Leveraging Generational Intelligence to Attract, Engage and Retain Your Top Talent

I don't know if you are one of those leaders that are frustrated by having so many generations in the workplace under one roof. It can feel sometimes like we have generational wars going on. But what happens if you could leverage the various generations to create more collaboration, more job satisfaction, and higher employee retention? That's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that your customers and employees deserve. I am your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. And today, My guest is Shawn Johnson. We will be talking about how we as leaders can leverage the generational worldviews of our team to help influence the way we work and the way we do business. But before we get into that, I just wanted to remind you to go ahead and subscribe to this podcast. I know, I know. The podcast gurus out there say that I should wait until the very end until you get value from this episode before asking. But I figured, what the hey! If you're here with me right now, then we are friends. So, welcome friends! Just make sure you subscribe, please. You know, I consider myself very lucky being a hospitality specialist. I have been surrounded by young employees and seasoned professionals in the industry. I do know that the two can complement each other very well. But I also know that there can be Strife. And it can create— the strife happens because we have different values, different challenges. For instance, the baby boomer generation, for instance, snarls at the work ethic of the younger generation. And the younger workers can't believe some employees have spent 25 years with the same company. So that brings us to our Question of the Day. What do you think is the big positive to having different generations under your roof? Good question, eh? Go ahead and share your experience on social media. Share the episode on social media and hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and put in what do you think has been the biggest benefit to you of having different generations in your workplace. My guest for this episode is Generational Strategist Shawn Johnson. Shawn is the Strategist for Generational Inclusion and the author of her brand new book, Strategies for Generational Inclusion at Work. Growing up in a multi-generational family business has given her the wisdom of valuing older and younger generations working together. She is a member of the John Waxmill Rented lips. She is the member of the John Maxwell Team, a Certified Disc Behavioural Analyst, and Next Gen Facilitator, and has completed courses in positive psychology. Shawn, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you here.

Thank you so much, Marc. It's great to be here. I'm very excited about speaking with you and sharing some ideas.

As I am as well. This has always been kind of a real cool kind of topic because it is all about all these different things that happen within workplaces. And you just go, as a leader, you go, what am I doing wrong? But before we get into our topic, could you maybe tell us a little bit about what you do for your clients?

Yeah, I sure will. Well, I do a lot of presentations that are interactive because I find that everyone enjoys talking about their generation. But then, after we have fun talking about our generation, we can link that to all kinds of things that happen at work. The expectations we come to work with, the conflict that we sometimes have because we see the world differently. So, I do presentations, lunch and learns, workshops. I love interacting with people. So, while I enjoy doing a keynote, I like it even better if there's some interaction. If I can go into an organization and hang out in the conference room or wherever and And really talk about why is it that millennials don't want to put a signature line on their email? Like, what is the problem? Just simple things like that that can really aggravate us.

Very cool. How did this become such a passion point for you?

Well, a couple of things came together about 3 years ago. I was already with the John Maxwell team doing leadership things. But there were a couple of things that really changed my direction, a pivot so to speak. In doing the leadership training, I learned that my best reviews came from millennials. I consider myself a younger boomer. So, when I looked through them, I thought, wow, I really connect with millennials. So, that's something I can share with other people. And then, the second part of it was I started noticing, especially in the corporate world, that older generations were being pushed out, encouraged to retire before they were ready. And of course, that's illegal. But a lot of times, people don't take action. And it can be really discouraging to people even at the age of 55, which the older you get, the younger that seems, right? And then, at the same time, I was getting all this feedback from millennials. Gen Zs really weren't strong in the workforce yet. But millennials were saying, no one listens to me. I come to work. I have all this great feedback. I learned all this stuff in school and nobody listens. So, I started just diving into that whole dichotomy of the older generations feeling unheard and pushed out and the younger generations feeling unheard and undervalued. And said, I know something about this because I grew up in this environment. Saw this from the time I was a young girl.

Very cool. And because you had a family business, right? I think in your bio, you mentioned you were part of a family business with everybody working in it.

