Like was said in the post bellow, here goes the second part of the interview with Bruce Tulgan, the founder of Rainmaker Thinking Inc., best-selling author and the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Toastmaster’s International Golden Gavel, in an exclusive interview with Talking About Generations:

Ines: How do the aspects of privilege, culture, and social class fit into “Not everyone gets a trophy?” Is the idea of a generation getting trophies just for showing up, linked to a privileged American upbringing?
Bruce: The title is a reference to the fact that Generation Y is the generation of kids where every kid did get a trophy, just for participating. So many so-called ‘experts’ have jumped onto the bandwagon of this topic, but our research shows that most of these so-called ‘experts’ have got it all wrong. In many recent books and articles, many of these ‘experts’ argue that, since Gen Yers have always gotten a trophy just for showing up, maybe the best way to manage them is to give them lots of praise and, basically, give them a trophy just for showing up.

These ‘experts’ tell managers to create “thank-you” programs, “praise” programs, and “reward” programs. They recommend turning recruiting into one long sales pitch; transforming the workplace into a veritable playground; rearranging training so it revolves around interactive computer gaming; encouraging young workers to find a “best friend” at work; and teaching managers to soft-pedal their authority. In my view, this approach is out of touch with reality, especially in today’s environment.

Here’s the short story with Generation Y. If you liked Generation X, you are going to love Generation Y. Generation Y is like Generation X on-fast-forward-with-self-esteem-on-steroids. Gen Yers’ childhood was defined mostly by the 1990s, and they are reaching their early stage of adulthood amid the profound changes of the 2000s—this era of uncertainty. One could say that the same major historical forces that shaped Generation X are also shaping Generation Y: Globalization and technology, institutions in a state of constant flux, the information tidal wave, and the growing immediacy of everything. But those forces have picked up so much velocity in just one generation that I would argue there is a profound difference in the life experience of Generation Y. After all, there is only one globe, and it is now totally interconnected. GenYers connect with their farthest-flung neighbors in real time regardless of geography through online communities of interest.

But as our world shrinks (or flattens), events great and small taking place on the other side of the world (or right next door) can affect our material well-being almost overnight. World institutions—nations, states, cities, neighborhoods, families, corporations, churches, charities, and schools—remain in a state of constant flux just to survive. Authority is questioned routinely. Research is quick and easy. Anyone can get published. We try to filter through the endless tidal wave of information coming at us from an infinite number of sources. A year is long term, and five years is just a hallucination. Short term is the key to relevance. In a world defined by constant change, instantaneous response is the only meaningful time frame.

Ines: But why is Gen Y so different from other generations?
Bruce: Gen Yers are comfortable in this highly interconnected rapidly changing web of variables. Uncertainty is their natural habitat. Globalization does not make Gen Yers feel small. Rather, it makes them feel worldly. Technological change does not make them feel as if they are racing to keep up. Rather, it makes them feel connected and powerful.

Institutions may be in a state of constant flux, but that’s no problem. Gen Yers are just passing through anyway, trying to squeeze out as much experience and as many resources as they can and so on.

The power of diversity has finally kicked over the melting pot. Generation Y is the most diverse generation in history in terms of ethnic heritage, geographical origins, ability/disability, age, language, lifestyle preference, sexual orientation, color, size, and every other way of categorizing people. But this doesn’t make Gen Yers feel alienated and threatened. Rather, they take the concept of diversity to a whole new level. Generation Y, difference is cool. Uniqueness is the centerpiece of identity.

How do Gen Yers continually shape and reshape their uniqueness? They want to customize anything and everything they possibly can. This goes beyond the services and products they buy. Gen Yers want to customize their very minds, bodies, and spirits, by customizing their information environment on the Internet. They voraciously pursue an ever-increasing array of mind food—images, sounds, experiences, texts—in an ever increasing range of media and formats, from an ever increasing number of sources, for an ever increasing number of purposes (education, skills training, self-help, health, entertainment, news, household matters, consumer interests, life planning, death planning, spirituality, and so on).

They customize their bodies by availing themselves of the wide range of natural and artificial tools and techniques, going way beyond tattoos and piercing and fashion statements. Their efforts range from food obsession to surgery; from Ritalin to naturalism; from yoga to steroids; implants, teeth whitening, tanning cream, and on and on. Beyond family, they customize their primary relationships across space and time in personalized networks. They even customize spiritual lives of their own devising. Gen Yers often put together bits and pieces of the teachings of one or more religious traditions, rejecting others, and ultimately settling on their own selection of values and beliefs and religious or spiritual practices.

