Dear Lovely Human,

I know this is going to be controversial for those of you with young adults entering the workforce. And in advance, I don’t have kids of my own. I do not think I would ever have been able to live, do the work and sleep the way I do and love, and also be a good parent. So give the weight you feel most comfortable with to my words… I don’t mind, even if it’s a zero ;-)

I said NO to yet another young graduate this week. Early 20s, and her mentor was on the call too, a senior person I deeply respect, who knows me well and was the one who arranged the call.

Clinical psychology background. Running youth programs since she was a teenager. A band. She wanted to work in People Operations or Learning and Development. She had never used ChatGPT or Claude or any AI tool. She told me she felt her area of psychology, people and community, did not require knowing these tools.

"You will not be useful for any role in a company with your current skill sets," I told her. I also gave her a clear roadmap of what she has to do over the next 3 months to become useful to any employer. I was clear that she could also ignore whatever advice I gave her and keep looking for jobs with her current skills. I never take it personally. What’s interesting is that after I did all of that, her mentor still asked if I would give her a chance. I said NO.

Just a few months back, I probably would have taken the time to try and give her a shot by giving her an AI project and seeing what she was capable of learning within a week. Then decide. But something shifted recently, and I realized the cost is now just too high for me and the team to train these non-AI-native, fixed mindsets. There is also a gigantic blind spot we cannot control, being a virtual company with no idea about their home/life environment. And trust me, it matters if you are going to try and invest in a candidate.

For some reason, and I don't know if it's lack of curiosity, educators, parents, or her environment, AI seems to be, to many young people, a separate thing from what they studied. It is not an operating system for how we do things with this co-thinker and worker. In fact, you need to observe their body language when they speak about it, and it becomes very clear there is a complete misalignment.

AI isn't a separate elective at school or in life anymore. It's the floor everything else stands on now, if you plan on being in the room.

What shifted for me, and sadly this young lady paid the price, was that I had another intern earlier this summer who I did give a chance. But he kept showing up unprepared. He often could not explain what he produced with AI. I initially took it as nerves communicating. But 60 days in, I finally told him very straight that his performance was a five out of ten and that was not acceptable. He needed to be useful to have this job, even if it was at ONE single thing, and could he identify what that was?

I got a response to my email from……. his father.

Not a typo. His father was logged into his son's email, responding to his son's employer, on his son's behalf. It raised an entirely different red flag.

Was this young man doing any of the work at all, or was his parent? Was that why he could not explain the work sometimes? And exactly how much of our company’s business, through the son’s email, was the parent monitoring, having access to, and/or actually seeing or even using? Maybe the answer to all of this was zero, but you can certainly understand my ethical concerns and shock.

I de-risked the situation immediately.

But it really left me concerned: how much of what is going on with our young people is a mirror of our gaps? Cringe as you throw darts at me….

Why are we not allowing our young adults to become aware, falter, be accountable, fail…. and get back up?! A recent RBC poll showed over 51% of parents in Canada financially supported their adult kids over the last 12 months, and 1 in 5 parents of 35 to 40-year-olds are still helping pay the bills. Our children are also not getting married in their 20s anymore, and/or not starting families at all, in very large numbers.

Why is it that most of us have gotten so scared of being the person who says the hard thing to one another and to our children? Who benefits? How will young people be ready for this world we are entering, to be independent, thriving humans who build families and institutions that employ others?

If you're the employer young people come to for a chance right now, try this uncomfortable thing this week. The next time someone asks you for an opportunity they're not ready for yet, don't soften it into a maybe.

Tell them the hard truth. Hand them a clear map of how to get there and be useful. It’s then up to them. That’s the best gift you can give them. And yes, some parents will not appreciate you because of this…. but everyone still lives to see another day, and life goes on.

Religious Focus this month: Ubuntu

Every month we pick one religion or way of living. It allows us to open our minds and be mindful of how we and others live better, healthier, joyful and meaningful lives.

Last week we sat with letsema, neighbours turning up at the gate to plant a field for a family knocked off its feet. This week we look at what happens when the person who has fallen out of step is the one letting others down, and how the people around them bring them back.

The workshop floor in Bulawayo smells like solder and old coffee by the time Nkosana shows up, forty minutes into his shift, for the fourth time this month.

His supervisor, Mrs. Ncube, doesn't send him home. She also doesn't pretend it didn't happen.

She takes him into the small office at the back, past the shelves of returned radios waiting to be repaired, and closes the door.

"You used to be first through that gate," she says. "Not anymore. Tell me what happened."

Nkosana doesn't have a clean answer. His mother's been sick. He's been staying up managing his younger siblings. He hasn't told anyone because he didn't want to be the guy with excuses.

Mrs. Ncube listens. Then she does something that surprises him. She doesn't lower the bar.

"You're still expected here at eight," she tells him. "That doesn't change. But you're not walking this alone anymore, and neither is your mother."

Over the next two weeks, three people from the workshop, people Nkosana barely spoke to outside of handing off a soldering iron, start showing up. One drives his youngest sister to school twice a week. Another brings a pot of food to his mother's flat on Thursdays. Nobody makes an announcement. Nobody calls it charity.

This is ukubuyisa. In isiZulu and isiNdebele it means to bring back, to return someone to where they belong. It is the same word used for the ceremony that brings a loved one's spirit home to the family. In everyday life it carries the same instinct: nobody is left outside the fold for good.

It is not the same as forgiveness, and it is not the same as looking away. Ukubuyisa requires the truth to be spoken first. Mrs. Ncube did not restore Nkosana by ignoring that he'd been late four times. She restored him by naming it plainly, then making sure the reason behind it stopped being his to carry by himself.

That order matters. Skip the naming and you get enabling, the kind that leaves a person exactly where they were, just with softer walls around them. Skip the restoring and you get punishment, the kind that pushes someone further out right when they most need to be pulled back in.

Ukubuyisa insists on both, in that order, every time.

Three weeks later, Nkosana is first through the gate again. Not because Mrs. Ncube let anything slide. Because for the first time since his mother got sick, showing up on time wasn't the hardest thing he had to hold by himself.

Guiding question:

Who in your life or your team has drifted lately, and have you told them the truth about it, or have you just quietly made room for less?

Three steps. One person.

1. Name the actual thing, out loud, before anything else.
Not implied. Not softened into a maybe. Said, plainly, to the person.

2. Ask what they're carrying that you can't see yet.
Then sit through the silence instead of filling it for them.

3. Do the boring, specific, unannounced thing.
A ride. A meal. A shift covered. Restoration is rarely dramatic.

Mrs. Ncube didn't lower the bar for Nkosana. She just made sure he wasn't the only one holding it up.