CHAPTER 1
Signposts: Harbingers of Things to Come
“Life is rather like a tin of sardines—we’re all of us looking for the key.”
—Alan Bennett, British author, actor, humorist, and playwright
Meagan Remembers
When I was six years old, I went to the grocery store with my father. He bought an item priced at $1.69, but the cashier misread it and only charged him 69 cents. (This was 1976. Scanners had yet to be invented, and cashiers manually entered prices.) My father alerted her to her mistake. She thanked him and charged him the extra dollar.
I was dumbfounded! At the time, my weekly allowance was a dollar. My father had just thrown away what it took me a week to earn. So I said, “Dad, that was dumb. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut and you could have saved a whole dollar.” “Yes,” he replied, “but how I feel about myself is worth more than a dollar.”
My memory of that event has followed me all my life. It helps me decide how to handle situations in which I must determine the right thing to do. It taught me that there is more to life than material gain. I’ve even used it as a standard for picking the company I keep. Would I want a friend who would have kept the dollar? I think not. Thanks, Dad, for the great life lesson.
Larry Responds
You’re welcome, Meagan, but gosh, I don’t even remember this big event in your life. In retrospect, it seems I was able to convey a simple life lesson for a pretty small price. If it had been a million dollars at stake instead of one, I hope I would have acted as nobly.
It does remind me that early experiences can have lasting influences on our lives. I attended YMCA summer camp when I was ten years old. My family didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t afford the tuition, but I was an enterprising sort. I secured a position as a dishwasher that allowed me to go for free.
For some reason, an adult counselor at the camp considered tuition workers second-class citizens. On an overnight excursion, after a long day of hiking, this counselor told the kitchen crew to wait until all the paid campers got their food from the chow line before eating. I waited and waited. When I saw some of the paid campers queuing up for seconds, I got in line. This counselor grabbed my arm and jerked me out of line. In front of all the other campers, he dressed me down, reminding me that I was just a “dishwasher,” and I had to wait for the “real” campers to eat.
My humiliation was unbearable. I burst into tears, threw my plate in the counselor’s face, and ran into the woods, hoping I would get lost and starve to death just to show them how unjustly I’d been treated.
Luckily, a more sympathetic counselor tracked me down and escorted me back to camp, where he gave me something to eat. He told me not to take the counselor who had been mean to me seriously because he had some personal problems that caused him to act that way. In retrospect, he should not have been allowed to work with kids, problems or not, but I did gain something positive from the experience. In the years since, I’ve traced any empathy I have for people less fortunate than I to that unpleasant incident. It gave me a small taste of what it feels like to be discriminated against. It was a painful, but beneficial, event in my life.
Personal and Group Signposts
We call these kinds of events personal signposts: experiences in our lives that significantly contribute to who we are. They are personal because they are unique to each individual. They are signposts because they influence our future decisions, reactions, attitudes, and behaviors.
Other signposts have just as much impact on us, but these spring from the experiences of the groups to which we belong and the society in which we live. These group signposts can have a strong effect on us because they are magnified by the power of numbers. For example, if you are a member of a racial minority, you may or may not have endured racism yourself. However, the fact that your friends, family, and colleagues probably did will affect how you view the issue of discrimination. And, if you combine this group signpost with one or more personal signposts associated with race, the effect can be very powerful.
Larry remembers an experience he had when working for a large organization. He and his boss, Irene, were conducting interviews to fill a position that would report directly to Larry. It came down to two finalists: one Larry liked, and one Irene liked. Since Irene was the boss, Larry yielded, and they hired her choice.
It turned out to be a mistake and they eventually had to let the woman go. In discussing it later, Irene graciously claimed responsibility for the fiasco. She said that she had let a prejudice hidden deep within her affect her judgment. It turns out that Larry’s preferred choice was white, and Irene’s was black. Irene herself is also black.
Larry was surprised. Irene had never struck him as being racially motivated. After all, she had hired him, a white guy, when there had been several minority candidates from whom to choose. She also had a sterling reputation as the consummate HR professional. Larry asked her to explain.
Irene replied that she hadn’t preferred her candidate because she was black, but because the white candidate’s Southern accent grated down at her “very core.” As a young black woman growing up in the South, she associated many negative experiences with a Southern drawl. The combination of a group signpost (being black) and the personal signposts (these negative experiences) affected Irene’s ability, years later, to be fair and impartial. To her credit, she promised to make a conscious effort not to let this prejudice affect her judgment again.
