Gen Z: A Multigenerational Leadership Opportunity to Respect Diversity

“These young whippersnappers, today!” Can’t you just hear it? That old geezer whining about the young upstarts? Multigenerational leadership challenges between younger and older workers are as predictable as the sun.

When I was young I just remember trying to survive when I came into the work world. Maybe my elders complained about me, but I don’t recall. By the time the millennial generation hit their internships I reliably heard complaints about entitlement, demands for flexibility and communications challenges. Fast forward a decade and Gen Z is challenging us with whole new levels of (over?) confidence, pronoun sensitivity and a desire to shape their work to their lives, or leave.

Multigenerational leadership experts have long sought a simple solution for the inevitable irritations of working with people younger and older than ourselves. When young people show up in (to our way of thinking) inappropriate clothing, using weird technology or indecipherable language, it’s everyone else’s first instinct to (1) roll their eyes and (2) try to bring them into the normative culture.

In part, this latter instinct is appropriate. Ever since the demise of the apprenticeship employment model, the transition from youth to working adult has been awkward. It puts pressure on older workers to initiate and train younger workers about how to survive, thrive and succeed in the culture of work.

But as recognition of reverse mentoring demonstrates, older workers have at least as much to learn from younger workers if they have the right mindset…

Read the full article at InPowerCoaching.com