On Participation Trophies

A few years back, I attended a mandatory training course on leadership. The instructor discussed strategies for engaging with and managing employees. We learned about the importance of organizational skills, ethics, technical competence, and transparency. The course was mostly pedestrian, but the discussion on diversity turned out to be interesting.

The class tackled difficult and controversial gender, race, sexual orientation, and religious issues. As an aspiring manager, it was the type of frank and candid conversation I needed to help navigate modern social issues in the workplace. I walked away with several actionable leadership lessons and was feeling as if the course was worth it. That is until we reached the part on generational diversity.

The discourse on generational issues was different than the discourse on other aspects of diversity. It was clear that stereotypes were permissible. The instructor hailed the greatest generation as those who defeated the Nazis and ushered in a post-war boom. The Baby Boomers are natural leaders and stoic innovators. They made America great. Then, we discussed the independent Generation X, the latchkey kids. Finally, we learned about the Millennials.

The class full of Boomers agreed that Millennials are the worst generation. The Boomers believe that the Millennials typify our country's problems. America is in decline because it is weak, self-absorbed, overly-sensitive, and unable to focus. Lazy Millennials prefer to hang out in their parents' basement and play video games instead of getting a high-paying job.

As we were leaving the class, a Boomer asked if I had ever received a participation trophy. A participation trophy is given to children just for showing up and being a member of a team. Nothing particularly remarkable or praiseworthy is required.

I tried to demur, but he would not let it go. I finally admitted that I had received participation trophies. In a moment of triumph, he proceeded to inform me that those participation trophies are causing the downfall of the Republic.

Generational ridicule is fairly commonplace for Millennials. The linkage between trophies and the collapse of republican government, however, was new. I started to wonder.

Children do not buy themselves trophies. They are given trophies. But by whom?

When I asked the Boomers who bought Millennials these nation-toppling trophies, they were slow to realize the truth. As much as they enjoyed teasing Millennials over participation trophies, it was they, the Boomers, who invented them.

That's right. The Boomers gave their children participation trophies. The Boomers taught the Millennials that they are each unique, talented, and special. Then, as those children grew up and entered the work force, the Boomers criticized them for the traits they had bestowed.

The story of the participation trophy has become a symbol of the systemic and moral failings of my lifetime. It is a tongue-in-cheek example of the real problems caused -- but in some cases not even recognized -- by that group of Americans born between 1946-1965.

The Baby Boomers have occupied positions of leadership in business, academia, government, and media since the 1990s. During the last 25 years, the Boomers have presided over the debasing of the office of the President in the 1990s; a costly interventionist foreign policy in the 2000s; the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression in 2008; and a series of far-reaching and hyper-partisan legislative initiatives in the 2010s.

The Boomers have pilfered the national coffers to the tune of $18 trillion of debt with minimal improvements to infrastructure, politicized the need to protect our environment, and driven up the cost of college education by 300 percent since 1995. They have created the conditions in which America is fracturing along class, religious, racial, and geographic lines.

All is not lost. The Baby Boomers are beginning to enter their twilight years and it is time for a new generation to lead. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated in June 2015 that millennials number 83.1 million people, surpassing the baby boomers at 75.4 million people. For the first time in 2016, Millennials also made up a larger portion of voters than any other generation. This is good news for America.

It is time for Millennials to lead.

Failure will not earn us a participation trophy. Failure will earn us a place alongside history's great civilizations, which fell into decline and vanished.

Game on.