Leading a 5 Generation Workplace
A single workplace today can have employees spanning as many as five generations. The work experiences that each generation has been through are so varied and each generation believes that their approach is the best. One person’s style isn’t better or worse than another, but it is important to understand how they differ.
Learning about generational differences as a leader is important to be able to lead them in the best way possible. Each generation can learn new things from the others if they are open to it.
Facilitating the learning between generations is key. This understanding is important for everyone and can help a team come together and be stronger.
Consider Differing Ways of Communication
One of the main challenges for multiple generations in one workplace is the way that they want to give and receive communication. Each generation wants it their way and can sometimes struggle to bend towards the other generation’s method. Here is an example:
Bob is a Gen X person who is leading a huge project and he works with Matt who is a Gen Y (or Millennial) and Sarah who is a Gen Z. Bob is really impressed with the creativity and ideas that Matt and Sarah are bringing to the project. Matt has a technical role and Sarah’s role is more creative design. They work in different offices so they have meetings over video conference as a group most of the time.
One day Matt sent a text to Bob about a major change he thought they needed to make to the technical specifications. Bob texted him and said, “Could you email the changes or call me so we can discuss?” Matt said, “I will text you the info.” Bob started scrolling through all of it on his phone and couldn’t follow it all. He again texted him and asked Matt to email or call him. Matt said, “I just sent it to you in text, I have to go into a meeting now.” Bob was pretty frustrated.
He texted Sarah, “Can you call me so we can look at the new design specs?” She is a consultant and she works out of her own office. She texted him and said, “What questions do you have?” He texted back, “Can you call me so we can discuss them?” She said, “Can you text me the questions, so I can answer them for you?” He said, “Can you please call me so we can discuss?” He finally heard back from her three days later. She assumed he got his answers and didn’t need anything else.
This is a real-life example from a client. The form of communication that Bob was trying to use was text. He knew that they worked well with texting and he found it faster in some situations himself. It worked when quick answers that were needed, but it didn’t work well in bigger decisions that a conversation needed to take place.
Bob was frustrated in both of these situations because he needed a conversation to resolve his questions. Matt and Sarah are used to doing most of their communication in text. They see it as much faster and more efficient since for most of their lives they grew up with the technology. Bob has adapted his technology use over time, but still would like conversations to resolve the big things.
So what was the outcome of this situation? Matt called Bob later that day and they discussed how they will work together on these types of big decisions going forward. Bob didn’t hear back from Sarah for three days even though he tried to reach out to her multiple times. Sarah was fired from the project and a new consultant was brought in to replace her.
It is important to have the conversation about ways of working upfront. Agree on the communication approach at the kickoff of a project or when there is a new team coming together. Talk about the types of communication and what approach will be used for each type. It may seem like this should just be understood, but it is better to have the conversation. Having these agreements upfront will save so much time later. It will eliminate frustration and everyone can be more productive.
Leveraging Your Workforce Through Mentoring
In addition to considering communication challenges, it is also important to look for opportunities to leverage the multiple generations in your workforce to support and learn from each other. Let’s look at another example.
Mary had been at the company for over 20 years. She progressed through different areas of the company and into holding more senior-level responsibilities over her career there. She was a super-connector and everyone respected her. Tom, who was Mary’s manager, thought she would be a great person to mentor Josh who was just getting started in the company. He was a few years out of college, but already had multiple internships and one other role before joining the company. He was viewed as a high potential and Mary’s manager was hoping she could help him navigate the organization and mentor him when he was having challenges.
Josh’s body language in the first meeting told her a lot about how he viewed this mentoring opportunity. He was polite but leaned back in his chair with his arms folded. He didn’t bring a notebook or pen and spoke with minimal responses. Mary asked him, “What are you hoping to gain through this mentoring experience?” He responded, “I don’t know. To be honest, I was told I had to do this and that you could introduce me to some people.” Mary could tell that he thought this was a waste of his time. She said to herself, what can I possibly teach him?
Mary decided to take a new approach with him after they had met a few times and things weren’t progressing. She asked him if he could help her with a new software program that their group had recently started using. She was doing okay with it, but knew there was more to learn. Josh had been training new users on this software and was considered a subject matter expert at it.
Josh spent some of their next meetings helping Mary learn it. She asked him questions as they discussed the software. She paid attention to the challenges he was facing and identified opportunities where he could use help. Mary asked him if he wanted to discuss where he was struggling to see if she could offer any advice to him. He said yes and they formed a great mentoring partnership from that moment on.
This is a great example of what is known as reverse mentoring. When you have multiple generations in the workforce, these mentoring relationships can bring great benefit to both mentee and mentor. As you can see in the above example, once they brought down the defenses and doubts on both sides, they were able to learn from each other.
Sharing Your Expectations
One more barrier you need to be aware of as a leader with a multigenerational workforce is that each generation has different expectations of their managers and it is important to clearly communicate what they need and expect from you.
If the employee is from the same generation then their expectations are most likely met, but having a conversation to confirm it would be a good thing to do. If the generations are different and the manager isn’t having a conversation about what the employee needs, then that is where conflict can occur.
Find out what your employee is expecting from you in terms of communication, feedback, recognition (public or private), support, motivation, development, etc. As the manager, you can also share information about what is expected of an employee to have a two way conversation on how best to work together. Each generation will care about different things and it is good to get it out in the open. There may also be differences for individuals within a generation that need to be clarified.
Managers who have employees from different generations should make time to have a conversation about expectations. It is good to have these types of conversations early on in a working relationship and create agreements to eliminate assumptions and frustration in the long term.
The most important thing to remember is that generational differences in a workplace — while they can be challenging — can also make your team collectively much stronger.
Susan M Barber, President of Susan M Barber Coaching & Consulting, LLC, works with individuals, teams, and organizations to build skills that leaders need to attain breakthrough results. Her passion for coaching and leadership development is driven by seeing the transformation of leaders as they reach far beyond their own ideas of success. She continues to drive custom programs for groups that want to make changes in their careers to become more powerful leaders.
