If you have a great work ethic, you may think that coming to work every day, showing up on time and doing a good job is so obvious that anyone can figure it out. But for some reason they don’t. Expecting people to figure it out on their own is a lot like teaching a kid to learn to swim by pushing him off the end of the pier. A few kids learn to swim. Others figure out that they don’t like being pushed off the end of the pier and learn to hate swimming. There has got to be a better way.

So, why can’t they figure it out? There is a gap between school and work. The culture of school does not prepare our youth for the culture of work. For example if you miss a day of school nothing much happens. School goes on without you. The teachers still give tests and teach their classes. When you go back to school you take a note from your mother. In the work place if you miss a day co-workers have to take up the slack and this may not be obvious to new workers. And if you don’t call in you may be fired.

Linda (not her real name but her true story) told us: “Honey, I can get a job. I just can’t keep a job.”  We explored a bit more and Linda told us that she kept getting fired because her boss always said she missed too much work. She told us: “I usually go in four days a week – too many other things come up.” We asked her: “What happens when other people miss work?” She told us: “I really hate it; it makes more work for the rest of us.”  We then asked: “Have you ever thought about what happens to your boss and your co-workers when you miss work?” Linda had never thought about how her behavior was affecting the entire work place. Linda’s problem may seem pretty obvious to you, but Linda had never considered her impact on others. We don’t know how this story ends. We are hoping Linda keeps that next job.

Today our young people are bombarded with so much information. How do they figure out which information is important? When a young person starts a new job there is so much to learn. She needs to learn the job as well as the culture of the company. If she doesn’t already have a work ethic, she is likely to pick her work ethic from fellow employees. So if our young people are learning work values from TV or music or the internet or slackers on the job how can we expect them to choose the best values?

Unless the concept of work ethic becomes relevant and meaningful to our youth, we don’t think they can just figure it out. See our blog post: Telling is NOT Training.