By Ines Schinazi
John G. Drozdal, Ed.D., is Principal Consultant and President of The Drozdal Company – an organization development and training firm that specializes in generational issues in the workplace, manager/leader development, team building, executive coaching, and conflict transformation. A complete description of the company’s services is available at www.drozdalcompany.com.
Dr. John Drozdal is also the voice behind two blogs, www.workingwithotherscom and www.workingwithtwentysomethings.com that focus on helping people remember what they learned in kindergarten: how to work and play well with others!
Dr. Drozdal graduated from Princeton University with an AB in Social Psychology, and he holds MA and MBA degrees from The University of Minnesota. He completed his Ed.D. at The University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. From 1988 to 2005 Dr. Drozdal served as adjunct professor in the Executive MBA Program in the College of Business at The University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has also taught at the Anderson Schools of Management at the University of New Mexico. For the last several years he has been a guest contributor to various newspapers including the Albuquerque (NM) Journal and Rio Rancho (NM) Observer.
Ines: Could you talk about what drew you to found “The Drozdal Company?”
John: I started thinking about it in the late 1980’s and finally got it launched in 1991. In the United States, in Kindergarten, there’s a category we get evaluated on called “works and plays well with others.” We make a judgment about how well the little kids do that. A lot of the curriculum and the learning is about teaching kids how to work and play with others. For some reason, after that first year of school, that emphasis goes away. People go through High School, University, Graduate school, and they learn how to do things. Then we throw them into the workplace and ask them to “work and play well with others,” and somehow they’ve forgotten how to do that.
So I wanted to start a company to help people remember what they learned in Kindergarten-how to work and play well with others. So through the years I’ve really focused on that activity.
That involves teaching leaders how to lead, managers how to manage, and teams how to work effectively together. I do a lot of training, team building, and team interventions, and quite a bit of one-on-one coaching with my clients.
I first started thinking about workplace issues, when I finished High School. When I first graduated High School I was looking for a job to earn some money before I went off to college. The principal at my High School heard about this job at a water utility company. So I went down there for the interview, and they hired me on the spot. My job for the summer was going to be to organize the filing system.
The first day on the job, this older guy takes me down to the basement, into this big room, filled with files that are just everywhere, in total disorganization. He said “OK, your job for the summer is to organize these files, you might want to wear old clothes.” That was all the work direction I got, and I was sitting in that room thinking, “I really should have taken that job painting fire hydrants, at least I could see the results.” Fortunately, one of this guy’s direct reports came down to look for a file. I was sitting there, and he asked me why I looked so bummed. So I told him, and he said, “Oh, that boss isn’t a very good boss.” He actually taught me the basic organizing principals to get my job done, which is what the manager should have done.
When you have a new employee, you want to teach the employee how to do their job, and a lot of managers miss that part. Anyways, during the course of the summer, people would come down, while I was working on these files, and tell me their life stories, and how unhappy they were in the workplace. The themes that emerged were usually not feeling part of the work environment, not feeling valued in terms of contributions they made. I think that’s where the seed was planted and I started thinking maybe I could make a difference in this area and help people learn how to work together. It just took a while for me to have enough experience on my own where I felt confident in terms of what I could do.
Also, in terms of generational differences in the workplace, there are systems of training that work for particular workers, but don’t necessarily work for the other generations that have come through, especially in terms of teaching them.
I think one of the best examples I can give is the way medical training is done, particularly in the United States. It’s really an endurance test to see how sleep deprived you can be and still function. That’s the way medical training was historically done in the United States. Now people are realizing that it’s not the best idea to have an intern in their 36^th hour of rotation having to make a life or death decision for a patient. It’s also true in the legal profession. Law firms will hire junior associates and work them into the ground, because that’s the way it’s always been.
I think one of the great things about the millennial generation is that they’re asking the question “Why do you do things this way? There’s a better way to do this.” So there’s the clash of the old way of doing things versus the new way.
Ines: How do you see the workplace evolving as this new generation of digital natives floods into the workplace?
John: I think there are going to be fairly dramatic changes. As with many change processes, you’re always going to have resistance to change, on the part of people who can be affected by it. If we look historically at major social changes, there’s always been a “push-back” from the existing way of doing things. I think the organizations that are going to survive and thrive, are going to be those who see the new ideas and the polarity. In other words, it’s a both/and conversation. It’s not about replacing the old with the new, or clinging for dear life to the way organizations have always done things. It’s really about blending the two together. Those are the organizations that will survive.
Ines: Do you agree with what many people have been saying about a great shift in the definition of the employee? Are we moving towards a market with many freelance employees instead of the more traditional full-time employees in an organization?
John: I am seeing it occurring. I think it’s too early to see how that’s going to shake out. At heart, I’m a freelancer. I think one of the things that I needed to learn about myself is that I have the DNA of a freelancer. When you work for yourself, it can be pretty scary. You have to go find the work all the time. For some people, that really resonates with them, and others really struggle with that. So to say that we are going to change to an economy of freelancers, I’m not sure that’s really going to happen. What I do think is that we’re in a time when the traditional corporate structure is being called into question. What may happen is that people within organizations are looking for more freedom to create within that organizational structure.
Ines: How does your background in Social Psychology mixed in with your Business credentials help you in dealing with generations in the workplace?
John: I’m fascinated about how we can improve relationships in general, but particularly relationships in the workplace. For me, it comes down to three things. 1. Helping people be self-aware of who they are. That self-awareness is their style, point of view, biases, and competencies 2. Being able to appreciate the points of views of other people, their style, and how they work. 3. The willingness to find a common ground without being judgmental.