Irene’s story illustrates the good news about signposts. They can have very positive effects on our lives, as did Meagan’s experience with Larry at the grocery store, or they can have very negative effects, like Irene’s reaction to a Southern accent. But they can be changed. Signposts are not life sentences. Irene proved the point. She learned from her insight and made a conscious decision to move in a different direction.
Generational Signposts
A generational signpost is an event or cultural phenomenon that is specific to one generation. Generational signposts shape, influence, and drive our expectations, actions, and mind-sets about the products we buy, the companies for which we work, and the expectations we have about life in general. Generational signposts mold our ideas about company loyalty, work ethics, and the definitions of a job well done.
Meagan’s grandfather, Joe, was from the Traditional Generation (the parents of Baby Boomers born before 1946). He came of age in the 1920s and struggled to raise a family during the Great Depression, a major signpost for his generation. Joe, like most of his cohort, believed that if you were lucky enough to have a job, you owed absolute loyalty to the company that hired you—always. Joe worked for Procter & Gamble for forty years. Throughout his employment and his retirement, he insisted that everyone in the family buy only P&G products. If P&G made it, they bought it.
Compare that attitude with that of people from Generation Y (born after 1980). Their average job turnover rate is approximately 30 percent.1 Some employers tell us they feel lucky if newly hired Generation Yers stick around past lunch. This lack of job loyalty can be traced to many factors including that the job often pays very little so the only way the Gen Yer can make more is to move elsewhere or the job itself is not his or her calling in life, it’s just something to do until he or she finds a career path. For many, however, they simply don’t need to work because they still live at home and are being supported by Mom and Dad. That phenomenon can be associated with a major signpost for them: They are the offspring of what we call “helicopter parents.” We’ll explain many of the implications of that parentage in Chapter 6, but suffice it to say that these kids are often overly indulged.
Life Laws
When Meagan was a young child, Larry traveled every week. She and her mother loved to surprise him by meeting his plane at the gate. It became a Friday night family tradition. However, for every generation born after September 11, 2001, that family tradition now takes place outside the security area. Today’s young people have no recollection of being allowed to enter an airport concourse without submitting to a TSA screening. For them, this necessity is a life law.
Life laws are events that have social, political, or economic influence on our lives but occurred before we were old enough to remember any difference. We’ve talked to many members of Generation X and Generation Y who take for granted the fact that schools are not segregated by race. They can’t imagine a time when it was otherwise. Consequently, they often have little appreciation for the sacrifices made by their Traditional elders that led to the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Oliver L. Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS) et al.—a decision that outlawed segregation in schools. Nor do they remember the subsequent struggle by the civil rights movement to turn the ruling into a reality. For them, school integration is a life law. It’s always been that way.
Life laws are important because they often affect how one generation views another. If you were part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, you may have little patience with 18-year-olds who take their civil rights for granted. Likewise, if you are from a younger generation, you may have little patience for an older worker who is still bringing those struggles to work and sees the world through that lens. For example, we know a Gen Xer who found it irritating when she was pregnant that her Baby Boomer boss said she should be grateful the company was letting her come back to work.
Generation Defined
During a speech, Meagan mentioned that she is part of Generation X. An audience member yelled out, “Aren’t you getting too old to be a Generation Xer?” That’s a risky question to ask anyone and, to her credit, Meagan resisted the temptation to snap back, “Aren’t you a little old to call yourself a Baby Boomer?” Instead, she clarified that generational groups are not determined by the present age of the members, but by the social events and demographics that were happening at their inceptions. Traditionals are defined as people born before the end of World War II. Thus, although people grow older, the period in which they were born always remains the defining time period that determines to which generation they belong. So if you are a Traditional, you’ll always be a Traditional. If you are a Baby Boomer, you’ll always be a Baby Boomer, and so on.
As it applies to groups in society, Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary offers four variations on the word “generation.” We start with this one—a group of individuals born and living contemporaneously—and then expand it a bit. Here’s our definition:
Generation: A group of individuals born and living contemporaneously who have common knowledge and experiences that affect their thoughts, attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors.
