The Care and Feeding of Your Young Employee

The Care and Feeding of Your Young Employee – by Jamie Belinne

I have been a professional trainer and public speaker for more than 25 years. I love to use illustrations in my speeches and trainings.  I’ve used one for several years, using the movie “Titanic” as one such illustration. It was only a couple of months ago when it dawned on me – I really shouldn’t use this example anymore. “Titanic” is now older than 20 years, and many younger people in my audience have never seen it, nor even heard of it. I find myself having to make adjustments such as this on a fairly consistent basis. What’s “new” and “exciting” today seems to quickly turn into Yesterday’s news. 

These types of problems are tenfold when we talk about getting along and working well with others in the workplace. When we take the time to look around in our work environment, careful observation shows us that there are a wide variety of ages in most cases. In this book, author Jamie Belinne does a great job discussing the different generations, the different idiosyncrasies of each, and more importantly – how a manager must successfully juggle such a challenge. Her focus is on the older managers and the younger employees (note the title), but I almost wonder if the title of this book is a bit narrow. It seems to me that a younger manager who manages older employees can learn a lot from this book as well.

The nomenclature that people use for these different age groups varies. In her book, she focuses on how older managers (She calls them “Boomers” and “Generation X”) can successfully manage the younger crowd (“Generation Y” and “Generation Z”).  To hopefully clarify – Generation Y is also known as “Millennials” and Generation Z are the youngest of the young in the professional workplace – born around the turn of the century.  It’s interesting that Belinne notes that there has been a lot of emphasis on Generation Y being the “kids”, yet they really aren’t kids anymore.  So even if you think you may have a handle on what is important to Generation Y, you now need to get ready to create a brand-new slate since the younger crowd (Gen Z) will be crowding the employment train quickly in the foreseeable future – with different needs and expectations.

So the author describes many strategies, using actual case studies, on how people are different, and why people are different based on their respective age groups.  She does accurately point out that you can never pinpoint a person’s habits and personalities simply based on their age, but it’s fairly common that there are definitely trends within each of these groups. 

She also keeps her focus on the fact that companies and bosses can never prevent change, and the biggest change that companies always face is “generation gaps”. Rather than fight this change, a good company (and its managers) will embrace this change and come up with alternative strategies that work for different people. The author reminds us of just how important this is – if you can’t accommodate your younger workers’ different behaviors, they’ll simply pack up and go somewhere else. Never a good thing when trying to retain top talent.

I would almost recommend that companies use this book as a workbook. There are so many good ‘tips’ here, that it can be easy to forget many of the helpful suggestions that the author gives once you are done reading. I’m not a fan of companies making their employees (or managers) “read books” to aid them in doing their job, but I think it would be very beneficial for leaders at a company to spend maybe a week on each chapter and formulate questions, scenarios, and tips as to how to work well within the different age groups. I would also suggest that the examples and illustrations that the author gives are not unique to the workplace. Personalities within families and friends can rapidly deteriorate as well when one refuses to acknowledge key age differences among the people involved.

To be successful in today’s work environment, it’s crucial that you accept people as who they are (within limitations of course) and not try to “mold” or “assimilate” people into only one way of doing things. The author does an excellent job reminding us of this with many real-life examples.  The world of work is tough enough with competition, regulations, and negative Yelp reviews.  Why not make things slightly easier and figure out how to work well within the walls of our company?   

Yes, it can be hard and challenging, but it’s crucial that everyone adapts to this way of thinking if we want our company to survive and prosper in today’s workplace.

The Story of Christianity - Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation

The Story of Christianity – Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation by Justo Gonzales

1500 years is a lot of history to try to pack into one 500-page volume. Justo Gonzales does a very admirable job in this task. Although I’m a lover of history, the further back in time one goes, the more the enjoyment tends to slightly whither. In many cases, there simply isn’t as much reference material, and many important figures and events are left to some speculation.

This book probably could have been ten times as large as it is, but the author knows when enough is enough. He traces the history of Christianity as far back as the Resurrection. He then focuses on the key figures – good and bad – that helped Christianity grow and flourish.  It shouldn’t surprise us that, just like today, there was never complete agreement on how to interpret scripture, nor how one should live their life to obtain a status as “godly”. We read about scholarly debates in meticulous detail.  How could Jesus be totally man and totally God? If he was, what did this exactly mean, and how were we to treat such a figure?  Where did the term “monk” come from? Why were so many so joyous to choose to live their lives in isolation and poverty?

This book isn’t strictly linear. It simply can’t be. The author does a good job keeping his reader interested in the fascinating people and times. I confess, though, that not as many of the key people stuck with me after I completed this book. There were simply too many bishops, popes, and other key figures to keep track. A careful use of a notebook could have easily remedied this issue, though, and even though the people in the book were numerous, the author does a wonderful job of communicating the major events and feelings at the time.

