Episode 237 Transcript:

0:00:00 Ramona Shaw: This episode is about how to work well and manage people of younger generations. I want to say, like people in their 20s, which is an overlap between Gen Z as well as Millennials. I’ll talk about some statistics and tips on how to do it well. Here are the two questions this podcast answers. One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted?

0:00:27 Ramona Shaw: Although the competition and the expectations get bigger, this show, The Manager Track podcast, will provide the answers. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection, and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead, so everyone wins and grows. In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate, and act as a confident and competent leader. You know you can be welcome to this episode of The Manager Track podcast.

0:01:00 Ramona Shaw: So in, I want to say, the last four or five months, I have repeatedly heard from clients who are in their 40s, maybe their early 50s, who say, hey, I’m starting to find it difficult to work with people in their 20s. Like, I kind of don’t understand how to communicate with them. I have a difficult time understanding their motives. Their requests just make no sense to me. And I realize that I have to adapt because, you know, the next 20 years that they’re in the workforce and they’re trying to progress as managers and leaders, they also know there’s going to be more millennials that are going to come through the ranks, as well as more people from the Gen Z generation.

0:01:46 Ramona Shaw: And for anyone who is leading and not yet at the tail end of their leadership journey, understanding the intergenerational dynamics and really being curious and interested in how to work well with people who grew up at a different time, who see the world through different set of eyes is really important. And so in this episode I want to highlight a few key themes, interesting facts from research and data, as well as provide some suggestions on how to communicate well intergenerationally and what are some of the things to pay attention to.

0:02:25 Ramona Shaw: With all that said, I also want to really emphasize that there’s simply not one size fits all. Just like if whatever generation you are in, if you look at your coworkers, they’re all motivated by different things. They all have different ambitions, different goals, different levels of work ethic, different interests, different personality types. And the same is true for people of, of younger generations.

0:02:53 Ramona Shaw: And so sometimes actually sort of putting someone into a bucket of, oh, that’s the millennial, or oh, these are people from a different generation can put a label on them that’s not fair and not accurate. And we’re then going to be biased in our conversations with them and in how we observe or judge their performance. And when it comes to discrimination, age discrimination, recognizing that we have these biases across a range of different generations and ages is important.

0:03:25 Ramona Shaw: And so I do really encourage you, if you find yourself in a situation where you feel like, hey, I’m struggling to kind of understand how to work with them, to first think of them as a human being that may just operate differently than you operate and not as a first go to judge them by their age or by their generation. That’s really, really important. Now, with that said, there’s still a few tendencies of things that, that we obviously want to call out, hence your interest of listening to this episode and my interest in sharing some of this information and just bringing that back up and top of mind for you as a listener or a viewer, if you’re checking this out on YouTube.

0:04:09 Ramona Shaw: So we’re just going to start with the basics. The Gen Z generation is born between 1997 and 2012. So the current age of people who follow in that generation is 11 to 26. It’s a pretty wide gap. And which also means that some of them are obviously not in the workforce yet. But if you do work with people who just graduated college and this is their first or among their first couple of jobs in the workforce, then you might have people on your team, people that you work with in the Gen Z generation.

0:04:47 Ramona Shaw: Gen Z is also that first generation that really grew up with smartphones and with social media, and that has definitely impact and sort of shaped their, their review and the context of how they see community and, and their lives overall. The Millennials are also, if we talk about younger generation and now the second generation, where we might feel like, oh, these are people of younger generations, are the Millennials. The millennials were 1981 and 1996, so they’re currently between 28 and 43 years old.

0:05:21 Ramona Shaw: It’s also a pretty wide spectrum for a generation. So if I look at someone who’s 43 to compare them to 28, I think the worldview overall, if you were to stereotypes, is pretty different. So again, goes back to looking at this all with a bit of distance versus really trying to pinpoint and assume that everyone operates the same way. Now, what’s interesting is that the millennials obviously take the biggest share in the workforce today with that age between 28 and 43.

0:05:49 Ramona Shaw: By 2030, we’re expecting about 30% of the workforce to be made up of Gen Z. So that’s a pretty big stake that’s coming into the working age within the next five years or so. Let’s talk about Gen Z first and then I’m going to sort of compare some of these facts or statistics here with what it looks like for Millennials. But what we really recognize for Gen Z and their motives is that a large part of them are seeking purpose driven work.

0:06:17 Ramona Shaw: 86% of Chen Si say that having purpose in their work is pivotal to their well being and satisfaction. And so speaking about well being and satisfaction, when we look at the importance of work life balance, 38% of Gen Z say that that’s a top factor in choosing an employer. It’s only 38%. So what I find interesting is that millennials, when that same question is asked to Millennials, work life balance is a top factor for choosing an employer. 85% of employees in that survey of employees.