Absolutely no consensus exists on how to determine when one generation ends and another begins. The most common definition is based on major fluctuations in the birthrate. For example, World War II forced millions of Traditionals to postpone starting families. At the war’s end, after long separations, these folks were ready to marry and produce children. And, aided by the nation’s unprecedented postwar prosperity, produce they did!
In 1946, live births in the United States surged from 222,721 in January to 339,499 in October. By the end of the 1940s, 32 million babies had been born, compared to 24 million in the 1930s.
U.S. Birthrate Chart
When the surge ended in 1965, the Baby Boomer Generation included 78.2 million members—the largest American generation on record.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Pill gave women more control over reproduction, while the women’s movement increased their educational and career opportunities. As a result, many postponed having children and the birthrate declined. Only 49 million babies were born in the United States between 1965 and 1980, making Generation X the smallest American generation on record.
About the same time, the biological clocks of childless Baby Boomers started ringing. Additionally, many of those who already had children were divorcing and starting second families. So the birthrate climbed until 1996, when Generation Y recorded a head count of 70.4 million, almost as big as the Baby Boomer Generation. Starting in 1997, Generation Xers and some Yers began to have children and the birthrate started to climb again, creating what we call the Linked-In, or Linkster, Generation.
See the U.S. Birthrate Chart in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1. U.S. Birthrate Chart2
Five Generations at Work
History is in the making. Never before have five generations occupied the workplace as they do now. The three main groups are:
Baby Boomers, aka the Woodstock Generation, born between 1946 and 1964
Generation X, aka Latchkey Kids, born between 1965 and 1980
Generation Y, aka the Entitled Ones, born between 1981 and 1995
A few members of the Traditional Generation are also still working (aka Depression Babies, born before 1945), and we’re beginning to see the first of the Linkster Generation appearing on the job site (aka the Facebook Crowd, born after 1995). In reality then, five generations are now present in the workforce. This is rapidly changing as more and more Traditionals exit and more Linksters enter, creating a four-part milieu that will be with us until all the Baby Boomers retire. And, according to a host of studies, many Baby Boomers plan to continue working long past the age of 65, so this four-part milieu is likely to be the state of business for many years.
In this book, we will refer to members of each of the five generations as those born in the years just described. We will also discuss various generational subgroups that have been identified by historians and social commentators as they come up.
Each generation has widely differing sets of expectations and perceptions of what the working environment will provide, how they should behave as employees, how managers will manage them, and how they will manage others.
The same differences apply in one’s personal life as well. To a great extent, how you get along with your young children, your adult children, and your parents is affected by the generation in which you reside.
Cuspers
People born close to the dividing line between generations are known as cuspers. They have the advantage of having one foot in two generational worlds. According to Lynne C. Lancaster and David Stillman in their book, When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work, cuspers have a natural ability to identify with multiple generations’ beliefs and interests.3
Gino, a project manager in the digital control system industry, was born in 1964. He is an example of a cusper who successfully straddles the line between Baby Boomers and Generation X. He serves as a bridge between the senior technical advisers, who are almost all older, salaried, professional-level staff, and the journeymen, who are hourly employees new to the company and the industry.
The senior technical advisers know Gino is reliable. He has had enough years in the industry to build a solid reputation as a project manager and has proven himself a reliable team member. The younger journeymen respect Gino’s experience, but his relative youth makes him less intimidating than some of the senior members. Journeymen now take questions to Gino for quick resolution, therefore freeing up the time of the senior technical advisers.
Much of the glue that bonds Gino to both generations is language. Senior technical advisers trust Gino because he can “talk their language.” He knows industry terminology and maintains composure under tight deadlines. The journeymen also trust him. One described Gino this way: “The dude calls it like it is. I figured someone with Gino’s experience would act, more, you know … like corporate. He’s not at all like those suits [senior technical advisers].”
Not all cuspers identify with both sides of the generational dividing line. Many adopt the values of one side and conduct themselves accordingly. Meagan’s aunt Maureen was born in 1944. Her sister CJ, who is Larry’s wife and Meagan’s mother, was born in 1947. They both came into the world on either side of 1946, which divides the Traditional and Baby Boomer generations. Maureen went to junior college, married young, had three children right away, remained a devout Catholic, voted for Nixon, and was crazy about Perry Como and Andy Williams. CJ went away to college, dropped out of the church, lived a hippy lifestyle, voted for McGovern, and loved Van Morrison and the Rolling Stones. Both were born close to the border separating two generations. Maureen went Traditional and CJ went Boomer.