We learn of schisms between East (Greek) and West (Roman) over scripture interpretation. We also see how many used the church for nothing more than a selfish power grab. Without going into detail, I was left feeling strongly that separation of church and state is a wonderful concept, and one that we should never abandon. We see the church becoming more and more corrupt, and although the book stops before the official Protestant Reformation (which was mainly due to the ongoing corruption), we can see the beginnings of such a movement. Since the book isn’t linear, we do read about events that happened several centuries after the Reformation – specifically the missionaries to Central and South America as late as the 1800s. My guess is that these events helped extend the original narrative and weren’t affected nor relevant to the Reformation – so it probably makes more sense to include them in this volume.

I’m eagerly awaiting reading the second, and final volume. Based on the author’s style and attitude (he has no problem pointing out mistakes of his faith throughout the years, and he’s no apologist), I’m fairly confident I’ll enjoy volume 2.  I’m hoping that one will sink in more since, being from a later time period, they’ll be more familiar faces, figures, and facts that will allow my brain to latch onto and retain better.

A very good starting point to learn the history of Christianity.

Dr. Zhivago

Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

It is not the author’s fault that a book written by a Russian about Russians is littered with so many Russians that all have complex Russian names.  Such is usually the main complaint about this classic.  I even remember reading a “Peanuts” cartoon where Charlie Brown and company commented on such an unfortunate factor as it related to this book.  Once one gets past this, many claim that there’s a beautiful story to be told, and many hail it as “The Novel of the Century”.  Even the movie was supposedly outstanding (I haven’t seen it).

Maybe it’s because I read the book 60 years after it was published, or maybe it’s because I don’t read many Russian authors, but I found myself a bit empty after reading this.  It certainly didn’t go in the direction that I was expecting, and the story really left me empty. Perhaps that was the point. When telling a story about Russians during the most turbulent point of Russian history, I’m sure there were an awful lot of people that found themselves uplifted from whatever normalcy they were accustomed to, and were never able to return to any sort of routine that they once knew.

The book succeeds in illustrating the bleak life of Russia during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Our protagonist is Yury Andreyevich Zhivago.  He’s referred to as “Yury”, “Yury Andreyevish” and “Zhivago” as well as a couple of nicknames.  Being the lead character, it’s not too daunting to keep up will all of these monikers. However, when EVERY character in this novel has several different names, it can be a bit too much.

Anyway, Yury marries childhood friend Tonia, yet fate pushes him in many different areas of Russia during the revolution, and he soon finds himself working side by side with another childhood friend, Larissa (or ‘Lara’). Lara is married as well, but due to her circumstances, Yury and Lara soon fall in love. Had they lived in some sort of normal existence, this infatuation could easily have been cooled over time, but 1917 Russia is anything but a normal existence.

You might be thinking at some point that this is essentially a “love-triangle” novel, but I’m not sure I would even classify it as such. In fact, it’s the personal lives of these characters that left me wanting more. I never really felt things moved as they should, and there too many things that were unresolved at the end of the story. As I mentioned, this may have been the point.  Since lives during this tumultuous time were so chaotic, why paint a nice happy picture at the end where everything gets neatly folded and put away in its proper place?

I think that was my main problem. I expected more of a story and less of a history lesson. Speaking of “history lesson”, I also confess that there are many aspects of this novel that are confusing unless one has a fair knowledge of the times and place. Being that the author is Russian, and that the book was written in 1957, he probably felt this was unnecessary, and he was probably right.  Since these events now took place 100 years prior to when I read the book (2017), I would bet many readers can’t adequately comprehend some of the situations and turmoil.  I wish the author could have spent a bit more time explaining why things were the way they were. He also never lets his readers know how much time has passed between key events. True, one can figure this out – but maybe, again, only if one has knowledge of the history.

I’ve also read that the author is mainly a poet. Interesting because although Zhivago is a doctor, he’s also a poet as well.  Poetry doesn’t pay many bills when your country is embedded in a revolution, so this hobby of Zhivago is usually only mentioned in passing.  However, the end of the book does contain “Poems of Zhivago”.  To be honest, I didn’t read them.  I was too relieved to be done with, what I thought, was a fairly disappointing story.  Perhaps some of these poems may have tied up a few loose ends that never seemed to get resolved?  I don’t know, and sadly don’t really care.

I should also point out that I’m of the minority of the opinion here.  Most people really loved this book (more, it seemed, loved the movie), so if you stumbled across this review and feel dissuaded to try the book, I should point you to the many positive reviews as well.  Give the book about 100 pages before you give up. Make sure you go through the pages slowly. And make sure that you give yourself enough time to digest all the complex vowel-less last names.