Episode 3: Navigating the multigenerational workplace

In the third episode of From the Mall, we're discussing a significant moment: There are five generations interacting with each other in the workplace. For the first time!

Is it chaos? It doesn't have to be (even though our immediate assumption might suggest that generational differences do indeed make things more complicated at work). Associate professor Leah Georges, PhD, BA'06, has researched the topic, she's conducted presentations and she delivered a Ted Talk in 2018 that's tallied nearly three million views.

Georges shares her insight on the multigenerational workplace and how we can navigate it without falling back on stereotypes and assumptions.

 

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Meet our guest

Episode 3 transcript

LEAH GEORGES

A generation's part of our conversation. It is part of who I am. It explains maybe how I was raised and in the world that I was raised and maybe the lens that I come to work with, but it doesn't predict necessarily how or who I will be at work. We're using it to make predictions, to make decisions about policies or assumptions about how I as Leah might best work here. That's when it becomes a little bit more challenging. 

JON NYATAWA

Welcome into From the Mall, a podcast where we share stories from the Creighton community that showcase achievements and impact is now on. I'm your host, Jon Nyatawa.

On today's episode, we're joined by Dr. Leah Georges, an associate professor at Creighton and the program director of the university's Interdisciplinary Leadership Doctoral Program. We're tapping into Dr. Georges’ expertise to learn more about generational differences in the workplace. Dr. Georges has led presentations for organizations and companies on the topic, and she delivered a TED Talk in 2018 that has tallied nearly 3 million views.

With five generations now coexisting in the workplace for the first time, we're discussing how labels shape perceptions, why the media portrays these differences as workplace chaos and how we can shift from conflict to curiosity. Dr. Georges will also share practical insights on fostering, understanding, adaptability and what she calls generational humility in our daily work.

Thrilled today to welcome Leah Georges here on the podcast. Leah, thank you. 

LEAH GEORGES

Oh, my pleasure. 

JON NYATAWA

Excited to kind of pick your brain a little bit today about the multi-generational workplace. It's a significant moment. Why is it so significant? What's relevant about our conversation here? Five generations working together? How significant is that? 

LEAH GEORGES

That's right. Well, I come from a place of practicality, but I'm also an academic. So the things that I come to this conversation with are based on my own experience, the things I hear about in the real world outside of the academy, but also I dig into what the literature tells us and some of these ideas, and I think it's something we've been talking about for a really long time, but we do have five generations interacting in the workplace for the first time in modern history at least.

And so it's something to talk about and it's really easy to assign meaning to something that's simple. If I see a difference in the workplace around technological expertise or even the way we speak to each other, we're very quick to try and figure out why that difference exists. And for whatever reason, we've gone to a difference in the year we were born, if you will, around why these differences exist. And then we assign meaning to them. Typically that meaning isn't particularly positive. I'm really happy to work with as many boomers or millennials or Gen Xers, and anytime we see a challenge, we like to assign a meaning to it to make sense. And for whatever reason, we've really latched onto this idea that these differences in ages are creating chaos. And I'm not entirely sure that's the case. 

JON NYATAWA

Yeah, it's interesting because if you do look at, and you've made mention in in your many talks and presentations about if you look at the way that media covers this topic, it is very much like workplace chaos, disaster. The battlefield, I think is a term you hear a lot, which kind of puts a negative spin on it right from the get go. 

LEAH GEORGES

That's right. 

JON NYATAWA

And you have no way to avoid it if you're curious about it even. 

LEAH GEORGES

That's right. If you look at a lot of the books and the blog titles and podcast episodes, none of them are framed around how we get along. It’s how to control a generation or how to prepare for a generation to come to work. And you're exactly right that there's very little out there that says, we're OK, let's start from a place where we are fine, and then let's try and make it better. But instead it comes from, here's what we're going to have to do around the clash between these generations.

And if you look at the books, they're using language like clash, wave of, chaos. And I think, well, as a now-millennial coming to work for the first time, I remember thinking, everybody hates me already because I'm seeing the same things that these folks that are hiring me are saying, which is, I'm lazy, I'm entitled, I don't want to work hard, and I want to raise right away and I haven't even started. So I think we're setting ourselves up for something that might not be quite as dramatic as maybe academics tells us is the case. 

