How to Get Employees to Behave Like a Bunch of 6th Graders

Before working for a Fortune 500 company, I spent 15 years in a monastic community as a Catholic priest. One of my first assignments as a priest was to hear Confessions at a local boys’ high school. Being newly ordained, I was a bit nervous. The first young man who entered the confessional spoke in a soft whisper: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned … I had impure thoughts.” Seeing this as a teachable moment, I reminded him that having sexual thoughts was a normal part of adolescence, but that these desires should not be actively pursued. “Did you entertain them?” I asked with priestly sensitivity. “No, Father,” he said with an air of matter-of-factness, “they entertained me.” I gave the boy Absolution, knowing that we both still had a lot to learn. Over the years I’ve come to see that youth regularly have lessons to teach us, as I was once again recently reminded.