Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground

real roots can help you decide what you can do to eliminate—or

at least mitigate—it.

The next time you hear someone at work talking about a per-

son from another generation in a negative way—whether older or

younger—remember that what is being said isn’t just about dislik-

ing that individual’s clothes or hairstyle or earrings or way of speak-

ing. Often underlying the specific complaints is the belief that the

individual isn’t doing things as he or she should—with the attendant

assumption that the person complaining gets to decide how some-

one should behave. In some cases, the person who is so upset is seek-

ing either to maintain or to increase his or her own clout by finding

something wrong with someone else of another generation.

What You Need to Do

You have to accept generational conflict as an inevitable part of

work and deal with it the way you do all the other status issues in

the workplace. Remember that whenever you go into any conver-

sation, the relative clout of the participants is part of the dynamic.

Remember that issues surrounding who should be listening to

whom, whose opinions should be listened to most closely, and who

should be reporting to whom are often more about how much re-

spect, deference, and control people think they should have than

about actual competence or productivity at work.

People assume that with experience comes knowledge. That is

true in theory, but we all know the old saying about someone who

has had one year of experience—20 times. What is important

about experience is the knowledge gained from it, and how much

knowledge people accumulate from their experiences has nothing

to do with age and everything to do with how good they are at

learning from those experiences. True, older people have had

more experiences and have had more time to process and accu-

mulate knowledge than have younger people—but that doesn’t

mean that they’ve taken advantage of their head start.

Part of the human condition is the understanding that older

people should be deferred to because of their greater experience

and therefore (it is assumed) greater knowledge. The cultural

norm that older people have more authority than younger ones is

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deeply ingrained, even as people talk about how “youth focused”

the United States is. The assumption that older people have more

authority isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it just causes problems when

younger people are promoted ahead of older ones, which turns

the typical authority relationship upside down.

212 CONCLUSION

Luckily the generation gap at work is one more of appearance

than of substance. As we said in the beginning,

• People want about the same things at work, no matter what

generation they are from.

• You can effectively work with or manage people from all gen-

erations.

You just need to remember—and put into practice—the prin-

ciples we’ve discussed here.

© The New Yorker Collection 2001 Lee Lorenz, from cartoonbank.com. All rights reserved.

Deal.c11 10/10/06 3:40 PM Page 212

1. All generations have similar values.

2. Everyone wants respect.

3. Trust matters.

4. People want leaders who are credible and trustworthy.

5. Organizational politics is a problem—no matter how old (or

young) you are.

6. No one really likes change.

7. Loyalty depends on the context, not on the generation.

8. It’s as easy to retain a young person as an older one—if you do

the right things.

9. Everyone wants to learn—more than just about anything else.

10. Almost everyone wants a coach.

You can use some of our suggestions—which are based on our

data and experience—for applying these principles. And you’ll un-

doubtedly come up with your own techniques that work in the con-

text of your own workplace.

Remember, you don’t have to tie yourself into knots (or

worse!) trying to accommodate each generation’s individual

whims, and you don’t have to worry about learning a new set of

whims when the next generation comes along. People from dif-

ferent generations are largely alike in what they think, believe, and

want from their work life. Once people accept this fact, and make

their actions consistent with the principles that apply to working

with people of all generations, the gap will be retired.

CONCLUSION 213

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