Employers are noticing a troubling pattern.
Graduates and young professionals increasingly ask for step-by-step instructions for everything, from routine assignments to basic workplace decisions. Tasks that once required judgment and initiative now often trigger a request for detailed guidance.
In this episode, Cindy Goodwin-Sak and Dr. Jaime Peters explore what might be driving this shift.
Drawing from recent conversations with employers, classroom experiences, and emerging research (including a widely discussed MIT study on AI and learning) they examine how a mix of pandemic disruption, over-structured learning environments, and new AI tools may be contributing to something psychologists call learned helplessness.
The result?A growing discomfort with ambiguity, reduced ownership over work, and fewer opportunities for people to develop the judgment that organizations depend on.
But the conversation doesn’t stop at the problem.
Cindy and Jaime also discuss how leaders and managers can begin to rebuild learned industriousness by changing how they delegate work and develop employees. Instead of narrating every step, they argue that great managers focus on three things:
* Clear outcomes
* Smart constraints
* Real decision authority
They also offer practical advice for professionals who want to avoid becoming stuck in “instruction-following mode” and instead build the kind of judgment and initiative that drives career growth.
If work increasingly feels like a checklist (or if you manage people who constantly ask what to do next) this conversation will challenge some assumptions about how we learn, lead, and grow. Keep your spreadsheets handy and your coffee strong!