White Bucks, Duck Tails, and Generation Jones
Authors have identified subgroups with characteristics unique to a certain time period in their generation. For example, we often associate rock ’n’ roll music with Baby Boomers. They grew up listening to Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. The term “rock ’n’ roll,” however, was first used for commercial purposes in the early 1950s by Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed (aka Moondog). He discovered that increasing numbers of young white kids were listening to and requesting the rhythm-and-blues records he played on his nighttime radio program, records called “rock ’n’ roll.” Freed promoted “rock ’n’ roll revues,” concert tours featuring black artists who played to a young, racially mixed audience.
In most cases, however, the white kids requesting this music were far too old to be Baby Boomers, whose eldest members at the time were six years old. Technically, these teenagers were members of the Traditional generation, but their generational signposts did not include the two sign-posts that most defined the Traditional Generation: the Great Depression and World War II. We call this interim group the “White Bucks and Duck Tails Generation” after the shoes made popular by Pat Boone and the hairdos of many doo-wop groups. They became teenagers in the 1950s, dancing to Bill Haley and the Comets and living the life portrayed in Father Knows Best. If young daughter Kathy on that show represented the coming Baby Boomer Generation, her older brother, Bud, was a White Bucks and Duck Tail guy. They identified with some of the events that would define Boomer culture, but their main connection was with their Traditional parents.
Another interim generation that has attracted recent attention is Generation Jones. Coined by Los Angeles–based cultural historian Jonathan Pontell, the members of Generation Jones were born between 1954 and 1964.4 They entered their adult buying years during the 1980s, the decade known for its over-the-top, decadent living style, when keeping up with the Joneses was de rigueur. They barely remember the strife of the 1960s and 1970s that so influenced early Baby Boomers. Today, they are moving into the halls of power in corporations and government. They represent the younger end of the Baby Boomer Generation—think Barack Obama (born 1961) versus Hillary Clinton (born 1947). In fact, they are also known as Generation Obama.
Other Generational Definitions
Some people believe generations should be defined by their generational signposts. For example, Salon.com columnist Dave Cullen recently described Generation Y as the “Columbine Generation,” referring to the Columbine High School massacre that took place in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999.5 He feels that the shooting marked the end of Generation X and the beginning of Generation Y.
Others define generations by the president who was in power when they were born or when they became aware of who he was. People born between 1970 and 1980 often call themselves the Carter Generation. Many born in the late 1970s and the 1980s refer to themselves as Gen-Reagan: They were too young to vote for Reagan, but they can remember their grade school principals announcing that the president had been shot and wounded.
Generational Signposts Bond Us
Generational signposts create shared values and serve as built-in bonding mechanisms among the individuals of a group.
Meagan’s mother, CJ, worked for AT&T during college, first as an information operator and then, after graduation, as a service representative for business accounts. She was very bright, graduating from college with a 4.0 GPA. She was well liked by customers and coworkers, and she understood the AT&T system inside and out. CJ’s supervisor, Alva, recognized her potential and often assigned her to train other representatives, as well as all the candidates going through AT&T’s executive development program.
CJ was honored to do this, but she was also frustrated. She knew that she would eventually be promoted to a position similar to Alva’s, but she also knew she would never be admitted to the executive development group she was training because of her gender. At the time, AT&T was the nation’s largest employer of women and also one of its most rigidly gender segregated. The working ranks were filled with women, but the management positions were reserved for men. In 1973, a discrimination suit filed with the FCC forced AT&T to change, but not before CJ had resigned in disgust and pursued another career.
Recently, CJ bumped into Alva, who had chosen to stay on at AT&T. With the end of its discriminatory practices, Alva had gone on to enjoy a 30-year career as an AT&T executive.
The bond between CJ and Alva was instant. Both had suffered under discriminatory practices that were common for their generation. They spent the afternoon talking about the pros and cons of staying at the company, and what had happened to all the people they knew. To this day, CJ has a special relationship with Alva that is particular to their shared signpost.
Whether it’s the memories of Boomers overcoming the discriminatory practices of the 1970s or the commonality of two Generation Xers who have bittersweet memories of Kurt Cobain’s death, generational signposts serve as mechanisms that bring people together. The downside of this generational bonding is that those whose pasts do not contain these signposts can be seen as “outsiders.”