Yeah, I grew up on a farm and I was one of those lucky people that had great-grandparents involved in the, you know, in the business. I mean, a farm is a business and they were involved until I was well into my teens, 16, 17, something like that. So we all worked together all the time. And I saw, you know, at a young age, I remember my parents with their college education, you know, coming home. And oftentimes we think of technology as something new and certainly it's changing more quickly these days. But technology was an issue. You know, my dad came home with his agricultural degree and said, we're going to upgrade the dairy. It's going to be great. You know, we're going to milk more cows. We're going to have all this, you know, system, electronic milkers. We're going to measure and weigh the milk. And my grandparents said, why? What we're doing is working just fine. We've done it this way forever. My great-grandparents said, you know, you got to be careful how you spend your money. You know, you don't want to jump out there and get in debt. That's a bad idea. But over time, my dad made that happen. You know, he talked them into it. He invested a lot of his hard-earned savings. And that was the dairy that I grew up in, milking cows with my grandpa mostly. So, all of that push and pull, that collision of the old and new, the tried and true with the, hey, but we should try this now, that attitude. That's still what goes on today. It hasn't changed a bit.

And so, in that regard then, what struggles are you seeing now in the workplace when leaders come to you?

What are some of the Well, a really funny one that I heard recently was I was working with a group of credit union managers. And something that happened was a young employee who was in the teller role at the credit union. He wanted to take all 2 weeks of his yearly vacation because he was adopting a puppy. And that just, you know, the manager just couldn't even believe her ears. That was just so crazy. And she said, you know, not only is that so short-sighted to take all 2 weeks vacation for a puppy, but it's also Yeah. I mean, all of us have had puppies and you put them in the kennel and go to work and you come home and let them out or whatever. But she said, it really affects our whole staff because someone's got to cover for him for those 2 weeks. And so, we had this whole conversation about how do you talk to this young person and explain to them they need some foresight. You know, they need some planning. And, you know, sometimes we get really impatient with younger coworkers. But one thing we have to remember, and that was certainly true for this individual, is A lot of them never had the summer job. You know, boomers and Gen X and certainly traditionalists, the oldest generation that we might still encounter at work, we had summer jobs. We had after-school jobs. So, we started learning at a young age what was appropriate and what was not. What happens if you do this or that? But a lot of younger generations haven't. They haven't had those jobs. Their job has been to go to school and then, you know, maybe go to a camp during the summer. They just don't understand what the problem is. Patience, right? We have to be patient.

And to your point, I can remember the first time somebody came to me again in hospitality. And they called in and they said, I can't come to work today. And it's like, why not? My cat died. And it's like, what? It's just your cat. What are you talking, right? And I really had to calm myself because I realized at point that that's a value system differential. But it was something that I like. It actually made me laugh that somebody would call in sick because their cat died. Because we've had pets as baby boomers, even if we are the younger part of the baby boomers. And pets are pets. And yeah, okay, you can love your pet and stuff. But life has to go on. We have to continue to go to work.

Yeah, it's a totally different value system.

Yeah, so why do you think now, This idea of generational inclusion, why is this topic really important for leaders today, do you think?

Because they benefit so much from it. And so many issues are generational that we might not even realize are generational. There are conflicts that happen at work that we might not even— we might think it's personality. And it certainly could be. It could be behavioral style. But a lot of it, there are underlying generational worldviews that are causing the conflict. And when we can create some empathy and some understanding, we can get through those conflicts. I mean, even the Great Resignation, you know, you can't look online without running into an article about that. It's generational because the greatest turnover is millennials. Depending on whose report you're looking at, it's going to be people that are like 25 to 40, 42. And so, that's a generational issue. Why are they leaving? Well, when you learn to understand their point of view and what you can do at your workplace to make them feel valued, get them to stay, your productivity goes up. Your morale goes up. Your turnover goes down. It's a huge ROI. Generational inclusion really results in a huge ROI for any size business.

If you could figure out how to leverage it. And I think that's— do you think that that's the biggest challenge that leaders have right now is they haven't figured out necessarily how to leverage the generational gap within their workforce?

Yeah, I think it is. You know, most business leaders, especially if you're an entrepreneur, you're busy. You know, you don't have time to figure all this out. But if you can, you know, do a workshop or just do some simple things to bring people together and help understand how that older person in your office can help mentor and bring that younger person along and Then you can keep running your business. You know, a great example is things really haven't changed that much. I'll say first, when I started working out of college in the '80s, early '80s, I had a boss that his approach still works today. He took time to explain and coach us in everything. Back then, we would do paper filing. He even talked to us about consistency in how you file. How do you handle an angry customer? Back in those days, we used fax machines. What's an appropriate way to send a fax? What's an appropriate response to a fax, an inquiry? Today, if you can find someone in your business, or you can do it yourself, but if you can find someone who will approach younger employees with that coaching approach, it'll make all the difference in the world. And then what you're doing is you're bringing young people in who will become a vital part of your business. And they'll also understand your younger customers, which is so important because we all know as business owners, we want to do business with every age group if possible. And in most cases, you can.