0:06:57 Ramona Shaw: So 38% Gen Z, 85% millennials. So that whole conversation around work life balance is really something that’s top of mind for Millennials, more so than it is for Gen Z. Now, similarly interesting is that flexibility is actually more important for change compared to millennials. So 73% of Chen Z wants to have flexible work options. 49% of millennials want to have flexible work options, including remote work. Now, there’s one more data point that I want to quickly call out, which also then leads to some of the problems or challenges that sort of people from older generations have with younger generations, and that is that 70% of Gen Z employees expect a promotion within their first 18 months on the job. Now, I couldn’t find a comparable statistic for the millennials, but career growth opportunities is a priority for 87% of millennials.

0:07:55 Ramona Shaw: So it’s high on both fronts. But the 70% expecting a promotion within 18 years is pretty high. And oftentimes people from older generations, they have a very different approach, approach to that. They may think, no, you’ll work for, I don’t know, five years, three years, until you’re even eligible to have a conversation or to make an ask for Chen Z, this looks different. So sometimes even the way that organizations are structured and the way that titles and promotions are presented and communicated, that may need to be adjusted.

0:08:28 Ramona Shaw: And what most definitely is really important, and now I’m jumping ahead a little bit with giving a suggestion, is the transparency upfront of what A journey, a career journey, a progression journey at the company will likely look like. Because one of the worst things to do is to assume that they have a similar mindset on how long it will take to get a promotion and then never talk about it. You going along assuming that they would not even think about it for at least three years while they’re, you know, six months into the job and they’re like looking at their watch and, you know, tapping on it, it’s like, okay, so when are those promotion cycles and when can I get my next promotion? Now let’s talk about mental health specifically for a few minutes.

0:09:12 Ramona Shaw: Mental health conversations have definitely increased in the workplace where a lot of employees are now looking to get and receive support, or at least like an understanding and awareness of mental health challenges. That could be anxiety, could be depression, it could be burnout, and the list goes on. Oftentimes companies who are sort of, you know, really well prepared and want to address these challenges, they offer trainings that for employees, they offer specific mental health training for leaders, they potentially offer therapy for mental health support as well as the mental health days and just more proactive things to ensure that the employee’s mental health is stable.

0:09:57 Ramona Shaw: And older generations may look at that and think this is nonsense or that it has nothing to do in the workplace and it actually is everyone’s personal and private business. And you might actually really think this is true and right and the way that the world should be. But that is exactly one of those points where we just can’t argue with reality and win the argument. Reality will always win. And the reality is that a lot of younger generations are experienced expecting mental health to be a topic in the workplace.

0:10:30 Ramona Shaw: So more specifically, 92% of Gen Z graduates want to discuss mental health at work. 60% of Gen Z employees expect their managers to care about their well being and for companies to offer mental health resources and support programs. I think Gen Z has really observed the previous generation, the millennials, struggle in the workplace. They know that they’ve seen burnout. They see the statistic that 35% of millennials feel stressed all or most of the time.

0:11:07 Ramona Shaw: They’ve seen the depression, the anxiety, and they’ve seen all that of people who work and then don’t feel good in their lives. They’ve also seen and experienced a lot of mental health challenges as they were growing up and through their teenage years. So to them, that’s part of the regular vocabulary. It’s part of the thing that they’ve been exposed to. And so it comes Natural for them to also say, well, obviously, you know, it’s part of our lives.

0:11:33 Ramona Shaw: And just like our physical health and our learning specific skills, ensuring that we have strong mental health is important and should be important to our employer as well. So with that said, if you have this assumption that mental health is a personal or private topic and has nothing to do in the workplace, you’re probably going to bump into some issues. This is one of those where you really want to try to lean into your curiosity and try to understand where it’s coming from, what they really expect, what really matters to them.

0:12:08 Ramona Shaw: There’s also not only one way to support your employees mental health. You might not need to survey your employees. You might need to survey or have conversations with individuals on your team to better understand what it would actually look like to them to feel really well supported on their mental health. What works for one does not necessarily work for the other. There are cultural differences, there are age differences, and there’s also differences across industries or professions.

0:12:36 Ramona Shaw: That’s what research shows. But that’s also what we at Covus when working with different generations on topics like this. As a caring and driven manager, I know you want to strengthen your leadership skills, advance your career and lead a high performing, engaged team. And in order to do that as a leader, you need to lead with a system, not by shooting from your hips or reacting to everyone else around you.

0:13:01 Ramona Shaw: To do so, you need to first learn what should go into your leadership system and second, develop your own. But here’s the good news. I created a concise, actionable and yet comprehensive course on one component of the leadership system. And this is about how to successfully run one on one meetings with your direct reports. It includes over 67 minutes of tactical leadership training plus a set of resources to make this as easy and immediately applicable for you as possible.

