I cringe every time I hear a business owner sigh and say, "It's just this generation."

As a mother who has raised a genuinely empowered young woman, I know exactly what that sentence is doing. It's not describing a generation. It's deflecting.

My daughter has a voice. She has opinions. She's learned — sometimes the hard way — what it feels like to live with the consequences of her own choices. None of that happened because of the decade she was born in. It happened because I worked at it, on purpose, for years.

I remember when she got back a grade that wasn't an A and didn't just accept it. She went to her teacher and asked why. Not with an attitude — with a genuine question. And more often than not, when she pushed for an explanation, it turned out the teacher had made the mistake. A miscount, a misread answer, a rubric applied inconsistently. She wasn't being difficult. She was being accurate.

That's the piece that gets lost when we roll our eyes at "kids these days." She wasn't taught to accept an outcome just because someone in authority handed it to her. She was taught to ask why, to expect a real answer, and to trust her own read on a situation enough to speak up about it. So when she pushes back, questions authority, or refuses to just go along with something that doesn't sit right with her, that's not a generational trait showing up in my workplace someday. That's a person doing exactly what she was raised to do.

So when I hear "it's this generation," what I actually hear is someone avoiding a much harder question.

It's Not a Generational Issue. It's a You Issue.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: whatever is frustrating you about someone else usually has something to do with you.

Not always. But far more often than we'd like to admit.

The people who irritate us, the situations that make our blood pressure spike, the employee who "just doesn't get it" — these are rarely as one-sided as they feel in the moment. Frustration is data. It's pointing at something. And most of the time, it's pointing back at us just as much as it's pointing at them.

So instead of reaching for the nearest generalization — this generation, this department, this person — try reaching for the mirror instead.

The Practice: Ask "Why" Until It Hurts a Little

Think of one person or situation that's genuinely under your skin right now. Name it. Write it down in plain language.

Then start asking why.

This is a technique Jay Shetty writes about in Think Like a Monk — a version of a much older practice sometimes called the "Five Whys." The idea is simple: ask why, listen to the honest answer, then ask why again. And again. Don't stop at the first explanation, because the first explanation is almost never the real one. It's just the most convenient one.

Keep going. Sometimes it takes five whys. Sometimes it takes eight or ten. You'll know you've hit the real root when the answer stops being about them and starts being about you — your expectations, your communication, your discomfort, your fear, your unspoken agenda.

That's not a failure. That's the whole point.

Once You Hit the Root, You Can Actually Do Something

This is where most people stop — right at the moment the real work is about to begin. Getting to the root isn't the finish line. It's the starting line.

Once you're there, ask yourself:

• What needs to be tended to? Not managed, not tolerated — tended to, like something that's been neglected and is finally asking for attention.
• What's the missing piece I might have overlooked? Often it's something small: a conversation you avoided, an expectation you never actually stated out loud, a boundary you never enforced.
• Am I pushing my agenda, or am I looking for real alignment? These feel similar in the moment but lead to completely different outcomes. One is about being right. The other is about building something that actually works — with people, not around them.

The Real Shift

You were once "that generation" too. Someone, somewhere, sighed about you.

So ask yourself the other side of the question: who were the people who truly heard you? Who celebrated what made you different instead of asking you to sand it down? Who took your ideas seriously, even the raw, half-formed ones, and helped you build them into something real?

That's the kind of leader — and the kind of parent, and the kind of teacher — this moment is asking you to become.

Leadership isn't about waiting for the next generation to fall in line. It's about getting curious enough, and honest enough, to ask why — over and over — until you find the thing that's actually yours to fix.

That's not a soft skill. That's the whole job.

Extra Credit: Try This On

Recently I found myself using a muscle I don't flex often — setting a boundary. I said what I did and didn't agree to, plainly, out loud. And of course, right after, I went straight into self-doubt. Was I too blunt? Did I handle that well?

Instead of sitting in that doubt for days, I asked someone from a younger generation who'd been in the room and heard the whole exchange: did I come across as disrespectful?

They didn't hesitate. They immediately named three specific things I'd done that made it a respectful, direct conversation — not a harsh one. I was shocked at how validated and encouraged I felt afterward. The very generation I might have been tempted to write off as "too sensitive" or "too much" turned out to be exactly who I needed to hear from.

So here's your extra credit: think of the one thing you recently did — set a boundary, gave hard feedback, made a call — that left you quietly questioning whether you did it right, or did it authentically.

Go ask someone from a younger generation, someone you genuinely respect, what they thought.

You might be surprised.

If You Need Help Processing This

Sometimes the "why" is easy to see from the outside and almost impossible to see from the inside of your own frustration. That's exactly what we do — we help you work through it, get to the root, and turn insight into action.

Call us. Let's get to work.

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