Right. And as long as we're prepared to stop and listen, then to your point, then we can leverage it and our business would get better.

Yeah. Then we also know that younger employee might also understand from that mentoring or coaching when an older customer comes into your place of business or calls in why they might think the way they do. And why you might have to just bite your tongue and be patient. You know, I always talk about the case in banking where the older customer comes in and wants to write a check for cash. Yep.

Or the teller getting kind of frustrated with an older person and saying, I don't understand why you just can't use the ATM.

Right, yeah. My mother still doesn't understand how our debit card works. It's the way it goes.

Hey, I'd like to uncover what leaders can do to increase their what you call the generational intelligence. And we'll do that right after this.

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I am speaking with Shawn Johnson about what it takes to create effective generational workplaces. Shawn, before we get too deep, could you define for us? We've been talking a lot about the different generations and kind of these different kind of misperceptions we have about them. Could you define what each of these generations are and what are the core driving values that each of these levels?

Sure.

We still have some traditionalists in the workplace today. Those are people that are going to be 76, 77, and older. I happen to have an aunt who's still a school psychologist, a full-time employee. I have an uncle who runs his family business with his son. So, and you know what? If they're not working with you or for you, they might be your customer. And they're going to have real traditional values. They think that good things come to those who wait. Something that they offer younger generations is resiliency because they've lived through so many things. During the pandemic, there were some variations, but a lot of times I saw this older generation during the pandemic totally calm, not even upset, because they probably remembered family members who lived through the early— the Spanish flu. and the Great Depression. So, they have this reassurance about them and they can help younger generations understand that not everything that comes to you quickly is worth having. Sometimes, there's things that we should wait for. But they're still out there. And if you're lucky enough to have one working or doing business with you, leverage that knowledge, that expertise. Think Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway in The Intern. You know how he gives her this broader vision of what her business should be like and how she should respond to The pressures that are coming at her. So, they're still out there. And then the baby boomers, you know, who many baby boomers are in good health and they do not want to retire. And they have so much to offer. I think it's so short-sighted when organizations push them out the door because they have so much expertise. Even if you want to just have them work as a consultant or part-time or half-time, your older boomers. leverage their skills. They're going to be anywhere from about 58 to 70, 75, 76, somewhere in there. They're right behind the traditionalists. But they have seen so many things change. And so, they can provide perspective, things that didn't work in the past so we don't reinvent the wheel. But probably the number one thing the baby boomers bring is they are high relationship people as a generation. They're great at networking. They're great at building relationships. And many of them love to mentor younger people in a very positive way, not in a condescending way. So, leverage that. The next generation is Gen X that followed the Baby Boomers, a smaller, quieter generation. They are hard workers. They're practical. They're independent. They're your worker bees a lot of times. They're in management. They're getting things done. One thing to remember about Gen X is that they really appreciate work-life balance. And many of them still have children at home and they're caring for aging parents at the same time. So, if you're working with a Gen Xer, keep that in mind because a lot of times they are, they're called the sandwich generation. But they are very practical. They like autonomy. They're great at problem solving. Good leadership skills. And of course, following them is the Millennials. And that probably when you get to generational issues is the first thing that comes up. And it's usually a little tug-of-war between the millennials and the boomers, which is ironic because the boomers are traditionally thought of as the parents of millennials. Not always the case, but very often the case. And what did we do? You know, we had fewer children overall, so we did everything for them. We went to every sporting event. We were like, well, you played the whole season, so you should get some kind of credit even if your team didn't win. And You know, we're called helicopter parents, and there's a lot of reasons for that, because safety was an issue, you know, kidnapping was an issue, and, um, there were all these things going on in our world. So what did we do? We made sure we did everything with our kids, right? We went on vacation with them, and we're still like that today. But at the same time, we like to complain about them. We like to complain about them at work, you know. Why do I send them a message and they don't respond? And they're like, well, I didn't need to, I got the message, right? I don't I don't need to respond. I got the message. There's all these things. I mean, just have a family wedding and you can see the difference between the millennials' point of view and everyone else's. But the millennials have been called the canary in the coal mine because they have called out some leadership issues, some work-related issues that really needed to change. It's just that we kind of got our feelings hurt because we'd been putting up with that for years. We'd been putting up with poor leadership for years and they said, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how it should be. But they've, you know, over the last 20 years, we've seen a lot of things change for the good. And a lot of that has to do with millennials saying, I know you don't want to hear my opinion, but I'm going to tell you anyway. That kind of thing.