0:13:30 Ramona Shaw: You can get your hands on this course, which I want every single manager to have for a nominal $19 at ramonashaw.com 11. That’s two times the number one. You can check the show notes for the details or head on over to ramonajah.com11 and get started right away. And so speaking of curiosity, when we really lean into it and we also try to see individuals as individuals with their own needs. We want to get over the assumptions and often sort of misconceptions that younger generations are either unproductive or lazy, that they don’t have a strong work discipline, that they don’t want to have a job or they, they are entitled and they want to get a promotion really quickly and only need instant gratification and never want to pick up the phone and talk to anyone. They just rather be behind the screen and do everything over text and that they’re disrespectful or rude or some kind of other things that you might add to the list.

0:14:31 Ramona Shaw: All these beliefs and all these statements will just create further gaps between you and them. And so the more that we lean into and we label people or we feel affirmed in our beliefs that younger people somehow are not ready for the workforce or not really up to our standards, the harder this will be. So if you do want to work well with other generations and you recognize that you have to in order to do well in your job, then the very first thing to do is really change your mindset about it.

0:15:05 Ramona Shaw: Younger generations are incredibly creative, they’re innovative, they bring new perspectives to your organization. Many of them have really strong work ethic and are actually very committed and ambitious. There are plenty of examples of that out there. And of course there’s also examples of people who don’t have good work ethic or are very rigid about their work life boundaries as much as there are people of generations like the older millennials, Gen X or even baby boomers where we see similar discrepancies.

0:15:38 Ramona Shaw: So leaning into trying to focus on the strength that they display and the new perspectives that they bring into the or the organization, that’s really where we want to anchor all this work. And then of course there are a few additional suggestions that I want to share in how to work and manage them. Well, given that there are definitely discrepancies that you notice and how you see the world versus someone who’s younger will see the world. So a few suggestions.

0:16:03 Ramona Shaw: One, find opportunities to do reverse mentoring where you and or other people of older generations will be mentored by people of younger generations, where you’re trying to exchange information, insights, where you’re going into this reverse mentoring, actually asking questions in order to see the world through their eyes for a little bit. And then in that mentoring conversation, you might also be able to let them see the world through your eyes.

0:16:34 Ramona Shaw: But the primary objective is for older generations to understand younger generations and their needs and their desires. So that’s one. Another one is to encourage intergenerational collaboration. So if you do have people of different generations on your team, maybe like put two people together for an initiative or a project and call out that the reason why you want them to work together is because you want to enlist the strength of someone from the younger generation. Hey, it’s maybe a fresh set of eyes like they don’t yet know how this industry works and they may come up with a creative ideas that is what you expect for them to bring to the table.

0:17:14 Ramona Shaw: And then from your more experienced person, you might ask to bring in a different strength. They might be sort of industry knowledge, or it might be attention to detail, or it might be understanding the organizational processes to push initiatives to the finish line. Call out the specific strengths that you want them to display in the intergenerational collaboration. The third one is to recognize people’s achievements and identify growth opportunities.

0:17:42 Ramona Shaw: Younger generations, they do want to get recognized more so than older generations. This is my personal experience and our research supports that as well. If you don’t already do this and know how to really leverage this leadership toolkit of recognition and praise and acknowledgement and appreciation, then you’re missing out. It’s not just to say good job or well done. That’s not it. You really want to call out efforts, strength, specific things that they displayed. You want to use that one to one communication channel where you tell them directly. You want to provide peer recognitions, you want to do indirect recognitions to provide visibility.

0:18:26 Ramona Shaw: There are a number of different ways to do this. We teach this in our leadership programs or in our workshops on giving feedback and praise. That lens. Knowing how to do this well will become increasingly important. The same is true with providing growth opportunities. And again, that goes back to the transparency of laying out what a typical growth pattern would look like and what you’re assessing someone’s performance on.

0:18:51 Ramona Shaw: If you say like, hey, you know, within a couple of years, you know the next step from being an analyst to become an associate. But you don’t say what the difference is between the analyst on your team and the associate on your team. You’re only providing half the story. So, okay, here’s what we expect from an analyst. When you master all of this, we’re going to look for you to do more of, you know, this other thing, you know, work Work scope B.

0:19:18 Ramona Shaw: And when you demonstrate mastery of Work scope A and an eagerness and willingness as well as initial sort of affinity to also succeed with Work scope B, that is when we will start to initiate conversations for a promotion. But these are, this is exactly what we’re looking for. And be as transparent and clear about this as possible. Ideally you can write this all down and just share with people not just after you’ve hired them, but also at least high level during the interview process. So that was my third suggestion. The fourth One is to be really clear on expectations.

0:19:54 Ramona Shaw: We work with a lot of our leaders on their leadership philosophy, not just so that they are grounded in their values and their principles, but also so that they are prepared to articulate what it will look like to succeed and to work well on their team. If you’re someone and you say to work on this team, the only way to be successful is if you’re willing to get work done, even if it takes an hour later to be willing to travel on short notice, be willing to come into the office one day, two days, three days a week.

