How to lead different generations at work

VICTORIA BROWN | FEBRUARY 2023

I get this question a lot - how do I handle managing so many different generations in my team?

We are in a super fascinating era, where we have three generations working alongside each other for the first time. Many of these generational stereotypes tell us that these generations have specific traits and attitudes - Gen Z's are flaky and demanding, Boomers can't text and prefer to call. While there can be value in understanding that the environments in which people grew up may influence their behaviours now - it's also really dangerous to rely on these as leaders.

The challenge here is that by being guided by these stereotypes, we are making wild sweeping assumptions about our people which can influence how we lead them, how they respond to us and ultimately impact your performance (boo!). What will serve you and your team far better is to get to know your teams real attitudes (not just assume you know them) and USE that cognitive diversity to create better solutions and experiences for your customers.

Swap generational bias and stereotypes for inclusion and open communication.

❤️‍🔥 Seek to Understand

•  Spend time with your team, and open up dialogues on important topics that will help you gain insight into their viewpoints. This helps you to push pash stereotypes and really learn about your teams attitudes and preferences. Talk about topics like team culture, life/work balance, communication preferences, learning styles. 
• Challenge harmful stereotypes. UNSUBSCRIBE to the cliche tropes that others might like to swing around, aren't we all sick of hearing about millennials and avocado toast? In reality, we're all different, and we're all similar in various ways. There is absolutely an impact that comes from growing up in different times, for example being a teenager in the 90s is hugely different to being a teenager in the 2010s - but when we rely only on someone's age to tell us about their preferences and attitudes we disregard someones personal experience.
• ⭐️ IDEAS ⭐️
  • Have lunch with a different person in your team each day. Ask them thoughtful questions to get to know more about how they like to work, what about their roles do they love and what do they find challenging.
  • Spend time with yourself, reflecting on your people. Have you applied any stereotypes to them - have they proven them to be relevant/irrelevant? What can you do to create opportunities for your people to shine away from harmful cliches?
  • Build your team's culture together, using a culture map to help reflect on the current state and build toward your ideal state that champions inclusion and diversity.

❤️‍🔥 Create platforms for growth and collaboration

• Create an environment that supports learning and growth. By empowering your team to learn, you can help them move through obstacles or challenges that may exist because of the era they grew up in. When teams learn together, you also strengthen their bond and build trust. 
• Create an environment where it's safe for your team to share openly and be vulnerable. Role model being vulnerable for your team, talk about your mistakes and share your insights. Allow others to make mistakes without fear or punishment - instead focus on what they learnt and how they'll refine the process or concept for next time to avoid the issue. By creating psychological safety, you help people to get to know each other on a real level, breaking through stereotypes and assumptions.
• Use the diversity as an advantage. Do you want the best ideas possible? Do you want to be able to pressure test your concepts from different perspectives? Of course you do - you want to do the best work possible, and having different kinds of people in your team is a MAJOR ASSET. People who think differently, who have different experiences and who can use their cognitive diversity to elevate your team's work will enable you to collaborate effectively on ideas, processes and problems to get better outcomes.
• ⭐️ IDEAS ⭐️
  • Book in a team workshop on a topic that would support your team's performance. Have a discussion with your team before the workshop on what each person would like to get from the day and how can you all support each other through the workshop to learn and grow.
  • In your next team meeting, share a mistake you made and what you learnt from it. 
  • Next time someone in your team makes a mistake, support them through the process, offer insight and ideas with ZERO punishment. After it's been resolved, ask if they would feel comfortable walking everyone through what happened and the insights in your next team meeting. Position this as a win (refined process, better idea), not as a failure (failure is just growth). 
  • Host brainstorms with your team. Whether it's a short "help let's focus on this problem together" or a longer "let's think about our annual strategy" brainstorm, allow everyone to contribute and refine ideas together. 

❤️‍🔥 Ignite people's purpose

• Create ownership of your team's shared goals. We might hear that the younger generations are more flighty or flakey, and don't care about what the team or business has to achieve. I have seen MANY examples to the contrary, and some examples that do align - across all generations actually. The key to get people to actually CARE about what your team has to achieve is to build some ownership and accountability into your processes and how you measure and track performance. 
• Make sure your leadership vision is inspiring. When you lead with vision, you excite people with the possibility of the future, your inspire them with what lies ahead. When done well, your leadership vision and strategic vision drives not only you forward, but also builds your credibility and makes people feel confident to get behind you and help drive towards that goal as well.
• ⭐️ IDEAS ⭐️
  • Share your leadership vision and strategic vision with your team. 
  • Set up a reporting rhythm with your team, and hand over the reins of the meeting to relevant people so they feel proud to present their own results, talk to red flags and challenges and feel like they really own their results. Cheer your team on!
  • Reporting rhythms, visions, strategies - these are topics I cover inside the 12 month Epic Leadership Accelerator Program. Apply now for the next intake.

The key takeaway here for you as a leader is to forget stereotypes and assumptions - instead focus on getting to really know your people, create opportunities to share and learn and collaborate, and make sure you're inspiring them.

VB x

Email me on [email protected] if you have any questions or want to talk more about this topic.