The question of how we harness the strengths of having different perspectives in our teams, rather than butting our heads against the frustrations, is coming up more and more in my coaching work.
Lucy and I had this conversation at our Just One Thing event in London and Sheffield recently, and I promised a round up of the key learning, so let’s go…
Firstly, let’s remember that where one generation begins and another ends is made up and varies between countries: in the UK we have Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpa all potentially working together in one workspace, but in Scandinavia you’re labelled by the decade you were born and in South Africa there’s a whole ‘born free’ generation born after the abolition of apartheid in 1994.
So – treat the naming of generations with a large pinch of salt. (As a younger Gen X I might have more in common with some of my older Millennial friends than I do older Gen X friends, because it’s just one lens!)
There is however, no disputing the fact that different aged colleagues will have experienced education, family life, early work life, in different ways, probably leading to slightly different values, priorities and expectations.
This is where the trickiness lies – when these differences clash.
Lucy and I started our Just One Thing event inviting conversation around our very first jobs and what we learned from them: Lucy gained a huge amount of experience very young in customer facing roles. Guess what – that’s made her very customer focused as a business owner AND it’s made her spot poor service a mile off (this means she and I rant a LOT about the service when we seek out our excellent coffees ahead of delivering a team away day.)
As for me, I did some very ‘of its time’ temping, gathering the sort of data from mineworkers pension files that these days would 100% be done by AI.
I learnt, through temping, how to operate as a very tiny cog in a huge company. I learnt about how people use hierarchy power in organisations (for good or less so) and I learnt that what makes work enjoyable is the people you are with and the fun you have, not necessarily the tasks you are doing day in day out.
So what about those in the current workforce who are in their 20s? Maybe you’re reading this as someone in your first, second or third job yourself. Maybe you didn’t get the chance to have a series of temp jobs, summer jobs, where you could fail quietly and no one would care or know, where you could learn from people a few months further in. Or maybe you did?
Maybe you learned about office politics by listening in to Teams calls rather than getting to watch your directors in an office having calls with funders whilst you sat a few desks away. How can we compare our experience to others when it’s the only experience we had?
If you’re leading Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z colleagues now, know that there may well have not been the kind of low stakes service industry or temp jobs that older colleagues enjoyed as valuable learning experiences, as described in this recent news article here.
One thing that came out of both of our events was this: those five generations potentially working together today have definitely had different experiences of the world of work.
So what to do about it?
The organisation 55redefined talks about the difference between multigenerational teams (which are teams with different generations represented which has just happened through default) and intergenerational teams – teams which have been intentionally put together to draw from the strengths and perspectives of different age people.
What would you get from pulling together such a team intentionally? How would you even make it work?
Here’s three top tips:
- Check your assumptions, just because your dad can’t get to grips with the new iOS software update doesn’t mean anyone older than you is tech hopeless. Just because your friend has a new junior team member who only focuses on the task they want to and ignores the rest, doesn’t mean every person of that generation will do the same. Understand it’s really normal for your brain to take shortcuts and categorise people, but you can pause and question your brain before you act on an assumption.
- If there’s already friction in your team, map it. What’s actually going on? What is the mismatch of expectation? Get granular, what exactly is behind the expectation mis-match and how can we have a conversation about that? What are the non-negotiables in our team/organisation about how we work and what are opportunities for sharing experiences and learning?
- Find opportunities for learning in all directions – not just one way. How do we, for example, use team away days to build trust and connection and share stories about our work histories and hopes and dreams and challenges and the rest? (without forcing people to share anything they don’t want to!)
If you came to our events on this subject, or have been creating intentionally intergenerational teams already – what would you add?
What’s the one conversation you could have in your workplace to start being intentional about harnessing the strength of differing perspectives, rather than seeing them as something that slows us down? (I might start by sharing our ‘first job’ experiences and see where it goes!)
Let me know how you get on?
And lastly…here are two interesting articles to get you talking at work with thanks to Emily who shared them after our Sheffield event:
- Firstly, the US museum sharing information about esoteric artefacts using Gen Z slang – might be a conversation starter. Listen in here.
- Secondly, this article struck a chord about how we know whether it’s ok to talk to a stranger (understanding that it’s only by sharing experiences with others we learn about other perspectives.)