0:20:29 Ramona Shaw: These are expectations of what it will require for you to work well and succeed in the team, the job, or the organization at large. If you can’t lay that out upfront and again during the hiring process, not after someone has started, you might attract the wrong people. But you’re saying, like, hey, here’s an invitation. Read it. And if that sounds awful to you and not something you want to sign up for, then this is not the job or I am not going to be the right leader for you.

0:21:02 Ramona Shaw: I want to be very clear with my language here. I’m not saying that you have only one way to lead and you’re being very sort of like firm and stubborn about this is how it’s going to be. It’s going to be this way and nothing else. That would not work well. I am saying, though, that you set expectations and then you’re still flexible to support people differently on your team or to adapt to certain circumstances.

0:21:26 Ramona Shaw: But overall, you’re setting the tone for what it will be like. So being very clear with those expectations is really important. Then there’s two more that I want to mention. One is about providing as much flexibility as you can. Yes, not everyone has remote work set up. More and more companies are sort of trying to ask people to come back to the office. You might have certain work hours where they just need to be on the desk, but wherever you can provide flexibility to let people work in the evenings or early mornings, but then take a longer lunch break or pick up their kids from school, or do things on their own terms, especially for, again, younger generations, that is very meaningful and a perk that they appreciate more so than others.

0:22:13 Ramona Shaw: So for you, the routine of the 9 to 5 or the very routine process of commuting to the office and home is beneficial and you don’t mind it. Do not assume that other people see it the same way. For them, a flexible lifestyle may be way more important than you could imagine. So that’s one and the last one I want to mention is to adjust to their need for having purpose. Now, great for you if you’re working in a purpose driven, mission driven organization where you might say, hey, we’re creating a product from plastic waste and we have a very specific environmental cause and mission that drives us.

0:22:52 Ramona Shaw: That drives us. Good for you if you do, because it’s helpful, because you might attract very mission driven, purpose driven employees from those younger generations who love that. The reality though is that most of us don’t work in a very mission or purpose driven organization. Now we can look for purpose and mission within what we do. So, for example, I used to work in the private equity field and one of the ways to call out the purpose is, hey, we’re providing retirement money for our clients, the end clients.

0:23:25 Ramona Shaw: Now, of course, there was like three layers in between, you know, us, my company at the time, and then the ultimate recipient of the retirement money. But still, that connection was good to see. Recognizing, hey, the profits that we’re making with our work actually also benefits these retirees who are depending on a pension. So big picture, like, how is the organization supporting the wellbeing of people, the planet and so forth.

0:23:55 Ramona Shaw: But also look closer to your specific team. How is your team supporting other teams? Supporting customers or vendors, or streamlining things like, what is the actual purpose of your team being there? And then what’s the purpose of your role? That’s first, but then also what’s the purpose of the role where you have those employees in and making sure that they understand the purpose of that role and how it contributes to your team and then how that team contributes the bigger organization.

0:24:30 Ramona Shaw: It seems common sense, but it’s not common practice to lay that out clearly for employees. And if you’ve been with your organization for a long time, you might not even realize that for someone starting in your organization, there’s such a disconnect between what they’re doing and what the company is doing. Whereas for you, you’ve had years in building up that institutional knowledge and understanding the industry.

0:24:55 Ramona Shaw: And to them, they may just feel like, okay, I’m clocking in and I’m typing up a document. But I really do not see the bigger picture. So as a leader, you have to lean into these conversations, shape it, be super explicit, often repeated or reiterated whenever you delegate work or train them on new things to call out the purpose of the role, the task, and the bigger and the end, the bigger picture. Okay, so these were some practical suggestions on how to work well with younger generations.

0:25:22 Ramona Shaw: And I’m going to emphasize one more time, not everyone is going to fit into this bucket. So it’s really important not to stereotype as your first go to, but to look at the individual you’re actually working with and try to understand them as a person and then only as you sort of like take a step back and you might say okay, and I do want to get to know that generation more broadly so that I or we as a team or an organization can systematically develop retention strategies or hiring strategies in order to attract and retain employees and support them in their growth while keeping them satisfied and engaged at work. If you have any specific questions around this or scenarios that you’d like some additional help with, please check out the AMA link in the Show Notes to submit your question and I will address it in a future podcast.

0:26:14 Ramona Shaw: If you’re looking for more information or training materials for your team or your organization on the topic of working across different generations, please reach out to us@contactarcova.org thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll be back with another episode of The Manager Track podcast next week. Bye for now. If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with.

0:26:39 Ramona Shaw: This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out@archova.org/ Masterclass. The second resource is my best selling book, the Confident and Competent New Manager how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out@archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. You can find all those links in the Show Notes down below.