Yeah.

Millennials are now managers. I mean, one of my millennial friends is the CEO of a huge hospital. You know, some of them aren't. But we got to remember that they're just approaching life at a later age than older generations for a lot of reasons— college debt, All kinds of things going on with them. So, you know, where their parents might have bought their first home at 25, for millennials, it might look like 35. And a lot of them are just choosing not to live that lifestyle too. They're choosing not to have children at all and just live a different lifestyle. But that's their prerogative. And a lot of that has to do with the world they grew up in. Last of all, we have Gen Z. And sometimes people get confused. They think that the millennials are like Gen Z or Gen Z are like the millennials. But Gen Z are traditionally thought of as the parent— as the children of Gen X. They're going to be practical. They're going to be more pragmatic. And an interesting thing is they're not as digitally dependent as millennials. They really like to have face-to-face conversation. Whereas especially younger millennials really would rather just send you a text. And of course, those are generalizations. These are not boxes we can put people in. But they are really good guidelines for understanding behavior, especially when it comes to work and business.

Especially being able to understand that there are really concrete differences. And it shouldn't just be shrugged off. People are people. They should just all behave well. We can't just unfortunately do that. But there's been a lot of issues within the labor market right now. And you mentioned the Great Resignation. But things like remote and hybrid workers, a big focus on mental health. How are these issues kind of reflected in the generational workforces?

Well, we'll start with mental health. The younger Millennials and the Gen Z generation have grown up with a lot more daunting things in their world. They live in a more global environment than we did growing up. I mean, we have global terrorism. We have climate change. Those were things that when I was growing up, No one thought about. I feel like the world was much more optimistic, you know, in the '60s and '70s and '80s than the world that they're growing up in. Millennials saw the Great Recession. They saw parents lose jobs. They saw people lose homes, maybe on a larger scale than Boomers and Xers did. And now we have the pandemic. You know, we have Gen Z going to school from home. Graduating college and never going to an office to work, having to learn everything online. Now that's all changing and shifting, but they've lost a lot of those rites of passage—graduations, proms—all of that plays into this mental health issue, and it's hard for them to see beyond where they are because they just haven't lived long enough. And that's where older generations, like especially I was saying the traditionalists, if they have a grandparent or you know someone older in their lives, they can say, "You know, look." Things have happened before and we always get through them, that kind of thing. So mental health, it could be any age group because it could be a Gen X mom who's had her kids home trying to go to school from home and she's trying to manage a workforce, you know, hybridly. There's lots of issues there. But the younger generations definitely have grown up with that global perspective and that changes the way we look at everything, work and everything else. We've seen engagement levels fall. If you get any reports on worker engagement, we've seen that fall. That's because people come to work with higher expectations. They want to feel connected to more than a paycheck. And that's come from lots of places— parenting, education. When I went to work at my first job, I really— I mean, all those other things were nice, but I really thought I just need to get a paychecks. I got college loans and I got to make a car payment. But younger generations have grown up with higher expectations that we've given them. You can be anything you want to be. Isn't that what a lot of us told our kids? So, if we want to have that level of engagement, we have to link them to bigger causes than here's what you do every day. But this is who you're affecting. You're affecting this customer or that customer. Those all play into generational difference issues.

Yeah, when we talk about the leaders and developing their skills, what strategies would you recommend that leaders need to start adopting to become more effective?

