What Young Love Taught Us About Work
Why the awkward years were career training
Shaking hands with your girlfriend's dad for the first time. Calling their home phone, hoping your voice doesn't crack. Facing their parents when you stayed out later than you were supposed to, or getting up the day after that first fight, convinced the world would end from heartbreak. Oh, the stress of young love. I never would have thought adolescent dating would have an impact on careers, but apparently it does.
Conflict, communication, awkward human interaction, vulnerability, compromise. All things we stumbled through in our teen years that, behind the neuro scenes, prepared us for the professional world. The problem, as Jake Angelo reports in Fortune, is that young people today are dating less. Only about 56% of Gen Z enter adulthood having been in a romantic relationship, compared to 75% of older generations. That means less practice on the soft skills needed in environments where disagreements, strangers and tension live every day. It's not just affecting their performance. It's making them lonelier at work, as they struggle to form the kinds of bonds often built through the same courting and compromise of early romantic relationships.
It's not easy being a kid in any generation. I'm thankful I grew up when I did, though, without streaming and social media and everything else that disrupts real human interaction. So while I didn't always get dating right, I have to believe all the mumbling and mishaps prepared me for the fumbling and bumbling of work.
Young kids: get out there and give young love a shot. It may just be the key to a successful career down the road.