3. Consolidating Generational Arguments (or, Let the Stereotypes Begin!)

Recall from Chapter 1 that there is no indication of anyone prior to the 1960s talking about generational differences in the workplace in the way that it’s being done today. That said, problems between Young People and Old People have always existed. In this sense, the generational battle has been going on forever. The important point is that except for the past few decades, it’s always been a two-way conversation.

Socrates has been famously quoted for his opinion about the younger generation of Greeks he was attempting to educate:

Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.¹

¹ Fun fact: Even though pretty much everyone attributes this quote to Socrates (who by the way never wrote anything down), there’s good reason to believe that it was written in 1907 by a doctoral student who needed an interesting ancient quotation for his thesis.

As you can see, Socrates hated chattering. He also did not finesse the generations into multiple, nuanced groups. There are youth, and there are elders—end of story.

But perhaps you don’t put much stock in a quote from someone who also famously said that the only thing he knew is that he didn’t know anything. So how about this one, which is commonly attributed to a sermon delivered by Peter the Hermit in 1274:

The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.

Isn’t it easy to imagine someone saying this today? Once again, there are two simple divisions at play—Young People and Old People.

And just so that my Younger readers don’t feel unfairly maligned, here’s one for you, courtesy of 17th-century French author Francois de La Rochefoucauld, whose name I’m certain I couldn’t pronounce correctly:

Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a good example.

I could go on, but the message is clear: We’ve been framing the world as an Us vs. Them/Young People vs. Old People struggle for the entire history of human civilization. We’ve always used a two-generation model. And it’s time we start doing so in the working world.

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, you won’t always be the Younger or less-experienced person, and you won’t always be the Older or more-experienced person either. Throughout the rest of this book I refer to “your Older or more-experienced colleagues” and “your Younger or less-experienced colleagues,” and you are given several strategies to deal with both situations because I’m certain you view your own position as a fluid and dynamic one—sometimes acting like the Older person and other times acting like the Younger.

But let’s take a moment to look at where other people tend to place you in the two-generation world of Young People and Old People. For some, the answer is obvious. If you’re 83 years old, there’s not a lot of debate. Even if 83 is the new 75, that’s still older than most of the people in your office.²

² Also, 50 is not the new 40, and 60 is not the new 25. If you’re using phrases like these, all you’re really saying is that you wish you weren’t as old as you are—which only makes you sound older.

On the other hand, it’s possible you’ve spent more time in the 21st century than the 20th century, which means your situation is equally clear-cut. If you still aren’t sure whether you’re supposed to cut open the pockets on your new suit jacket, then there’s no getting around the fact that you’re basically still in college.

If you’re somewhere in the middle, though, it might be difficult for you to know on which side of the generational divide you will most commonly find yourself. Fortunately, I’ve developed a 13-question quiz to help you resolve this conundrum. This quiz features in one of my keynote presentations, and you should find it both entertaining and surprisingly accurate in helping you position yourself with respect to your colleagues.

It’s not a difficult quiz, and it’s not something you’ll have needed to study for. All of the answers will be completely intuitive, and all you’ll need to keep track of is how many times you answer A or B. The answer to every question is either A or B. Because there are really only two generations, it makes sense that each quiz question would only have two possible answers.

So, are you a Young Person or an Old Person? You’re about to find out!³

³ Seriously, take this quiz. It’ll take less than 3 minutes, and it really will help. Plus it will amuse you. If you take it at lunch with some of your colleagues, it will definitely get some interesting conversations going.

Congratulations! Clarity is only a few short paragraphs away.

It will come as no surprise that the A answers are the ones Old People would typically circle, while Young People would typically circle the B answers. It follows that the more A answers you have, the more of an Old Person you really are, while having more B answers indicates that you’re more of a Young Person. You can visualize this with a simple line, divided into two segments:

As you can see, it’s pretty straightforward, and there’s one point worth mentioning: Although I have no way of knowing how you answered, I am absolutely certain you have some combination of As and Bs. I’ve presented a version of this quiz to tens of thousands of people at hundreds of corporate events across North America, and I have never yet run into anyone who has answered 13 As or 13 Bs. I suppose there are some horse-riding members of the workforce who still conduct all of their business via handwritten letters and house visits to their customer-friends, but I haven’t met any, and I doubt that you work with them either. And the only people who would answer 13 Bs are either too young to be of working age or too flighty to keep a job for very long.

So I suppose our chart should really look like this:

The point of this quiz is to illustrate that the overwhelming majority of us are not generational outliers, 100% Old Person or 100% Young Person. When it comes to generational self-identification, we all fall somewhere in the middle, in exactly the same way that almost nobody would claim to be 100% conservative or 100% liberal. Old People justifiably bristle at the suggestion that their youth and vitality have finally and fully vanished, and Young People disapprove of the often condescending lack of respect the very word young imparts. At the same time, young also implies an energetic creativity that many Old People still associate with themselves, and old suggests a wisdom that plenty of Young People are quite confident they also possess.

