you do, Susan. I honestly don't know what I would do without you. You have my undying gratitude and loyalty.

To Liz Richards, who has been serving at RainmakerThinking for less than a year at this writing (but has already proven herself among the very best of her very young generation): Thank you, Liz, for your everyday professionalism, critical thinking, and followership. We are very grateful.

Now, to the publisher and the editors:

To everyone at Wiley and Jossey-Bass: Thanks to every one of you who has put your faith and good thinking and hard work into the books we have done together, especially this one.

Karen Murphy, my editor on THE 27 CHALLENGES MANAGERS FACE, and my editor on this book until the late stages, has moved on in her career, but not before helping me conceive and re-conceive this book a number of times. Thanks to you, Karen, for all of your help along the way.

My brand new editor, the very talented and skilled Judy Howarth, has adopted me and this project in the late stages. She did so with kindness and conviction, and I have no doubt that her excellent work makes this book very much better. I am extremely grateful.

Then I always come to the great, great, great Susan Rabiner, to whom this book is dedicated. Susan is not only a world-class literary agent for me and also for my wife, Debby. Susan has become a true, dear, beloved friend and absolutely one of our very most favorite people in the world. When this book was going through draft after draft—when I was struggling to zero in on the issues that were truly at stake and the research that was truly most relevant—Susan demonstrated why she is considered one of the most brilliant minds in non-fiction publishing. Since we first met in the late 1990s, I have not written a book that Susan has not influenced profoundly. But this book is dedicated to Susan because her guidance and support in this effort was beyond even her usual heroics. It is not an overstatement to say that Susan Rabiner is simply the smartest and the best editorial mind in non-fiction publishing. She and her husband, the late genius Al Fortunato, wrote the book about writing and publishing non-fiction, Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction—and Get It Published. Susan is nearly 100 percent responsible for my success as a writer. How can I thank Susan enough?

My family and friends are the anchors of meaning in my life. First, thanks to my parents, Henry Tulgan and Norma Propp Tulgan, for raising me as well as you did. You are both among my very closest friends to this day, and I treasure the time we spend together. I neglected to visit my beloved parents for several months because I was so under the gun finishing this book in time. I would be ashamed for not visiting more except that the whole time, true to form, they insisted, “Don't come visit until you finish your book. We'll see you when you finish.” What I owe to my parents could fill much more than one book, but it definitely includes my work ethic!

Thanks also to the rest of my beloved family: My parents-in-law, Julie and Paul Applegate; my nieces and nephews (from oldest to youngest): Elisa, Joseph, Perry, Erin, Frances, and Eli; my sister, Ronna, and my brother, Jim; my sister in-law, Tanya, and my brothers in-law, Shan and Tom. I love every one of you very, very much.

I always add a special extra thanks to my niece, Frances, because I have always thought of her as if she were my own child.

Finally, I always reserve my last and most profound thanks for my wife, Debby Applegate. For many years now, Debby and I have worked side-by-side, writing. For me, to be writing in her company is an honor and an inspiration. Among her many impressive credentials, Debby won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Henry Ward Beecher! While I have made my way through this manuscript, Debby has been hard at work on what is likely to be yet another of the great American biographies of this century. This one is about a now largely forgotten figure of the 1920s—Polly Adler. Just wait. You're going to be bowled over by it. It's hard to believe that, by the date this book is published, it will be thirty years since our first date in September of 1985. We've been together ever since. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—I have done since the day I met Debby that has not been profoundly influenced by her. Debby is my constant adviser, my toughest critic, my closest collaborator, the love of my life, my best friend, my smartest friend, my partner in all things, half of my soul, owner of my heart, and the person without whom I would cease to be.

PART ONETHE SOFT SKILLS GAP

Prologue Meet the Newest New Young Workforce

Today's newest new young workforce has so much to offer—new technical skills, new ideas, new perspectives, new energy. Yet, too many of them are held back—and driving the grownups crazy— because of their weak soft skills.

Managers tell us every day in our research some version of what one middle-aged manager in a pharmaceutical company told me: “When I was young and inexperienced, I may have been naïve or immature, but I knew enough to wear a tie, make eye contact, say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘yes, sir’ and ‘yes, ma'am,’ and when to shut up and keep my head down and do the grunt work without having to be told over and over again.”

Indeed, the incidence and insistence of managers complaining about the soft skills of their new young workers has risen steadily year after year since we began tracking it in the mid-1990s, when Generation Xers were the “New Dogs” on the scene. Specifically, what issues do managers complain about most? Here's what managers most often say:

“They are unprofessional.”

“They have no self-awareness.”

“They don't take personal responsibility or hold themselves accountable.