From the first day, they arrive in the workplace, they are scrambling to keep their options open, leverage their uniqueness for all its potential value, and wrap a customized career around the customized life they are trying to build.

Ines: In your book, you argue that the idea that Gen Y needs work to be fun is a myth. I recently interviewed Don Tapscott the author of “Wikinomics.“ He writes, “They (Gen Y) think work—the work itself—should be fun and challenging.” He also states, “Training has to change, too. Some companies are using game-based training…” This seems to contrast with your view. What are your thoughts on this?
Bruce: One of the most important things I’ve learned in our research is that most GenYers don’t want to be humored at work. They want to be taken seriously. But they do want work to be engaging. They want to learn, to be challenged, and to understand the relationship between their work and the overall mission of the organization. They want to work with good people and have some flexibility in where, when, and how they work.

From computers, GenYers want to fill skill or knowledge gaps that get in their way. Their tools are usually menu driven information systems, wiki tools, and social networking sites. And it drives GenYers crazy when they have less sophisticated information management tools at work than they have at home. But that doesn’t mean they only want to learn from computers. They absolutely need the human element to do their best learning. GenYers love grown-ups and they love to learn from grown-ups whom they trust, and who are willing to share with them the lessons of their experience.

Gen Yers, especially the most capable and ambitious among them, push hard for more significant roles with increased responsibilities at much earlier stages in their careers than new young workers of generations past. It’s not just misplaced arrogance on their part, but rather a result of their natural adaptation to the information environment.

Managers tell me all the time, “In our line of work, it’s especially challenging to give inexperienced young people significant responsibilities. Perhaps a new young person could learn the knowledge and skill necessary to do one of these tasks and responsibilities, or two, or three, or four. But the role they want is too complex to hand over in its entirety to someone without several years of experience.” I promise you, I’ve been told that by leaders in supermarkets and nuclear weapons labs alike—and everybody in between. We call this the “meaningful roles problem.”

Ines: And what could be the solution for this managers and companies?
Bruce: The simple fact is that if it takes you months or years to get Gen Yers up to speed and into meaningful roles on your team, then you’ll have serious problems keeping high-potential Gen Yers engaged and growing. Don’t tell me you are struggling to manage and retain the best Gen Yers and then tell me it’s going to take months or years before they can do important work that allows their coworkers and bosses to take them seriously. How can you handle this conundrum? You may have to unbundle complex roles and then rebuild them one tiny piece at a time. You can give Gen Yers meaningful work at early stages in their tenure if you commit to teaching and transferring to them one small task or responsibility at a time.

So often I go into an organization that is trying to retool its training practices to suit what they think Gen Yers want and need.

Here’s the good news: you do not have to turn everything (or anything really) into a computer game to plug into Gen Yers’ learning needs. But you really should make the effort to get them the technology they are so comfortable and adept at using.

Yes, Gen Yers want the latest and greatest technology. But it’s not just a desire for the coolest toy. It’s like breathing. It’s their connection to the larger information environment. For Gen Yers, the information technology imperatives are simple: constant connectivity with whomever they want, immediate access to whatever information they want, total customization of their information environment, the ability to learn from and collaborate with experts in real time.

Wiki technology is the ultimate collaboration facilitator by enabling different individuals to contribute to a work product from remote locations on their own time.

Social networking allows anyone to build mutually rewarding relationships with people of similar interests—inside the company or outside—regardless of geography or other boundaries. Instant messaging means anyone can ask anyone they “know” anything at any time. Imagine a mind-set in which these tools—and the corresponding connectivity, immediacy, constant access, and total customization—are taken for granted. The only question is, What are you doing to facilitate Gen Yers’ use of these tools to increase their effectiveness at work?

Put the tools in their hands, and watch them fill one tiny information gap at a time in real time. This is the high-tech analogue to learning one task at a time. With access to the technology they know and love, Gen Yers will fine-tune and nuance their on-the-job learning in ways that might shock and delight you.

Especially when they are new on the job, Gen Yers are eager to identify problems that nobody else has identified and solve problems that nobody else has solved. They want to improve what’s already there, and they want to invent new things.

Most Gen Yers understand this on a gut level and won’t have it any other way. The real challenge is to keep them focused on all that work you hired them to do while simultaneously encouraging them to leverage knowledge and skill in that work. The more you encourage Gen Yers to think about their work—-whatever that work might be—the more engaged they will be. Help them channel their learning directly into their work instead of shooting down their ideas and dampening their enthusiasm. If you hire someone to unload boxes from a truck and that person wants to be an ideas guy, you need to get that individual to focus his thinking and learning on how to better unload boxes from the truck. If you hire someone to dig a ditch, get that individual to focus on how to dig that ditch better. And so on.