Most Baby Boomers remember where they were on the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. They remember the names of the people in the room and how important it was that the United States got to the moon ahead of the Soviets. Ask a Generation Y person where she was on that day, and she’s likely to roll her eyes and remind you that she wasn’t even alive then. For her, a man walking on the moon is about as impressive as a man walking to Wal-Mart: It’s something to which she just doesn’t give much thought.
This is not to say that Generation Yers are insensitive. It’s just that the importance of one generational signpost is often lost on others who didn’t experience it. They simply weren’t there. For them, any lingering effect from this historic event is a life law.
When Signposts Become Life Laws
Generational signposts can create ripple effects that often lead to the creation of life laws. For example, the 9/11 attacks became a generational signpost for Traditionals, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and those Gen Yers old enough to remember them. For these folks, the events of that day probably cross their minds regularly and have had a significant impact on their lives: from airport security to perceptions of Muslims by non-Muslims to the wistfulness one feels when looking at a picture of the New York skyline sans the World Trade Center towers. For those too young to remember 9/11 and for those born after, however, the subsequent changes in the world will always be life laws. Something to which one doesn’t give much thought.
Not all these ripples are negative. When Meagan was eight years old, she asked her babysitter why she had a small indentation on her left arm. The sitter explained that it was from her smallpox vaccination. Meagan asked, “What is smallpox?” With a tear in her eye, the babysitter replied that it was absolutely wonderful that Meagan had to ask that question. She went on to explain that she had a brother who had suffered from polio during the Great Depression and that polio, along with smallpox, had both been eliminated through massive inoculations of schoolchildren. For the babysitter, the generational signposts of polio and smallpox inoculations, combined with the personal signpost her brother represented, had a great deal of emotional significance for her. For Meagan, it was an interesting story, but not particularly memorable. For Meagan, the absence of those diseases was a life law.
Signposts Affect Everyone—Just Not in the Same Way
Of course, generational signposts are not applicable to every member of a generation in the same way. For example, when we think of young Baby Boomers, images of long-haired students rioting in Grant Park during the 1968 Democratic convention or young people cavorting naked at Woodstock may come to mind. In fact, most young people of the era considered themselves to be much more conservative than those images convey. Most were members of what Richard Nixon’s campaign manager, Pat Buchanan, called the “silent majority.”6 And, it was this group of conservative Republicans who elected Nixon on a campaign promise to “restore law and order”—mostly in response to those unruly student protesters. So in fact, the generational signpost represented by the “silent majority” is as applicable to the Baby Boomer Generation as are the radical ’60s.
Meagan is a member of Generation X. A major generational signpost for Gen X is that many came home after school to an empty house. They would let themselves in with their own key, thus acquiring the title of “latchkey kids.” Meagan was a latchkey kid.
Why did this happen? When Gen Xers were young children, their Baby Boomer parents were coming into their 30s, entering what Daniel J. Levinson and his research team called “the settling down period,”7 when you grow up and start taking responsibility for yourself. They became focused on supporting their families, accumulating wealth, and maximizing what they could accomplish in life. It was as if hippies, previously dedicated to social change and justice for all, had morphed into yuppies, dedicated to long working hours and a new BMW.
Television, ever the barometer of social trends, reflected the change. All in the Family, which was about the clash in values between Baby Boomers and their Traditional parents, gave way to thirtysomething, which focused on Baby Boomers’ fascination with themselves. The no-nonsense Dragnet, whose detectives drove police-issued Chevys and wore sensible shoes, was replaced by Miami Vice, whose detectives drove Ferraris and wore Armani jackets.
The new focus on materialism required more and more families to have both parents working. For this to happen, parents had to give their children a fair amount of independence. When Meagan saw the movie Home Alone, her response was, “What’s the big deal? I was home alone every afternoon from the time I was 8 until I was 18.”
