How Can You Use This In Your Workplace?

How Can You Use This in Your Workplace?

In the modern workplace, the collaboration of five generations brings forth many perspectives, challenges, and opportunities. From Baby Boomers to Generation Z, each group contributes its unique strengths, making it important for organizations to understand and harness this potential in an inclusive and effective way. As younger generations begin to gain more power in organizations, it is important to have transparency throughout the organization. There are many useful ways to increase our understanding of generational misconceptions and how to avoid them. Soft skills are becoming more important than ever, making the aforementioned tactics like perspective-taking and story-sharing strong tools, but there is more we can all do. Strategies for collaboration that focus on the diverse needs of the workforce and not perceived generational differences are pivotal for creating a strong workplace. These strategies will ultimately allow for both organizational growth and employee personal growth when done correctly.

Here are two techniques that you can use at your job to support your team:

A. A team-bonding activity

Despite individual differences, a shared purpose and goals unite the team, requiring effective leadership to leverage strengths and promote collaboration as the company grows.

One technique people can bring to the workforce is using Patrick Lencioni’s personal histories activity to help team members build trust and find common ground. Each person on a team prepares a slide with photos and answers to these three questions:

  1. Where did you grow up?
  2. How many siblings do you have, and where do you fall in that order?
  3. Describe a unique or interesting challenge or experience that shaped who you are.

“This activity always brings a team closer together,” Formato said. “People find common experiences, and they get to know the whole person.”

Here is an example of the exercise being mentioned: “When the president of a small New York City foundation asked his employees to share stories about their sports activities in high school, he was delighted to learn that there was a high school fencer on his team. What he didn’t anticipate is how the younger women (most of whom were administrative staff) would end up bonding with a much older female executive when she lamented how, in a pre-Title IX era, there weren’t a lot of sports teams for women. This led to an equally interesting conversation about life lessons learned through team sports and other team activities.”

B. Resolving Team Differences 

Also another practical application for people implementing strategies in their jobs are using Shaw’s five-part process to help resolve team differences:

  1. Acknowledge. Talk about generational differences. “You can’t solve a problem if you don’t acknowledge it exists.”
  2. Appreciate. Focus on the “why,” not the “what,” and the common needs. “The ‘what’ divides us. The ‘why’ is a uniter.”
  3. Flex. Agree on how to accommodate different approaches.
  4. Leverage. Maximize the strengths of each generation. For example, if an organization decides to use the messaging platform Slack as a communication tool, there will inevitably be people who are uncomfortable with a technology they don’t recognize or understand. A manager or leader can recruit an older team member who is comfortable and experienced in using this technology to coach, train and mentor the novice Slack users.
  5. Resolve. Determine which option will yield the best results if flexing isn’t enough.

The overarching theme of these strategies (and others) should be to treat people as individuals, regardless of their generational background. In a time where diversity is a key driver of many things, creating a work environment where everyone feels that they are a part of the team requires total expulsion of the common generational premonitions. These strategies are a good blueprint and starting point for understanding the individual needs of employees and making sure their contributions are recognized for what they are. By embracing this way of thinking, employees and their organizations can create an improvement spiral that puts everyone in a better spot than where we are now.

References

Hirsch, A. S. (2021, December 2). How to Manage Intergenerational Conflict in the Workplace. Society for Human Resource Management . https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/how-to-manage-intergenerational-conflict-in-the-workplace.aspx 

Workday. (2019). Engaging a five-generation workplace. Workday Blog. https://blog.workday.com/en-us/2019/engaging-a-five-generation-workplace.html