“They need an attitude adjustment.”

“Their work habits are terrible.”

“Their people skills are terrible.”

“They don't know how to think, learn, and communicate without checking a device.”

“They don't think critically.”

“They don't know how to problem solve, make decisions, and plan.”

“They have problems deferring to authority.”

“They don't appreciate context and see where they fit in.”

“They have no sense of self-sacrifice for the greater good.”

“What ever happened to citizenship, service, and teamwork?”

There is a growing gap between the expectations of employers and the reality of how today's new young talent is showing up in the workplace. Today's young stars may well show up with the latest and greatest skills and methods. Indeed, many of them seem to have developed almost “superpowers” in their chosen areas of interest and focus. They are often masters of the newfangled. What they are missing—way too often and more and more—is the old-fashioned basics, what many refer to as “the soft skills.”

What do young people have to say about the widely perceived widening soft-skills gap? Mostly, they say, “That's so true about my friends and me!” or else “Seriously?!” and then, either way, “So what?!”

To that, I usually respond, “Well, it drives the grown-ups crazy and it's holding you back. If you were to radically improve on these soft skills, it would give you a huge strategic advantage in your career.” The good news is that this is almost always enough explanation to capture their attention and interest in improving.

An executive in a major financial services institution recently told me about a recruiting interview with a very strong job candidate just about to graduate from college: “In the middle of my pitch about the long-term rewards of making a career in a company like ours, this young man starts laughing out loud. I mean actually laughing, just for a second. Then he quickly regained his composure. He was very apologetic. But what he said really struck me. He said, ‘Sir, you must realize that it's very hard for someone in my position to have any kind of faith in those long-term promises. I mean: Didn't we just barely avoid having another depression a couple of years ago? It's not that I don't trust YOU. It's just that I don't trust the future.’” The executive said, “What really struck me was that, of course, he's exactly right. There is so much complexity and uncertainty in the external risk factors. Why in the world would anyone trust the long-term promises of an institution like ours?”

What do business leaders and managers say when I tell them how they can lead their new young talent through the growing soft-skills gap? Often the first response is something like this response from a long-time partner in a large accounting/consulting firm: “This should NOT be our problem to solve! Shouldn't they have already learned all these old-fashioned basics from their parents? Or in kindergarten? Or at least in high school or college? Or graduate school for that matter? Certainly by the time they come to work as an associate at this firm, they should know how to get themselves to work on time and behave properly. Am I supposed to teach them how to cross the street, too?”

That comment brings to mind an aggressive public service campaign sponsored mainly by Yale University, here in New Haven, Connecticut, where we live. The City and the University have sponsored signs all over town, as well as other public education resources, spelling out the basics of safe pedestrian behavior. This was in part a response to the ubiquitous traffic hazard of Yale students jaywalking while staring down at their hand-held devices. In other words, some of the smartest kids in the world today—the cream of the crop, the future doctors, scientists, accountants, engineers, professors, and leaders in every industry—needed an aggressive public education program in order to learn how to cross the street. As one official told me: “They have all the latest tools and tricks, but I guess they are somewhat lacking in a lot of the old tricks. What's really interesting is that the program works. They are actually getting much better at crossing the street.”

Here's what I tell my clients: If you employ young people nowadays, then the soft-skills gap is your problem. That's the bad news. So here's some good news: You can bridge the soft-skills gap, and doing so will give you a huge strategic advantage when it comes to hiring the best young talent, bringing them on board and up-to-speed faster, better performance management, improved relationships, and greater retention rates among the best young talent.

The CEO of a biotech company in Silicon Valley was hosting a half-dozen employees at his weekly “lunch with the CEO.” Making conversation with the twenty-two-year-old brand new employee to his left, he asked, “Did you just graduate this past May or were you working somewhere else prior to joining us?” She said she had just graduated. The CEO asked, “That's great. Congratulations. We are glad to have you.” And then he asked, “Where did you go to school? What did you study?” The new young employee answered. The CEO continued, “Excellent. Did you do any part-time work while you were in school?” To this, the young woman replied, “That's enough about me, alright? What about you? What's your story?” The CEO chuckled as he told me this story. He told me, “I wanted to say, ‘My story? I'm your boss's boss's boss's boss. That's my story. But instead I just told her my story.’” He concluded, “It just took me aback, being so young and so junior in her role, her lack of inhibition in talking to the CEO of her new employer.”