JON NYATAWA

Along those same lines, we'll get to the positives in a second, but I did just want to mention, because I thought it was really funny, a moment in your TED Talk where you typed in the Google a generation millennial boomers and just like Google's AI autofill the rest, and the response is where you put boomer in, it's all negative for millennial, it auto fills all negative. So I guess that's what we're Googling or that's what Google thinks that we want to know is why millennials are lazy.

 

LEAH GEORGES

Right? Well, when I did those Google searches some years ago, I look now every now and then too just to see if there's solid updates or if it's changed or if everything is now more positive than it used to be. It's not. But every result, regardless of what generation you search, had the word stupid in it result. Why are boomers stupid? Why is Generation X stupid? And I don't like to say the word because there's no probable way that we are all a bunch of idiots running the world. And so again, I think we just start from this place of everything's on fire, let's figure out how to put it out as opposed to, we might be fine. Let's just start from there first. 

JON NYATAWA

So if we start from there, maybe what is your sort of advice to maybe a leader, organizational leader, company leader who's saying I think that this generational diversity within our organization is awesome. I want to maximize is what do I do? 

LEAH GEORGES

Well, the first thing I think I would say is let's think about whether generations exist in the first place. We kind of assume when we use this nomenclature or language around, well, these boomers or these Xers or millennials or Gen Z now coming to work, we automatically have these presuppositions or stereotypes about each of these groups. But we're making this big assumption that these groups exist, and I'm not entirely sure they do, at least in the way that popular press has asked us to believe. We are making assumptions that 20 years worth of folks born within 20 years of each other want the same things at work, believe the same things, have the same propensities. And I think it's really challenging. If I looked at any of my students and I said, Hey, we are exactly the same, me as a 40-year-old, them as a 21-year-old, they would disagree all day. 

But that's what these generations are assuming is that we are identical because we're within this 20-year span of time, give or take. If you look at any of the people doing this work, nobody agrees on who's in which generation. So I might be complaining about a baby boomer or a Gen Xer or a millennial, and we're talking about different people. If you look at 13 research articles, which is where I spend a lot of my time, you find 11 different demarcations of who is in which generation. So we might not even be talking about, complaining about, or comparing the same folks. So I think the first step I always tell people is, let's take a step back and say, are we talking about the same people? And if we are, we're talking about an average. And if we know anything, no one person is that average. And so when we start using these stereotypes, it really doesn't help us to make these decisions exactly as you're talking about because it requires us to stereotype or generalize around these groups of folks that I don't think are quite as clear cut as people really like to talk about them. 

JON NYATAWA

So it almost takes, I mean, the one thing, I don't want to be, oh, stereotypes are good, but sometimes they do help with categorizing.

LEAH GEORGES

Absolutely. 

JON NYATAWA

Okay. If my organization, I'm mapping out who I have in my workforce, it helps to kind of put people in buckets. But there's also, as you're saying sort of a little bit, there's consequence. 

LEAH GEORGES

That's right. Yes. 

JON NYATAWA

It might be an easy sort of method, but 

LEAH GEORGES

Right. Anecdotally, generational differences exist. There's no person I've ever come across in this work that said, I've never had a challenge with somebody from a different generation. And I assign that challenge because of a difference in generation that happens anecdotally, these things exist all over the place. I lead a doctoral program where the average age of a student that begins my program is 42 years old. And so we have a range of 25 to 82 years old in the program. And for me to assume that all of those folks have the same shared experiences would not be right or fair, and it would belittle what they bring to the classroom around those experiences, they do exist. They're not quite as dramatic, I would say, as popular press would like us to believe that they are. Now, certainly there's something to be said about the average 25-year-old, the average 45-year-old, 65-year-old desire, some of the same things maybe outside of work. But when we start making assumptions about how I like to work remotely in person, I like to hand write my notes. I would prefer to type my notes. I would rather talk on the phone. I would rather email.

