My Four Days with Gen Z: Encouraging or Troubling?

Originally published at Forbes.com

We hear a lot about Generation Z these days—some good, plenty of bad. Gen Zers have been described as hopeless, creative, weird, intelligent, and more.

Over the years, my colleagues and co-workers have been from the Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Gen Yers. But I didn’t know what to believe about “Gen Z.” Now, I can speak from some personal experience, and it is illuminating.

Earlier this month, I spent four days listening to and talking with students—undergraduates and graduate students—at Indiana University, many from the Kelley School of Business where I now serve as Poling Chair of Business and Government Leadership. Almost all of these students are members of Gen Z, meaning they were born in 1999 or later. (Generation Alpha started in 2012, so the oldest members of that group are only 12 years old.)

I don’t want to bury the lede. Spending actual quality time with Gen Z, what I came away with was that Gen Zers have, to some real extent, questioned and retreated from the movement that Generations X and Y made away from the post-World War II value set—the values held by the so-called “Greatest Generation” parents of Baby Boomers. In particular, I experienced a real rejection of the “everyone gets a participation trophy” mindset, which suggests that competition should never lead to an inequality of outcomes.

There also seemed to be real skepticism about the concept of “safe speech,” predicated upon an appreciation that free speech is indeed critical in a free society. Many Gen Zers at IU recognize that open inquiry and free-flowing dialogue are crucial not only at colleges and universities, but in American society writ large. They believe unambiguously in diversity—including ideological diversity—as long as the meritocracy is truly “color-blind.”

Another strong theme among Gen Zers is an unmistakable desire to be of service to their community as a whole. Young Americans are passionate about leaving a positive impact, whether it’s at a company, within a specific industry, or in other capacities. Their belief in community service is tempered with a nuanced distinction that corporations are expected to have integrity beyond adhering to all laws, but without losing sight of their fundamental purpose—providing their shareholders and employees with returns competitive to the market. This runs in parallel with their notion that pursuits of other social goals (i.e. environmental activism) are most appropriately done by individuals and purpose-based organizations, or in the political space. According to many Gen Zers, individual action is the best way to build norms that represent the will of the people.

Over the four days, I had 14 discussion sessions with small groups of Gen Zers ranging from seven to over a dozen. These were not lectures or class presentations, but rather the spontaneous result of introducing ourselves and deciding which topics to explore through candid discussion. And it did not leave me with “boomer doomer” or “get off my lawn” takeaways—or “takes,” as Gen Z says.

My four days with Gen Z left me both impressed and optimistic, tempering the general sense that colleges and universities are places driven primarily by uniform ideology. As Poling Chair at Kelley, I now look forward to building on these interactions with Gen Zers in the months ahead. Their general optimism has only made me more positive about the future, especially in an election season rife with political polarization.

Of course, the sample size at IU is not necessarily representative of Gen Z as a whole. There is still plenty to criticize when it comes to certain Gen Zers, and I wonder if my perceptions of 150 or so students at a school that admits nearly 2,000 undergraduates a year (from 20,000+ applications) would match data across broader populations.

But even my conversations with faculty members were encouraging. They often remarked that today’s undergraduates tend to be more politically astute and less reflexively “progressive” than older MBAs and other graduate students across campus. They told me that students’ ideology on campus is both generational as much as it is political.

All in all, we hear plenty of doom and gloom about America’s next generation of employers and employees, and not all of it is unfounded. The rise of social media (among other factors) has indeed led to unintended consequences for Gen Zers.

But there seems to be a generational shift taking place. Leading up to Election Day, I’m eager to see if the post-election polls show a political shift between older Millennials and the younger Generation Z, backing up my own face-to-face interactions.

Based on my four days with Gen Z, I’m hoping we start to see a shift more broadly. But for me, the future feels a bit brighter than it did just a month ago.