So if we were to leave generational identification up to ourselves, we would all end up describing ourselves as some combination of Young Person and Old Person. That’s what happens now with our current four-generation model, as many Baby Boomers demand to be respected for their technological acumen, just as plenty of Millennials contend that they work just as hard as or harder than their grandparents did. Read any op-ed piece or the comment threads on any online article about generational issues in the workplace, and you’ll find a resounding chorus of people of all ages who refuse to be limited by the characteristics of their supposed “generation.” Interview anyone you work with, and chances are that person will claim to have some Traditionalist qualities, some Boomer qualities, some Gen X qualities, and some Gen Y qualities. As we’ve said, this happens because none of us self-identifies as 100% Old Person or 100% Young Person.

However, if you work in an environment where generational tensions are at play, then you are an Old Person or a Young Person relative to the people you work with. A large cohort of your colleagues have placed you in the Them camp because of how much older or younger (or more experienced or less experienced) you are, and in order to turn Them into Us, we need to do two things: make them realize that your differing levels of age and experience aren’t as divisive as they might first seem; and understand why your Older or Younger colleagues think and act the way they do.

Even in a two-generation model, it’s virtually impossible to create a separation between the two that will please everybody. Just as millions of people hover on the border between Traditionalist and Boomer or Gen X and Gen Y, there are bound to be plenty of people who would dispute the logic of any age or experience level that would firmly separate Old People from Young People. In this, at least, we can all agree that we will never all agree.

But a quiz without a grading system is hardly worth taking, and the purpose of this book is to simplify the generational picture so that we can really start to solve problems. You’ve just taken a simple quiz, and it has a simple grading system to separate the Old People from the Young People. However, as you will see in a few pages, this separation is more symbolic than absolute.

So if you answered A to 7 or more questions, you are an Old Person. Congratulations! Your AARP card should be coming in the mail sometime next week—if it hasn’t arrived already. Get ready to enjoy 10% discounts on omelets and some of the best parking spaces in the country. You’d better hurry to the mall because there’s a shapeless knit sweater with your name all over it. You’re presumably reading this through bifocals, and it’s wonderful that you think it’s still important to learn things. Any day now, you’ll start feeding pigeons and playing chess in the park, and you should probably get into the habit of setting an alarm every day so you don’t forget when to take your pills. Don’t forget to buy a plastic box to keep all your pills separate from one another! You probably know all the shortcut keys to your company’s woefully outdated computer system, and because of that, you see no reason at all to update to a newer, more intuitive OS. Oh! And when you get finished reading this book, make sure you make an appointment to get your hips checked out. Chances are one of them is about to go out on you.

On the other hand, if you answered B to 7 or more questions, you are a Young Person. Way to go! Not that you had anything to do with that, of course. Any day now your baby teeth are going to fall out, and then you’ll probably be getting braces. You have the patience of a gnat, or a mayfly, or a mosquito...I’m not exactly sure what the proper comparison is, but I know it’s a comparison with something that dies quickly. You’ll be proud to learn that you are the reason bottled water and $5 cups of coffee exist, because before you came along, those things were free! Truly, the world was a veritable utopia of free water and coffee before you convinced everyone that tap water in plastic bottles was somehow more sanitary than tap water outside of a plastic bottle. You’ll pay double for anything labeled “organic,” including plastic bags, and you think infographics are as rigorously researched as an actual news story. If it were possible, you’d spend your entire day staring at pictures of other people doing things. You often doubt what your friends tell you, and you’re inherently skeptical of anyone claiming to be an expert on anything, but if you read it on the Internet then you immediately assume it’s true. If you happen to be sitting near something sharp right now, make sure not to put it in your mouth; sharp things are dangerous! And soon, if everything goes well, you’ll be moving out of your parents’ basement and into a place of your very own. I’m excited for you. Paying rent feels so grown up.

And there you go: the two generations in today’s workplace, decorated in all the most unflattering stereotypes we have. The Old Person mentioned above is frail, stubborn, and obsolete, while the Young Person is impatient, gullible, and dependent on others for everything.

I know you don’t think of yourself as either of these caricatures. But those descriptions—or something very much like them—are exactly the images we automatically, ungraciously, and unfairly conjure whenever we put someone else into a different generational category than the one in which we place ourselves.

Case in point: If you are having trouble with a Younger or less-experienced colleague, then I’m certain you’ve had thoughts along these lines:

“Sarah is too lazy to be trusted with anything important.”

“Kyle thinks that he should get a medal or something just for showing up to work every day.”

“Tamika spends more time on Facebook than she does doing her job.”

“Aaron can’t concentrate on one thing long enough to do a good job with it.”

“Kerri has no idea how our business actually works.”

“None of these kids has any concept of what ‘work ethic’ means!”

Arthur’s story doesn’t have anything to do with work, productivity, success, ambition, or any other important professional quality, at least not directly. But even here it’s clear that Arthur has a bias against the tastes of his Younger colleagues and is using that to form his opinion of the people he’s recently hired—and in this he is, to a greater or lesser degree, exactly like each and every one of us.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve spoken at hundreds of corporate events in almost every industry there is. I’ve had long conversations with thousands of older and very experienced workers from every kind of background—rural and urban, blue collar and white collar, Republican and Democrat and every shade in between—and time and time again, they complain about the same things. Today’s Young People are lazy, unmotivated, entitled, more interested in Facebook than productivity, and they have absolutely no sense of loyalty.⁵

⁵ They never say “Today’s Gen Xers” or “Today’s Millennials,” by the way. They say, “Today’s young people.” That’s one of the many reasons I decided to write this book.