JON NYATAWA

You sound like a boomer, 

LEAH GEORGES

Right? Thank you. See, I think I am. And when people say 

JON NYATAWA

Stereotypically, speaking.

LEAH GEORGES

That's right. And when people make some of these assumptions, we have an idea in mind of who that person is, but then we just don't take the time to figure out who that person really is, if that makes any bit of sense. So you're spot on. Making decisions based on wide swaths of people can be a shortcut and oftentimes useful, but it sort of excuses the opportunity to get to know you as a person who might happen to have a generation as well. 

JON NYATAWA

And I kind of brought up company organizational leaders, leadership. But I mean, I think I've heard you say that there's kind of a responsibility for everyone, no matter your generation, to sort of go in with an open mind, kind of exactly what you're saying. Let's see the actual person that I'm talking to and not just make an assumption based on, oh, you've been with the company 30 years, you're going to have these sort of perceptions or desires or goals. Let me get to know you. That's right. So it doesn't necessarily just have to be the vice president or the president or the CEO who's making these steps. It's everyone. 

LEAH GEORGES

Oh yeah. I mean, positional leadership is important. The folks that hold positions that write and guide policy, but it's for up to everybody else in an organization, big or small, to live into those things. And how we do it and with whom we do it is ultimately often up to us and then our responsibility to lead well or poorly with whoever we share space with. And so if I've decided immediately you are who you are because you fit some characteristics or stereotype based on something I've read or I've heard, or maybe I've even experienced with somebody else, I've already lost the opportunity to work well with you because I don't know you. And that's I think where the key is a generation's part of our conversation. It is part of who I am. It explains maybe how I was raised and in the world that I was raised and maybe the lens that I come to work with, but it doesn't predict necessarily how or who I will be at work. We're using it to make predictions, to make decisions about policies or assumptions about how I as Leah might best work here. That's when it becomes a little bit more challenging. 

JON NYATAWA

So that's a challenge. What are the other challenges that maybe, I mean, that might exist at this moment that people are talking about that you hear about when this sort of conversation comes up, what challenges are brought up? 

LEAH GEORGES

Yes. Well, we talked about some, right? So I think it's easy to talk about people. It's much harder to talk with people. And when I hear people stereotyping each generation, my concern is that they are making broad decisions based on it. I still hear people say, well, those damn millennials, those damn millennials. And it just sort of makes me cringe because I want to yell, we're 40 with bad knees and mortgages. We are so far past the everybody-gets-a-ribbon generation that the millennial generation kind of got a bad rap for. Some of it was true, right? But I don't think it was quite as pervasive as people thought.

So I think we're still using some of these old models of assumption to decide on the behalf of others how they will be in a particular space. I mean, we still see millennials are lazy, they're entitled, they want to raise because they showed up on time. Gen Z, the newest generation coming to work. We're still trying to figure out what makes them tick in the workplace, what they come, what they bring, what they're most interested in. I have the pleasure of sharing space with them here at Creighton University in classrooms walking around. I believe they're going to change the world. I have the privilege of watching them figure out how to do it.

We still hear Gen Xs, the independent generation, the first that really had to fend for themselves. They're particularly bothered by the millennial generation, the sort of everybody gets a medal generation, the teamwork idea, they love the Xers generation really didn't have that privilege. It's the first generation that experienced both parents working outside the home, came from school, started dinner, and so they value that independence. And when they see others that aren't practicing it, that might be a little triggering for them. Boomers, similarly, they're getting this wrap of being annoyed with everybody else.  I also think they're a generation that is sitting right on the edge of retirement if they haven't already and they're watching organizations they built and maybe still own fall into hands that they want to make sure are taking care of what they created. The boomer generation is the first that created the term workaholic. It comes from that time in history. And when we talk with boomers, again here I go, on average, all of these stereotypes are not helpful, but they help us create a story. Help when you give somebody from this generation an amount of work that is the work. It's not 9 to 5, whatever I can get done, but this is my job, is this pile of work. And when they see perhaps somebody else or another generation say, what? I work 9 to 5, those are my contract hours. Why would I ruin the rest of my time outside of work? That can be very frustrating.