When they come in the door, Gen Yers want to hit the ground running. By training them one task a time, giving them the technology tools they need to be fast and efficient, and helping them focus their energy and ideas on the tasks at hand, you’ll be able to plug into their enthusiasm and keep their excitement going past their first day at the job.

Parents have never been so influential in their children’s decisions as they are today. Many parents actually accompany their children to job interviews. Some even make a point of dropping them off on the first day of work. Parents regularly complain about heir children’s grades and shamelessly ask bosses to lighten their child’s workload. Of course, this is old news. Everybody knows that generation Y grew up being overprotected and over parented. Parents are of course largely responsible for young people’s behavior in the workplace today.

Many experts have dedicated themselves to exploring this subject and discovering possible solutions. Bruce Tulgan is one of them. Tulgan argues, “Without strong management in the workplace, there is a void where their parents have always been.” Drawing from his experience as an inter-generational expert, Tulgan tells bosses to “Step into the void…[and] take over the tutoring aspects of the parental role in the workplace.”

Tulgan is the founder of Rainmaker Thinking Inc. and a best-selling author, his most recent book is “Not Everyone Gets a Trophy.” He is also the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Toastmaster’s International Golden Gavel. In an exclusive interview with http://www.talkingaboutgenerations.com, Tulgan shares his thoughts on managing the generation who got a trophy just for showing up.

Ines: You’ve spent years conducting in-depth research on the millennial generation, becoming a veritable expert on the subject. What specifically made you interested in studying this generation, since you’ve spent good part of your career practicing Law?
Bruce: I started out interviewing young people in the workplace back in 1993 when I was a 26 year old lawyer. The oldest of Generation Y at that point were only about 15. Since then, I’ve continued interviewing young people in the workplace. It’s just that I’ve gotten older and older and the young people have become the next generation. So now the oldest GenYers are 32. Just wait, soon they’ll be in their forties and the young people in the workplace will be Generation Z.

Ines: Can you talk a bit about what made you want to found “Rainmaker Thinking” and what you are trying to accomplish through the company?
Bruce: Back in 1993, I was an unhappy lawyer working at Two Wall Street in New York City. I became curious about what was then becoming obvious to me, the generation gap in the workplace at the time. That curiosity turned into a book, which was MANAGING GENERATION X. That book got a lot of attention.

Companies started inviting me to speak at their conferences, train their managers, observe their operations and conduct focus groups with their employees. Then I became more and more interested in the dynamics between managers and employees, more generally. I’d go into a company, interview their employees and managers, meet with the senior executives and share what I’d learned from the employees and managers. And we’d provide training for employees to help them work more effectively with their managers and with each other.

Since the mid-1990s, I’ve had a front-row seat from which to study workplace dynamics. I’ve spent most of my time training managers and employees at all levels and every industry. The more we learn, the more we turn that learning back into more training. It’s a dynamic process, learning from people in our focus groups and interviews and turning those lessons into training programs so we can proliferate the best practices.

Ines: In a praiseful Boston Globe review of your book “Not everyone gets a trophy,” the reviewer remarks, “Tulgan’s approach sometimes sounds more like parenting than managing.” In your opinion do managers have to take on a parenting role? And if so, how will Gen Y eventually learn to “parent” and “lead” themselves?
Bruce: I have a whole chapter in the book called, “Practice In Loco Parentis Management.” Of course, that is somewhat meant to be tongue in cheek, but there is a lot of real data underlying this. The details change, but the thrust of the story is always the same. There’s no doubt that parents are far more heavily involved in the lives and careers of their young adult children than those of previous generations.

College professors and administrators report that the parents of Gen Yers show up to new student orientations in record numbers (some studies indicate that more than 80 percent of new students are now accompanied by a parent for some part or all of orientation). Parents are often consulted several times a day by their college-attending children, using cell phone check-ins to get advice about course choices, classroom protocol, homework assignments, and exams. Professors routinely field parental complaints about student workload and grades.

This pattern of helicopter parenting carries over once Gen Yers get to the workplace. Managers tell me about parents accompanying their children to job interviews and even, once in a while, to the first day of work. Parents are consulted about career decisions and management practices. The big surprise comes when managers hear directly from parents, suggesting their children should be working fewer hours, getting different assignments, winning promotions, and receiving pay increases.

Yes, it is commonplace today for parents to insert themselves in support of their young (and not-so-young) adult children, even in the most adult spheres when such involvement would have been considered totally inappropriate in the past. But remember, this is nothing new for Gen Yers. Their parents have always been highly engaged with them. Every step of the way, they have been guided, directed, supported, coached, and protected. Unlike previous generations, they don’t express much desire to break free as they reach adulthood.

