“They’re too sensitive.”

“They’re disengaged.”

“They want responsibility they haven’t earned.”

When seasoned pros talk about their younger colleagues, the discussion often turns critical — but are “kids these days” really just lazy and entitled, or is there more to the story?

If you ask young professionals, they say there’s much more that they wish older generations would take into consideration before defaulting to the familiar critiques. During a recent SITE Young Leaders webinar, panelists Anthony Every (ECO Destination Management Services), Beatriz Sa (Portugal Travel Team DMC), Brittany Cirillos (Motivation Excellence, VP of Young Leaders for SITE Chicago), and Jayne MacKinnon (Cantrav, director of Young Leaders for SITE Canada) walked through the most common assumptions made about young professionals in the incentive travel and events industry — and the context these young leaders say usually gets left out.

“They’re too sensitive.”

Mental health is a genuine priority for younger professionals, the panel acknowledged — one study cited found 92% of Gen Z graduates want to discuss mental health at work. But MacKinnon pushed back on reading that as fragility. “We’ve really been conditioned in previous years to see admitting that you’re struggling as a weakness,” she said, “but I think that’s a strength. That’s how we learn from each other.”

The reframe: prioritizing boundaries and mental-health advocacy isn’t the absence of resilience, it’s a different way of managing it.

“They’re disengaged and uninterested.”

Quiet in a meeting doesn’t necessarily mean checked out. “What if silence is not disengagement?” the panel asked. “It’s more about learning.” New team members are often watching how meetings work and how relationships function before they speak up — a behavior easy to mistake for indifference, especially across communication styles that range from introvert to extrovert.

“They want responsibility before they’ve earned it.”

This was Cirillos’s “biggie.” Her counter: professionals don’t learn by sitting in training indefinitely — they learn by doing. “So much of what we learn comes from actually doing,” she said. When leaders create space for ownership, she argued, people rise to it; when they don’t, ambition curdles into frustration and eventually burnout.

“They just want praise for doing their job.”

Sa reframed this one as a request for clarity, not applause. “Feedback actually helps us reduce uncertainty,” she said. “It tells us if we’re going in the right direction.” She admitted catching herself making the same assumption about a team member once — until she realized people simply build confidence differently, and that some need more explicit reassurance than others. Roughly 78% of Gen Z workers, the panel noted, say they want to be recognized at work.

“They don’t respect how things have always been done.”

Younger professionals challenging established processes can land as disrespect for institutional knowledge. The panel’s reframe: it’s usually not personal. “We’re not challenging the individual or leadership,” MacKinnon said. “We’re challenging the process or asking why it is this way.” Having grown up with rapidly shifting technology, many young leaders feel an implicit expectation to push for efficiency — valuing speed, clear reasoning behind tasks, and shorter, more direct communication.

“They’re entitled and impatient.”

Stepping up to ask about growth or the next opportunity can read as jumping the line. But the panel argued it usually comes from a sense of responsibility, not entitlement — a desire to make sure the organization keeps pace with a fast-changing industry. Their advice to leaders: if someone is consistently exceeding expectations, pair that with real acknowledgment or opportunity. Left unrecognized, motivation curdles into disengagement.

“They criticize leadership, then act exactly the same once they’re in charge.”

This one drew some self-deprecating laughs from the panel. “With experience comes perspective,” they noted. Frustrations that once seemed obvious from the outside — competing priorities, budget constraints, consequences nobody sees — become visible once someone sits on the other side of the table. That’s not hypocrisy, the panel argued; it’s understanding. “Perspective shouldn’t stop us from questioning,” they said. “It should simply make us question with a little more empathy.”

“They’re not loyal — they’ll leave as soon as something better comes along.”

Cirillos offered a relationship metaphor: nobody enters a job planning to leave, any more than they enter a relationship planning to break up. “People don’t usually leave because they wanted to leave,” she said. “Often they leave because the relationship just stopped working for one side.” She pointed to a viral example — a Target CEO praised for over two decades at one company — and noted the real story wasn’t tenure, but that he moved through many roles in under two years each, continually growing. “That’s loyalty,” she said, “not because 22 years passed.”

The Common Thread

Underneath all these perceptions, the panel pointed to a concept called the fundamental attribution error — the tendency to explain our own behavior through circumstance, but others’ behavior through character. “I left because I wanted to grow, but they left because they were disloyal,” they offered as an example. “I challenged the decision because I care, but they challenged the decision because they’re difficult.”

The fix isn’t generational expertise, the panel argued — it’s curiosity. “Every time we choose curiosity instead of certainty, we give ourselves the chance to understand someone else’s perspective,” they said. “Because when curiosity disappears, judgment takes its place.”