JON NYATAWA

It's something that I don't know as a 38-year-old probably didn't think, haven't thought about enough, just the idea that generations before me who are still working have been working for a long time and they've seen the workplace change dramatically. I mean even in the last five years, we've all seen that. But to think about just that term workaholics, that sort of framework of how you're going to approach your job and how that has shifted over time. And then with newer, younger employees also sort of shifting maybe a company culture or a company direction. And meanwhile, people who've been with that company for 20 years plus or who've just been working for that long are sitting there, wait a second, I didn't have that.

LEAH GEORGES

I didn't have this privilege. Right? And I think part of that is exactly the case. I mean, most boomers have been working every day with the exception of holidays and the likes since they were 14 years old. And so when they see people coming in asking for things they didn't have the privilege to ask for, the reaction is one of two and many other things is, how dare you? Who do you think you are? Which I understand. Or less often, but occasionally, what if we did that? What if I would've had that opportunity? Would my trajectory look a little bit different and better or more enjoyable? And it's that humility to sort of think about how it could feel a little bit different. 

JON NYATAWA

How do we inspire one another to embrace you use the term humility. I think you've also talked about generational humility is sort of a concept. How do we inspire our coworkers, our bosses, to sort of embrace that concept? 

LEAH GEORGES

Yes. Well, if you figured out, let me know. That's tricky. But generation of humility, humility isn't a new idea. I think about humility as not thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less. It's considering the perspective of others. CS Lewis tells us a lot of these ideas, humans are 99.9% exactly the same. Biologists here at Creighton University can tell us a lot more about that than I can, but we know they're 99.9% the same. You and I are 99.9% exactly the same. Now, that does not mean we are going to say, see, it doesn't matter. These differences between us aren't real. They're no big deal. Let's just find the common space. I would argue the 0.1% that does create that distinction. Difference doesn't mean bad, it means different. It is where the magic happens. That's where we get to share space with other people from our generation or otherwise and say, what makes you tick? 

I saw you show up to work a little late today and last week. What's going on? And that's when we learn, when we meet somebody where they are that they can't drop their kids off until 8:45 for school. They have to be at work at 9, but it's 20 minutes away from drop off. Meeting somebody in that space helps us get to know that person, not as that lazy, entitled, insert whatever here, but instead, a person that has a morning just like I do sometimes. And so, the generational humility, the way I conceptualize it or think about it is that 0.1% is our, I would argue, our obligation to explore. And then get to know and then lean into and say, ah, you do that differently than me. Explore it with curiosity, not criticism.

I think oftentimes kids teach us a lot about this, and I didn't think about this much until I had my own kids. Where oftentimes we see something different and we say, Ugh, I hate it. What is it? As my kids explore new food, sometimes I hate it. What is it? Well, what if we look at that difference or distinction with joyful curiosity, asking about it as opposed to saying it's different and so it's wrong. That curiosity, that 0.1%, where we can say, I'm going to explore it, but I do not have a goal of deciding whether I like it or I don't. That doesn't mean we have to decide if I'm going to like the difference or not like the difference. It frees us up to say, I'm just going to explore it. And once I have some understanding of it, whether I agree or I don't, I just walk away. And it helps us create those moments where I see you, you a person, not the generation, not whatever showed up in that space, but you as a soul with a heartbeat that says, I just got to explore your onlyness, your uniqueness with a little bit of joyful curiosity. And then I don't have to decide if I like it or I don't. That's not the point. 

JON NYATAWA

Onlyness, that's the term. I remember you saying that in your TED Talk. 

LEAH GEORGES

Yeah, that's Nilofer Merchant’s idea. She's amazing. She talks about onlyness as the spot in the world only you stand. And it's different from uniqueness. It doesn't sort of other a person. It's centers a person. And when we can lean into that onlyness, I think that's when we find that 0.1%, we have to go forward with that goal of curiosity to explore others in our own. 

