Negotiating Differences in Age
When Jim Rainwater, 32, offered to climb the stockroom ladder to retrieve audit records for an employee 20 years his senior, the man took offense, and Rainwater found himself in a discussion about age discrimination.
“He became furious and asked if I thought, ‘This old man is unable to do it because of his age,’ ” said Rainwater, a CPA at the accounting firm of Reznick, Fedder & Silverman in Forest Hill, Md. “He is a bit overweight and has a heart condition. I was being more concerned about his heart than his age.”
Tracy Brant, a 40-year-old mother of two and vice president of Gryphyn Media Inc., a small Web development company in Philadelphia, manages workers under age 25 who, unlike Brant, have time to schmooze with potential clients into the wee hours.
“I would like to be able to throw myself into it, wear the same clothes for three days and eat pizza. But I can’t pull all-nighters anymore,” Brant said.
Rainwater and Brant are experiencing the challenges that can occur when two or more generations collide in the workplace. Though people of different ages have always worked together, the hierarchical barriers that once separated them--with the older folks at the top--increasingly are disappearing.
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To the younger folks, particularly those who are information-savvy, the idea of gradually working their way to the top is no more in style than polka dots and skinny ties.
“They are flexible and independent. They don’t want to do things the old way, but they want to do plenty the new way,” said Bruce Tulgan, author of “Managing Generation X: How to Bring Out the Best in Young Talent” (W.W. Norton, 2000) and founder of RainmakerThinking Inc., a research, training and consulting firm focused on the working lives of those born after 1963.
Tulgan designs seminars and training programs for companies and managers on how to cope with generational clashes at work. But he says that though they are intended to help people understand one another better, the bottom line is what’s best for the business.
“There is a ruthless logic to focusing on the actual mission of the team. This isn’t therapy. It’s not church. And it’s not family hour. This is a workplace,” Tulgan said.
These days, generation gaps in some offices are wide enough to trap an elephant. Nineteen-year-olds are working beside 60-year-olds and, in some cases, managing them. You might find fans of Lawrence Welk, The Who, Donna Summer and Britney Spears on the same marketing team.
“They are shoved together. It’s a team-oriented environment. So they all have to work together in order to get things done,” said Dan Wilkening, senior vice president and manager of the check-processing division for Bank One in Chicago.
The bank’s check-processing center attracts a lot of college students trying to make extra money, Wilkening said. Recently, some of them attended a retirement party for a clerk who had worked there 39 years--longer than many of them have been alive.
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Age diversity, like any diversity issue, creates conflicts that are based partly on stereotypes and generalizations about the entire group. More senior workers (baby boomers) tend to view those who entered the job market since the late 1980s as lazy, disloyal know-it-alls who don’t want to pay their dues.
On the flip side, some of the younger folks (Generation X and Generation Y) say older employees are stodgy and resistant to change.
When Monica Guignard was 19, she was thrust into management at a nonprofit after her supervisor quit. Her biggest problem was Frances, a retired government worker who was old enough to be her grandmother.
“She would call me a young whippersnapper to my face, in front of 20 people,” said Guignard, who is now 30 and a certified human resources professional for a real estate firm in Arlington, Va. “There was a lot of tension. Every little thing was a big discussion or argument. Of all the people I know, she was the one who could make me lose my temper the fastest.”
Guignard said she has since learned that one management style doesn’t fit all. She said things got better with Frances after she began giving her assignments over the phone rather than instructing her in front of everyone else.
Sometimes conflicts occur when younger workers think they know more than they do, author Tulgan said.
“[They] are missing that there is some real wisdom and institutional memory in the cubicle next to them,” he said.
Lou Parks, 27, a senior software engineer for Lante Corp. in Chicago, said he was relieved when the young Internet consulting company brought in boomer-age workers with more overall experience--colleagues he affectionately calls “silverbacks.”
“I’ve actually felt more comfort and security knowing that the company isn’t being run by a 23-year-old,” Parks said.
