Perception Is Reality

When the list was complete, I posed two questions.

1. 1. How many of you heard other people share a perception about a generation that you 100 percent agreed with?

Most of the participants raised their hand.

1. 2. How many of you heard other people share a perception about a generation that you 100 percent disagreed with?

Most of the participants raised their hand.

Whatever their opinions, they were 100 percent convinced.

Then came the make-or-break moment when I would either win them over or be asked to leave:

“Now how would you feel if I did this?” I grabbed the big red flipchart marker and crossed off the word millennial and replaced it with the words black people.

An instant silence came over the room. The air was thickly uncomfortable, and I let the silence speak. After what felt like five minutes, but was surely less than 10 seconds, I finally asked, “Now that I have changed the labels, is it not immediately obvious how inappropriate this exercise has been? When I write black people at the top of the page and the adjectives below include words like spoiled, lazy, or need praise, it becomes instantly painful to read and ridiculous to contemplate. Yet we are perfectly comfortable labeling people of different ages. Why is that? Is it because when we talk about race we understand that we should not and must not classify millions of people with character traits—desirable or undesirable—based on only one common denominator? And yet when we talk about millennials or baby boomers or generation Xers, we do it all the time. How have we come to accept that everyone in this generation is the same? The only thing these 80 million people have in common is an age bracket that is 20 years long.”

The first raised hand went up, and I braced for the worst. A woman, who looked to be in the baby boomer generation, stood and said: “I am so glad you said that. The exercise was really uncomfortable for me, and I couldn't pinpoint why. Now I get it. I've been to a lot of these generational talks, and this is the first time I've heard this side of the story. Usually, they talk about what makes us different.”

Another hand went up. A man this time, who also looked to be a baby boomer, stood up. I could tell he was not on board yet. “You know, that may be true for most of these generalizations, but there are things you simply can't deny. For example, millennials are way more tech-savvy than traditionalists. They're into social media, and that's a fact.”

I asked the man if he was on Facebook. He said he was, explaining: “I joined so I can look at pictures of my grandchildren.” Then I asked him if he would be surprised to learn that I, a millennial (who works at a high-tech company, no less), have never had a Facebook account. Then I asked him if he had heard of the CEO of Oracle, Larry Ellison, a member of the silent generation who probably has a thing or two to say about being tech-savvy. He laughed and sat down.

Another man raised his hand and introduced himself as Sam. “I see your point,” he said, “but there are some things I see in my own experience working with my millennial colleagues. There's a kid in my office who always has earbuds in. He has those earbuds in even when he walks to the Xerox machine. That is totally antisocial.”

A millennial in the audience spoke up before I could respond. “You know, I have earbuds in all day long at my job, but 90 percent of the time there's nothing playing. I use my earbuds as my phone headset. I don't want to go through the hassle of pairing Bluetooth on and off for a regular headset, so it's just an easier way to be hands-free when I answer the phone. I don't even notice them anymore. It never occurred to me that it might seem antisocial to some people.”

A second millennial in the audience chimed in, “I have earbuds in all the time too, but I am listening to music. I need music. I grew up in the projects in a really chaotic home, and the only way for me to focus is if I can listen to music while I work. I'm just trying to do my best.”

It was a powerful moment for me to watch Sam learn of two possible reasons why his millennial colleague might have earbuds in all day. It might have nothing to do with being antisocial.

Sam had heard somewhere in our pseudo-scientific, intergenerational pop culture that millennials are antisocial. Then he saw a millennial wearing earbuds and assumed it was because he did not want to socialize at work. It is possible that was the case, but there are also ten other possibilities Sam had not considered.

Ask the Gen-Experts

In recent years, an entire cottage industry of experts has arisen looking to throw light on these issues, but the results are vague and the research contradictory. Generation profiling is rampant in business and the media. “Experts” in generational issues, whom I like to call gen-experts, are writing books and articles, creating institutes and selling seminar tickets. In effect, they are selling their opinions to consumers hoping to find answers to complex questions—questions that seem new but have long been with us. Authors cannot even agree on which names to apply to the various generations. Millennials are sometimes called generation Y; traditionalists are also the silent generation; and generation X are often called baby busters. The catchy names are misleading, but they sell books.