First of all, just develop more of a coaching leadership style. There's a lot of ways to do that. I mean, you can read books. You can go online. You can hire your own coach. There's lots of business coaches. John Maxwell has a lot. Certified coach myself. Just to kind of help you think outside of yourself. But coaching, back in the day, no one ever thought about leadership as really being a coaching thing. You wanted to achieve results. It was profit-driven. The world was more profit-driven. Now, it's more people-driven. So, coaching is one thing. And then, learning to understand, having an open-door policy, allowing people to come in and talk to you. Set office hours. Whatever you want to give them. And let them come in and really find out what's going on in their world. Because when you show interest in them, they're going to create loyalty back to you and your organization. You're going to understand why that person of a different generation than you is saying things different. One thing I love to do is a values exercise. You know, get the team together and it's a lot of fun. Everybody gets to choose their values. And when you see other people's values, You understand so much about them, and it prevents you from pushing buttons that you never even knew you were pushing. So, that's great for leaders. And then, just understanding generations. I do a lot of workshops in generations, understanding how millennials think, how Gen X thinks, why they think like that. All of that. It's just that ongoing education because the half-life of education today is not what it was before. So, we have to all continue growing and And that has never been more important than it is now for leaders.

Fantastic! For those people who are watching this, if they turn around and they think, maybe I need to start thinking about this idea of bringing a coach in or somebody to help support us. How can people reach you if they want to look you up and ask for your assistance?

Sure. My website is seanjohnsonspeaks.com and it's spelled just like the gymnast. S-H-A-W-N J-O-H-N-S-O-N with Speaks on it. And my phone number and contact information is right there, as well as an opportunity to schedule time with me at no charge. But yeah, that's an easy way to get a hold of me. So, I'm a baby boomer. I don't mind if you just pick up the phone and call me.

You're not going to scan through the call display. Ah, maybe Tuesday.

Yeah, yeah. But if you're not comfortable with that, you can text me or you can email me, whatever. Whatever you want to do. I'm always open to a conversation.

Nice! Hey, I do know that there are people out there who are experiencing generational warfare in their organizations. What steps, like what's an initial step that they need to do to bring together a truce, for lack of a better word?

Yeah. Well, I think empathy and understanding are key. And one thing I love to do, it's like an icebreaker at the beginning of of getting together. And you can do this without me. I mean, you, you the business leader can do this. Bring people in your conference room, maybe get something good to eat or drink or whatever, and get everybody to relax and just share stories. Some key questions like, you know, what was your biggest obstacle growing up? Um, you know, what— how many kids were in your family? Um, you know, what, what is the most important thing in your life today? Just simple questions, because right away you get a different view of people. When I've done that, a lot of times people say, well, I've with this person 10 years and I never knew that, you know, they grew up in this environment with this many siblings and had all these challenges and struggles. We see people completely different. All of a sudden we find them, you know, we understand them better. We have empathy towards whatever issues might be going on in their life or, you know, all those things that happen in our childhood that still influence the way we think about things.

I think that's a fascinating exercise. I'm writing a script and one of the things that we need to do for the characters is we need to write a backstory for our characters so we understand when they come up to a conflict or something, how we're going to be able to write their responses to that. And as you were saying that, it's like, oh my goodness! This sounds exactly like just finding out people's backstories so that you have a point of connection. It helps you with the understanding aspect of it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, just even ask them like, what's going on in your life today? What struggles do you have? You might find out they have a handicapped child that you didn't even know about. It's crazy. It happens.

It tells me for workplaces, I did one episode on trust. How a lot of organizations, the trust bank account is very low as it were. What role does trust and respect have in this process?

That is a really good question. So, that exercise that I just talked about is kind of an adaptation from Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of the Team. And that was the first thing he recommends for building trust is to be vulnerable and share some of your stories with your team. And the leader should be a part of it too. It shouldn't just be team members and the leader watching. We all have to get in there. And sometimes those stories are We might not really want to tell them, but that's what builds that trust and that empathy. And then respect. Oftentimes older people, I consider myself one of those people, we want to be respected for what we've accomplished, how old we are, our wisdom, our experience. That's all good. But younger people want to be respected because they have good ideas or just for who they are, what they bring, showing up to work every day and doing the best that they know how to do. So, the respect thing is huge and it goes both ways. You know, when we treat everybody with respect, then we create an environment, a positive climate that we're all working in. Quick story. One of the millennials I know who I mentioned earlier, who's the CEO of a hospital, I talked to him early on, like 3 years ago when I started talking about this topic. And I said, so Kenneth, like what, how do you do it? Because you're managing people that are a lot older than you and yet you still have younger people coming in. And he said, I always adapt my approach for every person I talk to. And I always treat them with respect no matter what their job role is, what their age. That's key. It's a key factor.

And it seems so simple. And yet, in so many different work environments, when you think about all the reports of incivility in the workplace, you would think that the respect and trust aspect would be the easiest thing to solve. But it seems like that creates most of the clash for us.