The impact today from the latchkey generational signpost is that Generation Xers tend to be highly independent workers. After all, they’ve been looking after themselves since they were very young. This has powerful implications for those managing them and for those working and living with them. We’ll talk more about that in Chapter 4. On the other hand, not every member of Generation X was a “latchkey kid.” If you’re a Generation Xer, maybe you had your mom or dad waiting for you after school. Or maybe you went to after-school programs or you had a babysitter or you spent time at a friend’s house. Still, it’s likely that you were affected by the latchkey phenomenon. You may have been allowed to ride your bike to the store, take the city bus across town, or walk to the mall alone when you were eight or nine years old—freedoms that, for safety reasons, you might not extend to your own children today.
Likewise, not every Traditional who lived through the Great Depression suffered economic hardship, but anyone immersed in a culture where people all around you were struggling to make ends meet was affected by it.
During the 1930s, Larry’s great aunt Josephine was married to a successful businessman. They lived in one of the biggest and fanciest houses in town. They belonged to the country club, played golf with the mayor, and drove a Buick. Until her death 60 years later, however, Josephine kept the thermostat set at 65 degrees in the winter and 90 in the summer. She reused paper towels until they were in shreds, and she continually reminded Larry and all the other nieces and nephews to save their money. Even though she didn’t experience it much directly, the Great Depression was a generational signpost for her.
Generational Myopia
In our work as organizational consultants, we often hear managers complain that young people today have little or no work ethic. To tar an entire generation with one descriptor misses the tremendous value young people can contribute. Like them or not, young workers are the future of our companies, our communities, and our world. We call this tarring of one generation by another generational myopia.
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary tells us that myopia means “a lack of foresight or discernment: a narrow view of something.” When one generation judges the merits and faults of another through its generational lens, it often takes a narrow view of how that generation thinks.
Let’s suppose you are a Baby Boomer raised to believe that doing a good job means taking responsibility for seeing that your work is complete before you go home. It’s likely you will take offense if you see a young person walk out the door at 5:00 P.M. when some task critical to a project is still undone. First, he’s violating your generational signpost that says, “Grown-ups take responsibility.” Second, he’s violating a generational signpost common to Baby Boomers that we call kumbyaism, which means being a good team player is an absolute must.
Meanwhile, the young person in question has a different perspective. Up until now in his life, if something needed to be done, someone in charge would usually tell him to do it. Consequently, the task is not even on his radar. So, while you are projecting your ire at him, and by proxy, at all young people, he interprets your bristling as the typical weird behavior of old guys. It’s generational myopia raging on both sides.
New Generations of Leaders
Recently, we heard a radio interview with an environmental expert. The host asked him why we should care about environmental issues when the economy is struggling so badly. He replied, “The environment doesn’t care about the economy. The environment will continue to decline or improve regardless of our financial situation.” Likewise, our generational challenges will continue regardless of the economy or the environment. Companies and organizations that ignore this reality do so at their peril. According to a survey of 578 companies by the Boston College Center on Aging and Work, only 33 percent say they have analyzed workplace demographics and made projections about the retirement rates of their workers.8
Because of aging and health issues, fewer and fewer Traditionals remain in the workplace. Meanwhile, Baby Boomers are retiring at an accelerating rate, leaving a gaping hole in America’s management and employment ranks. There are currently approximately 69.2 million Baby Boomers. Simple math tells us that each day, the 10,540 Baby Boomers who turn 60 are thinking about doing something with their lives other than leading or managing in their organizations. Shortages of airline pilots, engineers, doctors, social workers, professors, managers, and senior executives, to name a few, loom on the horizon.
Although this prospect has been delayed by the drastic reduction of retirement nest eggs during the recession that started in 2008, it is coming. Smart companies are preparing Generation Xers and fast-tracking Generation Yers to take the place of disappearing Traditionals and retiring Baby Boomers.
How these folks are led and managed will impact the success of all organizations. According to a survey by Aon Consulting, 60 percent of companies say their business performance is suffering from a failure to prepare workers for leadership.9 As Generation Xers and Generation Yers become the core of the world’s workforce, their values, likes, and dislikes will determine how they respond to any efforts to direct, motivate, and inspire them to perform.
They are looking for something very different from their Baby Boomer predecessors. According to Jobfox.com CEO Rob McGovern,10 the top four motivators for Generation Y are:
1. Balance. “They don’t embrace the value of the Boomer-created, nine-to-five work week. They work best when they can set their own hours.”
2. Leading edge. This generation understands that technology is changing rapidly. If not updated continuously, their skills promptly become obsolete, so they are very interested in continual skill development.