It’s become almost cliché to say that Generation Y is over-parented. But they are. And that is a fact with which managers today must grapple. I don’t think you should accept that. You hired the employee, not the parents. But you do have to deal with it. The irony is that if you hire a Gen Yer who is not close to his or her parents, you may be sorry. Among today’s young workers, those who are closest to their parents will probably turn out to be the most able, most achievement oriented, and the hardest working.

Ines: And what’s the way for employers to deal with this problem of over-parenting?

In my seminars, I tell to take a strong hand as a manager, not a weak one. Your Gen Y employees need to know that you know who they are and care about their success. You need to make it a priority to spend time with them. Guide them through this very difficult and scary world. Break things down like a teacher. Provide regular, gentle course corrections to keep them on track. Be honest with them so you can help them improve. Keep close track of their successes no matter how small. Reward the behavior you want and need to see, and even negotiate special rewards for above-and-beyond performance in very small increments along the way.

When I describe this approach at seminars, at least one manager will remark that this sounds a lot like parenting. Are you saying that we should manage these young upstarts as if we are their parents?”

I’m afraid the answer I’ve come to is yes, at least sort of. Do be careful, and don’t get carried away. The worst thing you can possibly do with Gen Yers is treat them like children, talk down to them, or make them feel disrespected. Gen Yers are used to being treated as valued members of the family, whose thoughts and feelings are important. Remember, Generation Y has gotten more respect from their parents and elders than any other generation in history.

I call this approach in loco parentis management.

Read on tuesday the second part of the interview with Bruce Tulgan

Once upon a time there was a little girl named @littleredridinghood. Little red riding hood’s mother walked by her daughter’s bedroom and warned:

Honey, your grandmother is sick. Let’s go visit her?

So @littleredridinghood sadly glanced at the chaos of her flickering AIM, MSN, and twitter messages. She didn’t respond to her mother. She faced a major challenge: how to express the excruciating sorrow about not being able to make the awesome party with her gang of friends, because she had to visit her sick grandmother. How totally lame! How could she express all this in only 140 characters? She had to explain to all of cyberspace that she was suddenly disconnecting, like….#now!

Her 139 followers who were online at that moment, not to mention the 468 followers she had won over, got the following post: “whatdoyoumean grandmother sick on a Saturday?!! Plans for the club # fail. Kisses.

This didn’t mean that @littleredridinghood didn’t love her grandmother, or that it didn’t greatly affect her to know that her grandmother wasn’t well. It simply meant that @littleredridinghood preferred staying home tweeting until it was time for the party, where she would meet the hottest big bad wolf of the moment, than visiting her sick grandmother on a Saturday night. But for her mother just didn’t get this.

Where were the family values? Where was the consideration? Where was the ingenuity that she had when she was @littleredridinghood’s age? Where was the respect? She doesn’t even have time to visit her own grandmother? But she has time to spend hoursssssss talking to her friends on AIM and MSN messenger? Where was the real big bad wolf when you needed him? The questions that filled mother’s mind were infinite. Inevitable.

Clearly, there are generational conflicts. We try to understand the reactions of each generation based on the paradigm established by past generations, usually our own. The questioning which starts to appear in our brain is a fusion of our values and of our perception of the world. This is perfectly normal, of course. Those who don’t agree with the current reality, are actually reflecting a personal perception of facts, but not necessarily the objective facts. Right?

This generation asks for changes. Connected to the digital world, these young people are born under the reign of technology, transferring the virtual environment where they live, letting this spill out onto everyone and everything. Their interpersonal relations reflect their desire for immediacy, online and offline. They hope for a world that’s only their own, connected, open to dialogue, speedy, global, and with a completely different understanding of hierarchy and leadership.

Cell phones, Facebook, Orkut, MSN, and Twitter give young people the ability to constantly dialogue. They value communication. They are not very tolerant of criticism or being contradicted, and generally they develop personalities which can be quite egocentric. They demand direct access to their superiors (in the workplace) and the expect explanations when they ask for them.

These young people live a fragmented rhythm, due to the variety of their activities and their simultaneous execution of them. They listen to music, surf the net, and watch movies, all at once. Isn’t it logical to think that with the current intense stimulus of their world, their values and reactions will be different from those of their parents and elders?

For my generation, for example, the question, “Let’s go visit your grandmother?” doesn’t exist. It would be a concrete affirmation, “Let’s go visit your grandmother.” Period. Did this bother or upset me? Not at all! However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that I loved my grandmother more than @littleredridinghood. It simply reflects two different reactions to the same situation. Inputs and outputs of different worlds and different times. Affection and love for a grandmother don’t necessarily have anything to do with it.

