Written by: Vickie Sullivan  |  September 24, 2013

Ask Questions From Left Field

Millennials have gotten some press these last few years and lot of it is not flattering.  Between stories of crashing for years at their parents’ place to workplace entitlement, you’d think our future is in grave danger.  This study by psychologist Jean Twenge refutes conventional wisdom by comparing each generation’s answers to the same question at the same stage of life.  Her finding:  the responses were similar.  Perhaps we are not so different after all.

If you are curious, check out the findings here according to this post from Adam Grant.  But let’s apply her starting point to our situation.  How many of us form opinions then ask questions?  How many of us think we know the answers to the questions we ask?

What I like about Twenge’s approach is that she asked the question from a different angle.  To do that, she had to ignore the conventional wisdom, as well as a lot of other information.  Let’s try that sometime.  When we come at an issue from a blank page, I bet we will surprise ourselves with the innovations we come up.