On the other hand, if you’re Younger than many of your colleagues and have ever had trouble with someone Older or more experienced than you are, then you’ve thought something along these lines:

“Barry has no idea how things really work anymore.”

“Laura only wants to do it that way because it’s what she’s always done. She won’t even listen to another approach!”

“Maurice just doesn’t realize that we can’t keep doing business the way he did it in 1992!”

“Sofia’s retired in all but name. She’s completely checked out, totally unreliable.”

If you can identify with Arthur, Joan, or both of them, then you’ll know that you’ve really been operating with a two-generation model all along. Our brains instinctively divide everything into Us/Them categories, and now you should be able to see that your generational issues at work are no different.

You’re about to read how the future might look if it were run entirely by people significantly Younger or less experienced than you are. What you’re about to read may scare you. You may even cry a little. But you’ll also agree that this hyperbolized version of the future echoes some of the unkinder thoughts you have had about the Youngest members of today’s workforce.

Is this a fair version of the way today’s Young People really operate? Of course not. But it is a realistic exaggeration of the way that Young People are often portrayed—lazy, entitled, undisciplined, disinterested in working hard, captivated by whatever’s newest regardless of its ultimate utility, and everything else we discussed earlier in this chapter. This vision, or something very much like it, represents our worst thoughts about the people we work with who are Younger or less experienced than we are.

Now let’s look at the world we might inherit if everyone Older than you were given total control over every idea and decision.

Again, this is hardly a fair assessment of your Older or more-experienced colleagues. But once again, it’s a hyperbole rooted in the biases and prejudices that many of us have about those people—namely, that they are rigid, inflexible, slow to adapt, and enslaved to protocol even in instances where that protocol doesn’t work very well.

As I’ve said several times already, the point of this book is to simplify the question of generational differences in the workplace and put things into a framework where solutions come easily and intuitively, and these two caricatures are actually helpful. Because if you’ll notice, and if you’ll reflect upon your own attitudes toward the generational tensions you’ve experienced in your life, the differences between Younger and Older workers that we’ve been discussing (and exaggerating) over the past few chapters can be distilled into four major points of contention:

1. Loyalty and work ethic—Older workers think Younger workers have a poor work ethic and little if any sense of loyalty, while Younger workers think their Older colleagues are reluctant (or flat-out refuse) to give them any credit for the work they do.

2. Career advancement—Older workers think many of their Younger counterparts have unreasonable expectations when it comes to how quickly they’ll move forward in their careers, while Younger workers think many Older workers have become too complacent and stagnant in the positions they’ve held for the past several years.

3. Innovation—Younger workers think their Older colleagues are too married to outdated practices, while Older workers think their Younger counterparts have too little respect for established processes and strategies.

4. Approach to change—Older workers think Younger workers are too capricious and value change for change’s sake, while Younger workers think Older ones are too rigid and fear any change they did not think of on their own.

These four core concepts encompass 99% of the generational issues you will face in the workplace. They’re the same issues embodied in the quotes at the beginning of this chapter. Peter the Hermit is complaining that Young People are lazy, irreverent, and contemptuous of the traditions and wisdom of their elders; and Francois de La Rochefoucauld is denigrating Old People for persisting in a comfortable but outdated course of action that hasn’t worked very well.

Also, these four points of contention have nothing at all to do with Gen Xers being inherently skeptical of authority, Traditionalist workers being universally enamored of rigid hierarchies, or any of the other qualities that are commonly attributed to one “generation” only. In every instance, these points of contention are a function of the ways we all change as we age and gain experience, combined with the effect of our recent technological revolution and how it has affected in different ways the people who came of age before or after its advent.

Hopefully you can now see how simple your generational issues really are. Instead of the endless confusion you saw in the chart in Chapter 1 (which I still hope you didn’t read, unless you were having trouble sleeping one night, in which case knock yourself out), you’ve now distilled the generational issues separating you from your colleagues into a collection of concepts you can count on one hand.

The next four chapters are going to tackle each of these issues in turn—first loyalty and its effect on work ethic, then career advancement, then the tension between stasis and innovation, and finally the adoption or rejection of specific changes. Each chapter does two things:

• Illustrate what Young People and Old People have in common with respect to loyalty, work ethic, career advancement, innovation, and change (which will help move everyone closer to the Us side of the Us/Them line).

• Explain why Young People and Old People sometimes think differently about loyalty, work ethic, career advancement, innovation, and change (which will provide you with the strategies you’ll need to successfully manage anyone who approaches these issues differently than you do).

By the end of the next four chapters, you will have all the knowledge and strategies you’ll need to make your generational issues a thing of the past.

So why is it that all the Young People you work with are so evil and broken? And why are all your Old People colleagues so boring and inflexible? You’re about to find out.