In some cases, senior employees hurt themselves and office productivity when they insist on doing things the old way. Rainwater, the CPA, said he fired a 45-year-old man after he refused to learn a new computer software program that would have reduced his data entry time by more than half.
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The greatest conflicts occur between baby boomers and Gen-Xers, said Ron Zemke, co-author of “Generations at Work” (Amacom, 1999) and senior editor of Training magazine in Minneapolis. “Gen-Xers see a job as a means to an end. And boomers tend to see a job as an end in itself,” Zemke said.
Generation Xers typically do not subscribe to the loyalty-based, workaholic creed of the baby boomer generation. Their parents did that and many were laid off. So Gen-Xers seek balance in their lives and time for themselves, opting for “the killer life” over “the killer job,” said Steve Kraus, a consumer survey analyst for Yankelovich Partners in San Francisco, a market research and consulting firm.
“When I speak to clients, the common request is from baby boomers who come to me and say, ‘I’ve got these Gen-X employees and I don’t understand them. Help,’ ” Kraus said.
Fred Getz, 50, manages Gen-Xers as vice president of new initiatives for Robert Half International Inc., a professional services company that provides staff in various technologies to companies. Getz said he has found that, in general, Gen-Xers have short attention spans and require constant stimulation and new challenges. They prefer verbal training to reading and, even then, they want to keep it short and simple.
“Someone my age, who takes a more academic approach, is more willing to read and study things. They don’t have time to do a lot of reading,” Getz said.
But when it comes to changes at work, Getz doesn’t see himself any differently from the younger employees.
“You have to be willing to change with the times and economic circumstances and move ahead,” he said.
How employees have reacted to changes in the workplace--technological advances, globalization, downsizing--can depend a lot on when they were born and the events that helped shape their lives, Zemke said.
In “Generations at Work,” Zemke separates workers into four categories: “veterans,” born before 1943; “baby boomers,” born before 1960; “Generation Xers,” between 1960 and 1980; and “nexters.”
The defining events for veterans were wars, economic struggles, the silver screen and television. Their core values tend to be dedication, sacrifice, law and order and patience. “They grew up with slogans like ‘Loose lips sink ships,’ ” said Zemke, a veteran at age 58.
At Citicorp in New York, Zemke’s first job out of college, employees were expected to learn and follow protocol on the proper way to address senior managers. “We were taught how to say hello to the chairman of the board,” he said.
Veterans raised their boomer children to inherit the earth, Zemke said. Boomers, he says, are optimistic soul-searchers who are more focused on reinventing themselves than on making money.
“They are the ‘Thank God it’s Monday group,’ ” Zemke said. “They’ve got the promotion channel clogged because there are so many of them. And they have no desire to get out of the way because they haven’t saved any money and they can’t afford to.”
Zemke calls Gen-Xers the latchkey generation. They spent less time with their hard-working boomer parents. Their employment outlook was influenced by inflation, layoffs and, until recently, a poor job market.
“They look for balance in their lives. They want more fun at work. They think about the job and not the hours,” Zemke said.
Boomer Kris Mackey, 44, who oversees delivery of projects to businesses and mentors younger workers at Lante, an Internet consulting firm, said she finds Gen-Xers’ approach to work refreshing.
“They’ll never say what they think you want to hear, so you have to have the right attitude for that,” Mackey said. “They work hard and they’re willing to do their best, but when it’s over, it’s over. They are protective of that time.”
The jury is still out on the nexters, also known as Generation Y, or Echo Boomers. They are the most educated group. They’re enthusiastic and eager to learn.
“They don’t have that dark side about life and work,” Zemke said. “They are like warm puppy dogs. There’s a kind of freshness about them that is surprising to people.”
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The common thread is that the four generations are living through profound changes in the business world.
“We’re just experiencing them differently,” said Tulgan of RainmakerThinking. “The older you are, the more disruptive it is.”
But younger workers are not immune. The key is for everyone to recognize differences and manage accordingly, Bank One’s Wilkening said.
“That is often a challenge for younger managers--talking to people who’ve been around for a long time. As long as you demonstrate a willingness to work with them, they can accept that.”
Wise words from a 34-year-old.