When I was an undergraduate, my senior thesis was in an area of Social Psychology called “Attribution Theory.” Attribution theory has to do with how we make judgments about people based on their appearance or about what they say initially. Based on my study, I found that people were in fact making judgments based on appearances.
I think that when we look at having four generations in the workplace now, we can all be guilty of making stereotypical judgments about people. We see it all the time, with boomers for instance, seeing the millennial generation come into the workplace with tattoos, piercings, and flip flops. They make a whole set of assumptions about that person. When in fact, if they really listened to the individual and took time to get to know them, they could see that they could offer extremely positive contributions to the workplace.
The reverse of that is that the millennial generation will also come into the organization and see this person with white hair or no hair, and make the assumption that they’re too old. “They should just leave now, and let us have our turn.”
My background in Psychology has really giving me an appreciation for the human condition and the fact that everybody has a gift that they bring into the workplace, if we just take time to understand what that is, we could have much more productive work environments.
Ines: What are your thoughts on this idea of a “brain gap” between digital natives and digital immigrants?
John: I just want to preface my answer. I have thoughts but they’re not necessarily in my area of expertise. I do think that there’s some credence to the fact that digital natives are wired differently. There’s a difference in the way digital natives process information. The metaphor I find really helpful, is that for digital natives technology is their first language, for generation X it’s their second language and they’re very fluent in it, for boomers it’s like learning a language later in life. It can be done, but it takes a lot of effort.
Ines: Are most of the issues you try to solve, products of generational differences or issues you feel are independent of generations?
John: I think it’s a combination of the two. I think that to help generations work effectively in the workplace, all generations need to be self-aware, understand the other’s point of view, and have the willingness to work together. But I think when you have those generational differences, it’s like any other difference in the workplace, it increases the need for good organizational practices.
One of the things I come across very often is the millennial generation saying they really want their manager to manage them. But one of the things that every manager dreads is being labeled a micro-manager. That’s not generational, it’s across the board.
As a result of this fear, managers will do things to not over-manage. Gen Y is saying, “I want to learn, I need more feedback on how I’m doing, I’d like more of your time.” What the millennial generation is doing is asking managers to provide what I call “good managing practices,” in spending time with their employees, finding out what they need to be effective, and providing that so they can be more effective. The generational difference is pushing the need for good organizational practices.
Ines: In terms of the people I’ve interviewed, there seems to be quite a lot of debate as to whether or not there’s in fact a serious generational gap. What’s your view?
John: I think organizations are going to have to change, and they’re not really going to have a choice. The younger generations are going to be replacing some of the older workers. There needs to be a dialogue between the older and younger generations. The younger generations are coming in with the new ideas, a new way of working, and a whole new view on what the world is about. The older generation feels dismissed. What reduces this tension is having the older generation’s fear of losing the old way of doing things minimized, by respecting their experience.
What’s also interesting is that generation Y is coming into the workplace and asking the questions that baby boomers wish they had asked. For example, with the whole work-balance thing, boomers aren’t necessarily happy about being workaholics. But they weren’t sure how to break the cycle.
Also, the whole generation that’s forgotten is Generation X. They are wondering why everyone is putting all this emphasis on the millennial generation. They’re saying “What about us?” Generation X is product of single parent homes, or dual-income homes, and so they learned to be self-reliant, and brought that independence into the workplace.
There’s a tension between Gen X and Gen Y that not a lot of places are paying attention to. Gen X is being lost in the conversation and I think that’s a mistake. The Gen X employee also needs to be recognized in terms of contributions they can make.
Even in the way we talk about this generation, we use the letter “X.” There are 26 letters in the alphabet and we picked the one that typically means unknown…
Ines: You recently started the blog, “working with twenty something’s.” I’m curious as to why this blog is separate from the “working with others” blog. Also, could you talk a bit about what you’re trying to accomplish through these two blogs?
John: When I was in college and coming out of college, the term that was used was “generation gap.” I was experiencing many things that Gen Y is now experiencing. I wanted to create a forum for helping this generation make a successful transition into the world of work, and to provide insights, mentoring opportunities, and create a dialogue. Working with others is about working relationships in general. I wanted to use the “working with twenty something’s” to look at generational differences and how that impacts working relationships. I really see an opportunity in developing working relationships. With my life experiences, I feel this is an opportunity to give back and to mentor, and to help this younger generation come along and not make the same mistakes I’ve made.
Ines: In one of your blog posts, you mention the perspective of a “Christian Scientist Monitor” article. The article argues that “The Devil wears Prada” is this generation’s coming of age movie. Do you agree? Also, what does it signify to shift from “The Graduate,” to “Risky Business” to “The Devil wears Prada, in terms of coming of age movies?”
John: I know with the boomer generation, pretty much every boomer knows the line in “The Graduate,” about plastics. There’s that famous scene, Benjamin has just graduated from college and one of the guests comes up to him and says, “I have one word for you…plastics.” That’s the sort of corporate structure to get into.
If you accept that Generation X is pretty independent and had to fend for themselves, “Risky Business” illustrates this total free-for-all exploration for independence.
With “The Devil Wears Prada,” I can see how it captures some themes regarding this generation. If you look at Andy’s friends, they are a very diverse group. One of the things that I love about the millennial generation is that diversity isn’t an issue for them. They grew up with diversity. They have friends from all walks of life. The other thing that’s really interesting in the movie is the whole tension of getting caught up in the rat race of success, and sort of selling your soul to the corporation. It’s the whole work-life balance thing that comes into stark reality. Is it the quintessential coming of age movie? I don’t know. But it does illustrate a lot of struggles of the millennial generation. I can see how people would say that it’s the coming of age movie for the millennial generation.
