Approximately 15 years ago, in 2008, Simon Sinek, a renowned British-American who has authored several motivational and self-help books, sat down with Tom Bilyeu, the host of Inside Quest, to address the "millennial question." First, Mr. Sinek defined "millennials" as an age cohort born in 1984 and after. Then, Mr. Sinek began answering the "millennial question," which is to say, "what to do with millennials," by reviewing what studies have said about them, such as being self-centered, highly unfocused, having unrealistic expectations, and skewed view of the world and reality. Mr. Sinek acknowledged that some often referred to millennials as the "entitled generation," which is no fault of their own, especially millennials in the workplace. For example, Rosa and Hastings (2018) found that millennials desired their managers to offer them training/advancement opportunities and constant feedback that were constructive/positive, with the latter serving as a benchmark to determine their job performance and if their manager liked them. Furthermore, another study by Woo and Bertram (2022) found that, similar to previous studies, some millennial employees were more likely to have different jobs throughout their careers if a job did not meet their expectations or if they had multiple career interests. For this reason, some have accused millennials of being uneasy to please and associated them with "job-hopping."

Still, Mr. Sinek argued that managers still find millennial employees challenging and cannot make them unhappy even after attempting to address their millennial employees' needs because they fail to understand underlying problems and reasons for their unhappiness. For instance, Mr. Sinek stated that the root cause of millennial employees' unhappiness stems from lousy parenting, technology usage, lack of patience, and their environment.

First, Mr. Sinek blamed the millennial parents who gave them whatever they wanted, even if it was not deserved or earned. For example, Mr. Sinek provided examples of parents who used dishonest means to get their children into honor classes where they might have received a participation medal or award but lacked unique gifts or talents. Therefore, the same children grow up desiring to be instantly gratified without merit and cannot wait for the desired reward or achievement (e.g., pay raise, promotion). Second, Mr. Sinek does not speak of a specific parenting style but rather bad parenting strategies. As a result, it isn't easy to make inferences about whether Mr. Sinek meant his definition to be generalizable to millennials or a small subset, such as millennials of high socioeconomic status or parents who are overindulgent/permissive. Still, those millennials experience a rude awakening when they enter the workforce and realize they must work for everything they obtain. Additionally, no one will give it to them, contributing to depression and lowered self-esteem.

Another issue that compounds the problem is that millennials were born during the introduction of the internet, social media, and the invention of new technology such as mobile phones. As Mr. Sinek stated, on specific social media platforms, such as Facebook, millennials can use filters or wear a faade to show the world that their life is excellent despite the contrary. Of added concern, they become addicted to displaying a particular persona and interacting with people online, causing difficulties in establishing and maintaining healthy interpersonal or social interactions in the real world, such as in the workplace. Similarly, Grau, Kleiser, and Bright (2019) found that when studying 129 college students, they asked the participants to abstain from social media for four days. Some participants exhibited varying degrees of addictive and near-addictive behavior. Additionally, some participants developed depressive and anxiety symptoms after abstaining from social media during this period. At the same time, a few participants spent time away from social media to rebuild or improve their interpersonal relationships.

Mr. Sinek notes that since social media has allowed millennials to access things, even if it is intangible at their fingertips, they are sometimes concerned with instant gratification. They are also impatient to succeed in their selected position or career path. Again, it seems that Mr. Sinek sided with scholarly articles which view millennials as 'narcissistic" when he stated that millennials are "impatient." However, Steffy (2023) found that millennials who were recent graduates and underemployed, concerned about self-actualization (self-exploration or personal development) may change jobs constantly but still express concern about doing a job with a positive impact on others. Lastly, Mr. Sinek indicates that a millennial's employees' environment is why millennials are unhappy, leaving it up to the managers and leadership to deal with the problem. However, Banerjee Srivastava and Krishnamoorthy (2022) found that in a study of Generation Y and X respondents, some reported positive emotions and focused on doing their work, unconcerned about their environment, and did whatever was necessary to eliminate distractions.

I need to condense the following to two pages and limit the use of quotes or saying from Mr. Sinek...........I am writing an introduction for a qualitative analysis research paper on a YouTube video by Simon Sinek entitled "Millennials in the Workplace"