We Still Don't Trust You

Boomers, Zoomers, and Democracy

In a Plain English podcast this week, Derek Thompson discusses declining trust in public health institutions. That question of trust has been on my mind this academic year, as I teach and learn from students generally skeptical of the institutions built by those of us “born in the 1900s.” That’s likely why the title of Future / Metro Boomin / The Weeknd’s new album jumped out at me when it dropped on Wednesday:

And to be fair, why should Gen Z trust the grownups? They delivered the financial crisis, the Iraq War, climate change, a polarized pandemic response, and historic inequality. Among my students, one way that distrust manifests itself is in curiosity about the anti-vaccine presidential candidacy of Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Another way that distrust is expressed, according to business owners I speak with, is that Gen Z workers demand be in the know about decision-making in the companies they work for, and to influence those decisions. Unlike previous generations, they tell me, these new hires are disinclined to defer to previous generations whose own deference got us into our current set of messes.

To the degree the message is just “move aside, it’s our turn,” it will not prove any more restorative than any other shift in power. It will just be a new group that gathers power over other groups.

But if this generation’s participatory impulse opens up space for a less hierarchical, more democratic way of working together—what organizational scholar Mary Parker Follett called power with—it might well transform our companies, churches, schools, neighborhoods, and forests.

One organization helping Boomers and Zoomers learn a version of power with is Campus Compact, through its work on international collaboration. I was turned on to Compact’s work by my aunt NJ Pierce, who co-authored the piece linked above. Her white paper focuses on higher education, but its lessons for the workplace are clear, too: as business owners and executives get farther along in their career, they would do well to consider how to “co-generate” their organizations with their younger colleagues. I can tell you from my experience in the classroom and as a manager that it’s worth the work!