Leadership’s Future: Entitlement And Instant Gratification

A newspaper article 30 years ago talked about the initiation rites of girls who joined gangs. Previously, girls hadn’t been active members of gangs and I remember thinking then that equality was happening in the wrong places.

There was a time when attitudes and actions moved from older to younger.

But it seems that more and more, instead of children learning from their grandparents, the grandparents are adopting the attitudes of the kids and, as with girls in gangs, it’s not the good ones that are moving—it’s the worst.

Entitlement. Instant gratification.

There are thousands who knowingly bought homes they couldn’t afford (as opposed to buying out of financial ignorance and/or mortgage chicanery) because they wanted it now, not in three to five years when they could actually afford it.

When I was young I thought the same way, but there were all kinds of adults who, by example, showed me that that wasn’t the way the world worked.

Now, with these attitudes spread throughout the generations, where are the everyday examples that show a different way? Worse, the examples that are out there are often ridiculed as being out of step with the current world.

I know that some of you reading my Thursday posts wonder what they have to do with leadership, managing and business.

The answer is simple; these are the people who work for and with you; they are the people you hire now and the people you’ll be hiring for decades.

Can you build a successful business or non-profit of any size on attitudes of entitlement and instant gratification?

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: sxc.hu