I came late to a career as a business-school professor—I’m now in my fourth year. When I first stepped into the classroom, I didn’t expect that my research would soon agitate nearly everyone.
It started innocently enough, with a class I created about how to find your purpose—which, I posited, lies at the intersection of your values, aptitudes and economically viable interests. Intrigued by what I was learning about Generation Z by teaching, I decided to conduct a study about generational values, and, because it seemed relevant in an M.B.A. environment, I thought it would be interesting to see how Gen Z’s values compared with the values most prized by hiring managers in today’s economy.
The analysis produced a number that startled my co-researchers and me. A mere 2% of Generation Z members hold the values that companies want most in new hires, namely achievement, learning and an unbridled desire to work.
There’s much to unpack in that finding, but let me first explain how we arrived at it. My course helps students discover their purpose through collecting three data sets. Aptitudes and economically viable interests are relatively easy to identify by having students take widely available tests, but values are harder to pin down. One reason is that most students confuse values with virtues. Values are choices about how we want to live and work, while virtues are qualities that everyone generally agrees are good, like kindness and integrity.