JON NYATAWA

Let's pivot a little bit. How does the power dynamic that currently exists in most organizations impact our conversation? So perhaps there could be a group of employees, generations don't matter, that are into this idea. I want to explore our onlyness. But there's another group that's like, look, we've been doing this the way it is, it is fine. Let's just get our work done. And maybe that group happens to be the group that has been there the longest and article I read said 50% of companies, organizations are owned or run by boomers at the moment. So the longer you've been working, more than likely, the higher you are. So older generations have the power. How does that impact this conversation? 

LEAH GEORGES

Yeah, I think that's really, well, it's astute to notice. So older generations have the power, right? Air quotes, power meaning run the organization, own the organization. But millennials are the most represented generation in the workforce as of something like 2016. So although the people running organizations might identify with the boomer sort of stereotype, most people working in them are not. And so it's that idea of creating onlyness in a space where it doesn't have to be a directive. It's not something that should or will very often come from the top. It will never be a policy.

It is something I can practice sitting here with you. I can practice walking down the Mall. I can practice in my cubicle. I can practice walking to the parking lot with an employee that I've never met. And say, tell me about you. Oh, tell me more about that. I've never heard about that. I'd love to hear more. Or walking up an elevator where we can teach each other some small thing. Hey, I just want you to know, I noticed in that meeting the way that you responded to Steve or Sarah, and I'd never thought about that perspective, and I just want you to know, I noticed it was a good thing. And so just because these organizations are run by any particular dynamic or generation doesn't mean that necessarily requires me to not practice that one-on-one work with people that I share space with. 

JON NYATAWA

Creighton is such a great place for you to do to be thinking about this.

LEAH GEORGES

It’s a great place. Yeah. Oh, I know it's a gift. It's a privilege I get to play in this space. Yeah. 

JON NYATAWA

I mean, first off, we have a lot of bright and outstanding students that are walking campus, so we get to see them. They're not necessarily at work, but then again, they kind of are, it's their first introduction maybe to responsibilities. 

LEAH GEORGES

Think about this place. I think about a university as sort of a hotbed of generational conversations. I don't have to go very far to find a place where every generation is represented. Most organizations don't have every generation there for whatever reason. If you come to this institution, we've got Gen Zers starting college, we've got millennials here working. We've got Gen Xers, we've got boomers, and we've got some from the veteran generation that are with us in brilliant capacity. This is the most wonderful place to practice some of these things because they're all here. It's a gift.

JON NYATAWA

Yeah. That's great. All right, let's leave our audience maybe with a few tips. We've talked about a lot of 'em certainly, but maybe summarize, you've, you give a lot of talks and presentations. I wonder what do you try to leave people with? A few that just tips, advice, words of wisdom. 

LEAH GEORGES

Oh, well, I'm not sure I have any of those, but I can certainly give you some things that I think have resonated with me and maybe others. The first thing I would say is run from anybody that says to fix this, you do the five following things. I've often, I joke, I'm not your six easy steps girl. If it were that easy, we wouldn't be talking about this. And so one of the things I think I would share is, meet people where they are. It's the hardest thing and the easiest thing that we can do. But we lose folks when we insist they come to us first. Now when we meet people where there are in their onlyness, their generation, whatever that might look like, that doesn't require, I unpack and live there with them, but if I want to bring them with me, I have to start where they are. So meet them there and whatever that looks like.

Similarly, we can be willing to teach when it's appropriate others in a space. And then if we're willing to teach, I would argue we must be willing to learn as well. That doesn't always mean from people that are older or people in power, as you talked about. It can be, and oftentimes is cross generation opportunities from elevators and parking lots, but also formal opportunities like trainings in our place of work. Practicing a bit of generational humility like we talked about, I think is the gift that we give each other at work. And then the last thing I do think is the most meaningful is to practice that curiosity, not criticism, not critical thinking. They're all related, but practice that curiosity with individual people we work with and know what a person brings to that space is good. That's it. It's that easy, not hard. 

JON NYATAWA

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Leah, for sharing your time and your expertise with us. 

LEAH GEORGES

Thank you. Really appreciate it. This is my pleasure. 

JON NYATAWA

Thanks again for listening to this episode of From the Mall. We hope you enjoyed it, and we can't wait to see you again next time.