For years, I've used the military as my “ace in the hole” when making the business case that organizations can and should invest in bridging the soft-skills gap. I would typically point to the Marines’ Boot Camp, for example, and say, “The Marines can take an ordinary young person and turn him or her into a United States Marine in just thirteen weeks, and together these young Marines make up the most effective fighting force in the history of the world.” Of course, most organizations don't have the resources (or the inclination) to run the equivalent of their own boot camp. (Some do, by the way, and it works like a charm. But those organizations are few and far between.)

The really good news is that you don't have to put your young employees through the equivalent of a boot camp in order to have a huge impact on their soft skills. In fact, we've collected hundreds of case studies, best practices, and teaching methods from organizations and individual managers who have systematically helped their new young employees radically improve their soft skills. There are many, many ways you can help them build up one soft skill at a time and thereby make them much more effective and successful employees, co-workers, and future leaders.

Chapter 1The Soft Skills Gap

You are very careful in your recruiting, selection, and hiring process and, yet, it is getting harder and harder to figure out which young job candidates to hire. Should you hire the promising new graduate with impressive, freshly minted credentials indicating valuable technical skills, even though he seems like he might be yet another new graduate lacking in some of those elusive, yet critical “soft skills”?

It seems like more and more of your young new hires are not working out. They make very little effort to “fit in.” Does every single one of them expect to be treated like a “special case”? They often don't seem to appreciate that they are entering a pre-existing scene; joining an organization with its own mission, history, structure, rules, and culture; integrating with a group that has its own established dynamic; and engaging with individuals, each of whom has his or her own story and many of whom have been part of this scene in this organization for years on end or longer.

Too often they say the wrong things at the wrong times and they fail to ask a lot of the questions they should be asking. Heck, they often can't even get to work on time. Anyway, they spend half the workday on their devices, instead of focusing on the work. That really comes through in customer service scores, along with other complaints about young front-line service personnel. Sometimes, their lack of interpersonal skills leads to misunderstandings and even conflicts on the team.

Most of them seem to have one foot out the door from the day they arrive, all the while asking for more of something—or more of everything. Even the young superstars nowadays don't seem to come in early, stay late, work through meals and weekends and holidays, bend over backward, and jump through hoops like the young superstars of yesteryear did.

If you are like most managers with employees in their late teens and twenties, then you no doubt have first-hand experience with a very serious management challenge that has been growing especially fast in recent years. There is an ever-widening “Soft Skills Gap” in the workforce, especially among the newest new young workforce.

I use the term “soft skills” because most people understand the term is used, in contrast to “hard skills” which are technical, to encompass a wide range of non-technical skills ranging from “self-awareness” to “people skills” to “problem solving” to “teamwork.”

These skills may be less tangible and harder to define and measure than many of the “hard skills,” but they are absolutely critical to the success or failure of any individual in the workplace. The problem is that these old-fashioned basics—professionalism, critical thinking, and followership—are out of fashion and are too rarely spoken of nowadays. Today's young talent is not being indoctrinated in these old-fashioned basics either at home or in school. Usually, by the time they get to the workplace, employers figure it is too late to focus on them. Certainly, most managers think it is neither their place, nor do they have the time or resources or know-how to deal with the soft skills gap in their newest, youngest employees. So the soft skills gap continues to grow, hiding in plain sight, despite the fact that it costs organizations a fortune every day.

I've asked tens of thousands of managers: “How much do these so-called ‘soft skills’ matter?” The answer is nearly universal: Soft skills matter a lot. The cliché is that people are hired because of their hard skills but people are fired because of their soft skills.

When employees have significant gaps in their soft skills, there are significant negative consequences: Potentially good hires are overlooked. Good hires go bad. Bad hires go worse. Misunderstandings abound. People become distracted. Productivity goes down. Mistakes are made. Customer service suffers. Workplace conflicts occur more frequently. Good people leave when they might have otherwise stayed longer.

It robs so many young employees of greater success and causes so many managers so much aggravation and so many unnecessary costs. The soft skills gap is not a household term like the technical skill gap, but it should be, because its impact is monumental.

Like the technical skill gap, the soft skills gap in the workforce has been developing slowly for decades. But the soft skills gap runs across the entire workforce—among workers with technical skills that are in great demand, every bit as much as workers without technical skills. What is more, the soft skills gap has grown much worse in recent years.

Are today's young employees really so much worse when it comes to soft skills than those of previous generations?

