You might have a different view than me, but I find adults can be more difficult to deal with than young people. Yet it’s the young people today who get a bad rap. I’m a champion for young people; I was one myself once and still am one at heart. I want to talk about them because they are the workforce of the future, and I believe we’ll be okay. At the end of this week, I am privileged to be joining 53 high school youth and 10 adults for a trip to New Orleans to attend a youth gathering with 20,000 + kids and adults from throughout the country. The leadership of our group comes from a steering committee of 10 high school students and an equal number of adults. When preparing for adult leader training, we asked those 10 high school students to give us feedback about working with adults.

We asked about what they 1) wanted us as adult leaders to know about youth and 2) what we (adult leaders) do that aggravates them or wish we wouldn’t do. Take a minute to write down what you think they would say to us.

Now I’ll share what they shared with us.

We dislike it when adult leaders…

• Treat us like children and don’t allow us to have autonomy.
• We want to feel respected and spoken to at a “higher level” than children.
• Make assumptions about us. We aren’t all glued to our phones or fit the stereotypes that older generations place on them.
• Get upset or flustered when problems arise. We can tell when we’re in good hands, and when an adult is stressed.
• Cause drama.
• Please don’t cause or intensify conflict by bringing in your own emotions or trauma to a situation.

We like it when adult leaders …

• Check in with us on the trip a couple times a day via text, but please don’t badger us all the time, it feels overwhelming.
• Give us freedom and allow us to make our own decisions about how we spend our time.
• Participate with us. It’s a great way to strengthen relationships.
• Know their boundaries as adults.
• Remain relaxed and calm. Emotions can get high when spending a lot of time together on a long trip.
• Take care of themselves so that they can be reliable for us.

I don’t know about you, but I found their responses gave me even more faith, not less, in young people because they are sharp.

If you’re a leader today, do you think their responses are any different from how your team would respond to the same questions about leaders?

I don’t think so. I’m confident within their responses you’d hear some of these same things that I draw from their comments:

1. Treat me like an adult.
2. Give me freedom and autonomy in decision making.
3. Remain calm.
4. Don’t make assumptions about me.
5. Don’t cause more drama bringing in your own baggage.
6. Participate with us, we want to get to know you as a real person.
7. Know and respect boundaries.
8. Take care of yourself.

All of these are things I want from any leader I work with. I especially love the last one because I’ve found (myself excluded of course 😊), leaders can get very cranky when they don’t take care of themselves.

If you want to recruit the workforce of the future, become the leader they are looking for.

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. 1 Timothy 4:12

Author’s note: I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks and won’t be publishing a weekly blog. I look forward to publishing again in August.