So busy being bored

Usually, when I arrive at an event a little too early, I would go to a coffee shop, I would get a cup of coffee, review my lessons and prepare for the training engagement.

As I stand waiting in line, I would scan around. I am not kidding when I say that almost everyone is staring at their cellphones, texting, checking their e-mail, or browsing the Web, and a great many of them are playing games while waiting for their coffee to be served.

Even when friends are around the table waiting for their food, their eyes are fixed on their screens with their fingers busy navigating the buttons instead of engaging in meaningful conversation. In other words, many are just busily bored.

People nowadays have very little capacity to wait. They have to fill their waiting time with entertainment. I might be mistaken, but it seems to me people these days get easily bored.

Don’t get me wrong though. These young people are extremely productive. They produce a lot of work and meet demanding expectations, but truth to tell, they are so bored silly with their jobs and do not find it stimulating at all.

They go through the motions, they deliver what is expected from them, but their minds are not stretched. They may not be learning new things.

This may also be the reason why my friends from HR are fascinated to see young people turn off their laptops or tablets, to listen to me speak and engage in the exercises and the activities I make them do.

It was just two weeks ago when I gave a two-hour talk to some 200 leaders from a leading BPO company.                   

After the talk, the HR people were surprised to see many of the young people go to the training room and leave their laptops behind to listen.

The HR people said something funny but totally unsurprising for me as I have heard this gazillion times: “When they attend seminars, they bring their tools with them. Even while the training is going on, some would open their laptops and continue working, a few would stand up to get coffee or food while the others go straight out of the room. It is so difficult to get them to sit down through the session,” says one frustrated training officer. “In fact, when they are bored, some continue working, others just play games.....”

All the money invested in training is wasted.

I thanked the HR person for the encouragement, then started wondering: how much money for training is wasted on these young people when they get easily and busily bored and could not hold their attention for too long?

Here is the key: when you get them interested in a topic that is relevant to them, their eyes light up, their smiles beam, they pay attention to the speaker with laser-like focus, and they absolutely participate. They will even go to remarkable details when I do activities with them, and their questions are also deep and on-topic.

This gives me a great sense of relief. Not only because I am a speaker and I can get them involved, but because I realize they have not given up their capacity for wonder and interest.

They want things that really intrigue them, provoke them, challenge them and stimulate their senses, not just some plain politically-correct statements that sound nice, but can easily be dismissed as “I’ve-heard-this-before” thingy.

The young audience today want to hear lessons that would resonate throughout their entire being. They want to grow. They want to be better. They actually want to work for companies that invest in their personal growth. They want depth of understanding. They want stimulating, intellectual discussions that would make them become better and do better.

This means we need to steer the young work-warriors to reclaim their curiosity by embracing an educational-engaging mind-set rather than just an entertainment mind-set.

We need to stimulate the young people’s minds by making them wise and wiser and not succumb to the demands of the times to simply entertain, and thus make them dumb and dumber.

This is a vital principle for training our people in the work place. And should I still say, or is it academic for me to claim this is precisely what we should do for our children as well?

(Send your high potential leaders and experience two inspiring days with Francis Kong learning leadership and life skills in his widely acclaimed Level Up Leadership this Oct. 27-28 at the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel. For further inquiries contact Inspire at 09178985010 or call 632-6310912 or 6310660 for details.)