Not only does each generation have several labels, but there are a couple of generations that share labels. Some authors call baby boomers “GenerationMe,” but others apply that same name to millennials. According to the gen-experts, there are two entire generations, amounting to 156 million people, that tend toward the egocentric by prioritizing “Me”'. In their book, Managing the Millennials, Chip Espinoza, Mick Ukleja, and Craig Rusch (2010) called generation X the MTV generation; but Lynne Lancaster (2004) also used the term “MTV Generation” to label millennials. And what is an MTV generation anyway? Does watching MTV really define anyone?

Along with the confusion created by label making and name calling, the defining characteristics of each generation also change from author to author. For example, Neil Howe, one of the founders of generational studies, argues that millennials yearn for job security and want opportunities to advance within a single organization. However, in Keeping the Millennials, Joanne Sujansky and Jan Ferri-Reed warn that companies must cater to millennials or face high levels of turnover. Which one is it? Which option better fits an entire generation of 76 million people?

Other titles on the subject range from the positive (Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, by Neil Howe and William Strauss) to the not-so-positive (Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y, by Bruce Tulgan). Depending on the author, different perspectives with different labels define any one generation.

Few authors provide any quantitative research to support their claims on generational differences. Most of their research is done through case studies, interviews, and observation. For example, Howe and Strauss claim that generation X is the “latchkey kid” generation. They argue that having experienced high rates of parental divorce, they are a more cynical and depressed generation. That may strike a guilty chord in some baby boomers' hearts, but are there any data to support the claim?

Further, the president of the Generational-Targeted Marketing Corporation says generation X is the generation of “out-of-the-box thinkers,” whereas Espinoza, Ukleja, and Rusch state that millennials are the ones who think out of the box. Does that mean that baby boomers do their thinking inside the box? Here we have a useless metaphor when two entire generations of Americans, amounting to 156 million people (or about half of the United States population), are described as thinking out of the box.

One of the most striking contradictions among the gen-experts deals with defining the generation that volunteers the most. Howe and Strauss called millennials the “volunteer generation,” but Johnson and Johnson assign that label to baby boomers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics disagrees with both of them. Apparently, people aged 35–44 years old are most likely to volunteer (29.8 percent). That is generation X.

With so many gen-experts putting people into carelessly labeled, mythical boxes, how one perceives millennials or any labeled generation is influenced by the latest book read.

The Need for Information

We are acutely aware that society is changing due primarily to the seismic impact of technology in our lives, and we need to understand our changing world. Most of us have the best of intentions when we try to understand our colleagues who, for whatever reason, are different from us. Hence, the plethora of books, articles, and seminars on generational issues that are hungrily consumed by a confused populace. The gen-experts say that the multigenerational workforce is creating new dynamics to which we must adjust. However, these attitudes toward different generations are neither unique nor new. Long before the Internet, humans struggled to relate to one another across age lines. Texts from more than 2,000 years ago describe these same challenges:

Children … no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs.… The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise.

Kenneth John Freeman, quoting ancient texts, Dissertation published in 1907 (commonly misattributed to Socrates)

In this information age, when everyone can have a blog or a podcast, a veritable cottage industry has arisen to help us cope with the differences we experience among generations. Armed with good intentions, we define each other in order to understand each other. However, in so doing we oversimplify the complexity of human behavior. We are more comfortable defining the world around us in black-and-white terms rather than living in the discomfort of gray.

In this book, I hope to help you find comfort in the gray. Many millennials are lazy. Many others are not. Many others are sometimes lazy and sometimes not, and many others are lazy about certain things and not lazy about other things. The same can be said for any stereotype applied to any generation. You will not find easy answers in this book but, rather, tools to understand the deeply complex people in your life, regardless of the 20-year-long—generally accepted but largely arbitrary—age bracket they happen to fall within.