3. Instant contribution. “They do not want to be treated ‘as junior anything.’ They want to begin contributing right away. Companies must do a better job of helping younger workers see how their work is vital and how that work relates to the bottom line of the company.”
4. Stability. Generation Y workers can be loyal team players as long as they can balance work and life goals, gain new learning opportunities, and feel like they are supporting company goals.
McGovern goes on to say that the employers who will be most successful over the next two decades will be the ones who can best inspire and engage this challenging generation. The question is: How ready are you to motivate your Generation Yers and future Linksters?
Larry Comments on Intergenerational Miscommunication
Meagan and I strongly believe that the principles and approaches we describe in this book can be applied to your day-to-day interactions with people of different generations, regardless of where you encounter them. For example, I recently had an encounter with a member of the Traditional Generation, about which I wrote the following story for the e-zine we publish, “Tips For Today’s Managers.” (You can subscribe at no charge by going to http://www.larry-johnson.com.)
Bicycle Seats and Generational Disharmony
I’m an avid cyclist—not very good or very fast, but I like the exercise, and the fresh air you get from riding every day is invigorating. Yesterday, after my standard 12-mile jaunt, I stopped for coffee at Starbucks. Sitting at one of the umbrella-covered tables out front was a group of men who appeared to be from the Traditional Generation. They were all dressed in the same funny-looking bike clothes that I was wearing, so I stopped to talk bikes.
After the usual pleasantries about where we had ridden that day, one of them noticed the seat on my bike, which is one of those skinny, Lance Armstrong types. He said, “At your age, you ought to change out your seat and get one like this,” pointing to his bike. His seat was one of those fat, cushy, gel-covered types with a split in the middle to relieve pressure on the rider’s groin. Real bikers sneer at those miniature La-Z-Boys® as the mark of a beginning biker.
For me, it’s not being a biker snob (although I know I’m guilty of being one). I’ve researched the subject and there are solid reasons why “real” cyclists ride a skinny saddle (the proper term for a bicycle seat):
1. It’s lighter so there’s less weight for the rider to propel.
2. It’s designed for the rider to put his weight on the sit bones that lie under the gluteus maximi, so it forces you to ride in proper position. (If you’re feeling pressure on your groin, you aren’t seated properly.)
3. On rides longer than 10 miles, it doesn’t chafe the way those cushy seats do.
So I replied to the fellow, “Those seats are okay for leisurely riding, but they are killers if you’re going more than 10 miles.” At that point, he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “Suit yourself.” One of the other members of his group then said, “Charlie here ought to know what’s the best seat: He rides 50 miles per day. At 75, he looks like a man in his 50s, don’t you think?”
It was true. Charlie did look young and fit. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring off in another direction in a way that told me he had disengaged from the conversation. I made a few more comments, wished them a good day, and went on my way.
In retrospect, I realize that my quick response to Charlie’s comment had cost me the opportunity to get to know him—to maybe gain a new riding partner—all because I’d jumped in and offered my opinion without ever having given due respect and a fair hearing to his. At that point, instead of engaging in further discussion or debate with me, Charlie had simply written me off as a jerk.
It reminds me that all people want to be heard and to have their opinions respected, but more so the older members of our society. The greatest gift they offer us is the wisdom of their accumulated years—a gift that Charlie offered me and I casually tossed aside in my quest to show him how smart I was.
If I could repeat the conversation with Charlie and his friends, I would do it differently. When he told me that I should get a different saddle, I would have asked him to tell me why he likes the wider saddle. I would have inquired about its features and if there was anything about the seat that he didn’t like. I would have asked him about his riding habits, what his favorite routes are, and if he had tried any other kind of seat. And throughout this inquiry, I would have listened to his opinions and not have argued, denied, or negated anything he said.
Then, once I was sure that Charlie felt like I had truly listened to and respected what he had to say, I would have offered my opinions about the type of saddle I use and why it works for me. My guess is that even then, I probably wouldn’t change Charlie’s mind, but the odds would have risen that he would hear me out with a semiopen mind. And had I done so, maybe I’d have a new biking partner. I guess I’ll never know.
The lesson we can take from this story is simple: You will build better relationships with anyone from any generation when you are willing to listen to that person and respect his or her opinions, even if you disagree. Our journey to respect begins with a better understanding of why the members of different generations think and act the way they do.