At the corporate headquarters of a very old and very large consumer products conglomerate, summer interns are sometimes permitted to attend certain high-level meetings, mostly as a learning experience, but also to run errands and assist with clerical tasks during the meetings. One such intern was visibly annoyed when she was asked by her manager to dress in “business casual attire, at least” on days when she would be attending such meetings. After, “ignoring that suggestion entirely,” the intern came to one such meeting “very casually dressed” and then spent most of the meeting texting on her hand-held device. When her manager whispered quietly to ask her to please stop texting during the meeting, the intern responded in an exasperated tone, “Actually, no.” The manager whispered back with incredulity: “‘No’?” At which point, the intern explained, “I'm texting with my dad . . . about this meeting. So, it's fine. My dad works here!” As it turned out, she was giving a blow-by-blow account of the meeting in progress to her father, who was himself a longtime executive in the company, and had arranged the internship with the company for his daughter.

The Soft Skills Gap: Growing Steadily from Gen X to Gen Y to Gen Z

Since 1993, I've been tracking generational change in the workplace and its impact on organizations, especially the impact on supervisory relationships. I started out as a frustrated young lawyer seeking to understand why the older, more experienced lawyers were so annoyed by those of my generation, Generation X (born 1965 to 1977). I quickly realized that it wasn't just the older, more experienced people at my firm who were annoyed with Gen Xers. It was nearly everybody older and more experienced in workplaces of all shapes and sizes.

That's when I started conducting in-depth interviews with young people and their managers, the original research that led to my first book, Managing Generation X. I formed a company to continue that research, and we've been conducting that interview research for decades now, tracking the ever-emerging, ever-“newer” new young workforce. By the late 1990s, we started tracking the first wave of the great Millennial cohort, what we refer to as “Generation Y” (born 1978 to 1989). At this point, we've been tracking the second wave Millennials, whom we call “Generation Z” (born 1990 to 1999), for nearly a decade now, since they first entered the workforce as teenagers in part-time jobs. Gen Zers are the newest “New Dogs” arriving in your workplace, part of the global youth tide rising now and for the foreseeable future.

I've interviewed tens of thousands of young workers (hundreds of thousands of interviewees in total) in just about every industry—health care, professional services, restaurants, retail, research, finance, aerospace, software, manufacturing, the public sector, even nonprofits—you name it. Based on two decades of research, I can report that the overwhelming data points to a steady diminution in the soft skills of young people in the workplace from Gen X to Gen Y to Gen Z. Today's young workers are increasingly likely to have significant notable weaknesses in one or several key soft skills.

Why is that?

Some partners at a forensic accounting firm told me of their latest young associate “case study.” This first-year associate, a recent top graduate of a top school, was cutting-edge in his knowledge of a new set of tools and techniques for mining and analyzing data buried within evidentiary documents obtained during pre-litigation discovery. One of the partners said, “This kid had done some projects in school using this new approach and his technical knowledge in this area far surpassed anyone else in the firm. But he kept running into roadblocks because his communication made him seem so immature. At first, he couldn't get anybody to listen to him. Once we got him going on introducing the new process, I know it sounds petty, but he kept saying ‘like, like, like’ every other word, and he could barely look people in the eye or string three words together without saying ‘like.’” In short, “His inability speak in a way that seemed even remotely professional was just rubbing people the wrong way, especially in meetings, though it wasn't very much better when he was working with people individually.” One of the other partners explained, “We had to send him to a class.” One of the other partners added, “It took a lot more than one class.”

Something Much Larger Is Going on Here: The Post-Boomer Generational Shift

Of course, the older, more experienced people are always more or less annoyed by the attitudes and behavior of each successive new young generation. New young employees are, by definition, always younger and less experienced and, therefore, lacking in the corresponding maturity and patience. As they step into the adult world with youthful energy and enthusiasm, young workers often clash with their older colleagues. That's always part of the story. But there is something much bigger going on here.

On a macro level, Generation Z represents a tipping point in the post-Boomer generational shift transforming the workforce. With older (first-wave) Boomers now retiring in droves, they are taking with them the last vestiges of the old-fashioned work ethic. By 2020, more than 80 percent of the workforce will be post-Boomer—dominated in numbers, norms, and values by Generations X, Y, and Z. Generation Z will be greater than 20 percent of the North American and European workforce (and a much greater percentage in younger parts of the world, especially South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South America).

Much of why Generation Z seems like a new species from another planet is really just an accident of history. They just happen to be the generation to come of age in the 2010s, during an era of profound change and uncertainty driven by a confluence of epic historical forces.

Globalization

Generation Z will be the first truly global generation—connecting and traveling to work across borders in every direction and combination. Unlike any other generation in history, Gen Z can look forward to a lifetime of interdependency and competition with a rising global youth tide from every corner of this ever-flattening world.

Technology

The pace of technological advance today is unprecedented. Information. Computing. Communication. Transportation. Commerce. Entertainment. Food. Medicine. War. In every aspect of life, anything can become obsolete any time—possibilities appear and disappear swiftly, radically, and often without warning.