Skip to main content

Get Young People to Work Hard without Telling them Hard

Ask any bosses and they will lament that nowadays young people don't work as hard as the previous employees.  In fact, many of these youngsters talk about work life balance before talking about work deadlines.  We cannot help but wonder: have our society's values degenerated so much that working hard is no longer a virtue?

Truth be told, young people are not lazy.  They too want to work hard.  The reason they don't work hard is not because they don't want to work hard, but because they worked hard before and did not get a good experience from working hard.  Many of them also don't know how to work hard.  Some of them think that working longer hours is work hard. For the top 10 myths and truths of working hard, read here and explore at here too. 

Here are 5 ways that you as a manager or leader can get your people to work hard easily:
  1. First, recognize that they have their own ideals and dreams.  Talk to their dreams, and get inspired by their dreams. 
  2. Ask them how they can achieve their dreams and if they carry on their life as now.
  3. Let them feel the pain of not achieving their dreams and live a life of regret for not putting in the efforts now
  4. Assure them that all great success in this world can be achieved as long as people pay the price of success
  5. Offer your help on how they can pay the price of success now by working hard.  Then work with them a detailed step-by-step plan with clear timelines on how they can work on the plan.  Show them the sweet success when they achieve their dreams in future.  That will inspire them to working hard. 
By Andy Ng of Asia Trainers, details of How to Be a Better Manager course is at here.  Related articles:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What an Executive Coach and Business Coach Does

The Secret Under the Mattress: Why would a 79-year Man Bet So Big on 4D?

It was 2007 when we discovered his secret. While moving my father’s mattress, we found them: heaps and heaps of Singapore Pools 4D tickets. They were stacked in layers, a paper trail of lost hopes. What shocked us most wasn’t just the volume, but the stakes. He wasn’t betting a few dollars for fun. He was punting hundreds of dollars per draw—nearly ten times a month. At the time, my siblings and I were furious. Our father was a 79-year-old retiree. We wondered, with a mix of anger and confusion, why a man at his stage of life would need to win such "big money." What was he going to do with the money? We saw it as a reckless habit, a sign of poor judgment in his final years.  Some of us would say, "If I were to give him money to buy 4D, why don't I use the money and buy 4D myself?  At least I have better discipline".  It has taken me two decades, and the experience of raising my own three grown-up children, to finally see the truth that was hidden under that matt...

Head Bleeding when the Chair Falls

The Weight of Silence: What Were We Really Arguing About? My earliest memories are punctuated by the sound of shouting. In 1970, when I was barely 6 years old, I stood as a small witness to the fierce quarrels between my father and my late eldest brother Kah Yang (he passed away in 1971 at the age of 17). As I grew up, these contradictions became the soundtrack of our lives, usually centered around our family's shoe shop and clothing stalls in Chinatown. In the court of family opinion, the verdict was almost always the same: my father was "wrong." He was judged as a man who didn't fulfill his role, who wasn't "burdening" enough for the family’s success. But as I look back from the vantage point of 2026, I have to ask: Was that actually true? Let me finally put to rest what my father did right: the truths that were buried under decades of criticism: Unseen Labor: He worked grueling, long hours. I remember him hauling boxes of goods and equipment to set u...