Family members, coworkers, educators, and business executives, who are currently absorbing this new generation in their institutions, can opt to create new ways to motivate and develop healthy inter-personal relationships, creativity, and dialogue. Or they can continue investing in the conservative attitudes that will continue to fuel generational conflicts.

By saying this, I certainly don’t mean to encourage permissiveness. Generation Y has a lot to learn from the wealth of experience of their elders. This is incredibly obvious. But I also believe that Gen Y can teach the Baby Boomers and Gen X, a lot as well.

And so, I dedicate this post to all the grandparents in the world. As a Gen Y friend says, “Press F5 and update that!” So I’d like to extend that to all the business executives and educators. A great F5 for all! Refresh! #Go!

By Eline Kullock

In my day (and yeah, this was during the time of dinosaurs), people were really careful when talking about other people.

Talking badly about someone, could hurt someone. There’s a saying in Portuguese that says: “Loose words blowing in the wind, can never be taken back.” After all, words are like nails in a chunk of wood, you can take out the nail, but the hole remains…like an open wound. To “attack” someone meant taking a risk. If a friend was hurt by you, you fought, you broke up, you got fired, there were often very serious consequences.

It seems that Generation Y doesn’t think this way.

They are propelled by their own voice. It seems that it’s become common to talk, to criticize others, without having an idea of the consequences.

Talk, talk, talk. The most important thing is to talk. A recent example occurred here in Brazil. A student at the local Brazilian University, Uniban was violently ostracized by other students, simply for wearing a mini skirt (the university has no dress code.) Surprisingly, the majority of the students were in favor of the student’s expulsion. A small group resisted, protesting against the expulsion, calling the others Taliban’s.

So this became a huge event, in which most everyone took part in. Not only in the case of Uniban, it’s clear that Gen Y talks more and more, saying whatever they want, to whoever will listen. It seems that Freud’s superego has disappeared. Freud must be rolling over in his grave!

There’s no self-censorship anymore. There’s just talk.

And what does this have to do with the larger issues? This attitude can drastically interfere with the life of business organizations. This generation will soon be speaking on behalf of businesses, expressing their opinions to the media, exposing themselves and others.

Mauro Segura, you work in the field of communication at IBM. How do you feel about this? Are you comfortable with this? How will businesses feel, having Gen Y responsible for their communication, if they simply say whatever floats into their mind at that specific moment?

If the idea is simply to speak, to give one’s opinion, you simply give an opinion and change it later. But is this it? Is this what’s happening? Perhaps this will fuel a great demand for lawyers? Are we moving towards a world of abundant lawsuits, where people are constantly sued for what they say?

Our supermen and superwomen have to rethink the superego.

Wiki defines the superego as “…the critical and moralizing function.” It represents censorship imposed by society and culture, imposing this on the Id, impeding individuals to indulge in complete satisfaction and the total fulfillment of their desires. In short, it’s repression. The manifestation of one’s conscience, indirectly exercising itself as morals, creating an ensemble along with duties and education, producing an “ideal” which is good and virtuous.

Does anyone still know what a superego is? Or should we just remove it from the dictionary?

By Rudney Pereira Junior

Sometimes I feel like the “lost link” caught in the middle of generations. Like a fossil, stuck between the monkey and the human being. Archeologists searching for me in the heat of African deserts. If you’re into definitions, I belong to generation X. But I feel as though I’m part of Generation Y too. Perhaps I belong to the group in transition. As the son of baby boomers, I also carry many characteristics of Generation Y.

When I discovered the term “multi-tasking,” I felt relieved. I thought, “That’s what I am!” I’m able to do a million things at the same time, and take care of everything. I would always try to justify this by my astrology sign…

But it’s not only about multi-tasking. I’m afraid of getting left behind. Seriously. How do I explain this? I’m 33 years old, and I’m afraid of growing old. Another preoccupation. It’s not that I’m sick or anything like that. But I keep thinking what I’ll be like at 60 or 70. Will I be able to follow the frantic rhythm of technological evolution then?

I think of my grandmother. 77 years old in the midst of this technological revolution. She comes from the time of the wood-burning stove. Even worse, while I was growing up television was still black and white.

Another label for myself comes to mind: Kangaroo generation. Labels come and go at such rapid velocity. That makes me anxious. What legacy will this generation leave? Does planting a tree, having a kid, and writing a book still count? The question remains, how do you follow this life and not get passed by? I don’t want to ever be or feel useless. But how?

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.