Yeah, yeah, the respect thing is huge. Whenever I do, whenever I have a conversation, do a talk, someone's going to mention respect.

Or the lack thereof, right?

Yeah, yeah, or the lack thereof.

I'd love to get into some cautionaries as people are watching this and thinking, yeah, I got to change some stuff up. I'd love to get into some cautionaries about what the dos and don'ts are. As people want to instigate change. And we'll do that right after this.

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Welcome back! I hope you are getting tons of value from today's episode and our expert Shawn Johnson. As you could tell, Shawn and I are passionate about today's theme, this idea of leading teams and bridging the gaps. If you belong to an association who is planning a leadership retreat or a conference and you think we could be valuable presenters, go ahead and drop us a line. All our contact information is in the show notes. So, feel free to reach out at the very least for a quick discovery call to see how we could possibly serve you. We'd love to explore how we could be of service to you and of course, your people. Sean, your brand new book just got released on Amazon today. So, as we're Broadcasting this episode. It's on Amazon. Can you tell us a little bit about your book and what it covers?

Sure. I have a book right here. Whoops! It's behind me as well. But yeah, my brand new book. I'm really bad at putting this in the screen. I'm sorry, Marc. But there it is. Okay. It's a mini book. So, for those of you who might be intimidated by reading a 250- It's not a 50-page book. Don't worry, you're safe. You can order it at a very affordable price. And each page is a tip or a strategy, and some of them have additional information that you can access online at no charge. So what I tried to do is bring the best of everything I know and have used, or other people have used, about how to bring generations together. And a lot of it is just good information for getting your team to work together better, for keeping your best people, for attracting good people, all of that good stuff. So I hope that some people that are listening to this podcast will find that helps them out.

It does. I thank you so much for the advanced copy. I really read through it and it really is. It really gives you an idea of questions you should be asking. Once you have an understanding of where some of these strategies lie, you can then look at your property and at your organization and think, I can have— I could start strategizing what I need to do next. For people who think, oh, you know what? Generations aren't a problem for me. People, they go around thinking, ah, you know, I'm the boss and I'm fine. I don't need any of this information. How can people test where their generational IQ is?

Well, I do have an assessment. Funny you should ask.

No!

And it's fun. It's free. So, ShawnJohnsonSpeaks.com/GQ, generational Quotient. It's not the men's magazine. It's how much you know about generations. And there's 10 questions there that you can answer and it'll give you a score. And then if you, if you want more information, there's actually a generational matrix. It's, it's like an Excel spreadsheet PDF that you can download for free. And, and people love that thing. I, in fact, I've even adapted it for organizations, but it really helps you understand the way people think. If you have someone that lives to work that's working with you, chances are pretty good they're a boomer. If you have someone who thinks that work should be fun, chances are they're a millennial. If you have someone that thinks that work should be for a greater cause, chances are they're Gen Z. But a little warning, don't get too hung up on generational stereotypes because there's always outliers.

Yeah.

But it does kind of give you some good information, a good starting point to go, oh, I bet that's why they don't get along.

I love the fact that in the book, you mentioned the word cusps. We have generational cusps of people who bridge these 2 generations. Does it really make that much of a difference? Because everything that you were talking about today, I see that I'm on a cusp of many generations. When we talk about this, being a sandwich generation. I still have a child at home. I'm taking care now. My wife and I are taking care of our elderly parents. You know, we're still, even though under generational definition, I'm a baby boomer.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm basically a cusper as well. As a rule, most of my life I've identified with the older, you know, the boomers. That's just me personally. You know, there might be people my age that don't feel that way at all. At the same time, my siblings are definitely Gen X. They're younger than I am. So, I kind of see both sides of the coin, if you will.

Yeah.

And that's a great person to have in your organization, the one that gets both extremes. When it comes to— here's a great work example. So, Gen Xers that are cuspers, especially towards the younger end, or millennials that are cuspers on the older end, they saw a lot of changes in technology. And those people can be great at bridging that gap between those of us that didn't have a personal computer until we were Yeah. At work. I mean, I didn't have email until I was 3 years into my career, 4 years. Like, we didn't even know what to do with it. So, they're great at bridging that gap between the technology that older people might be familiar with or comfortable with and the stuff that the younger millennials and Gen Z are actually just expecting. So, if that makes sense, your older millennials, they grew up with AOL dial-up and all that, whereas the younger millennials didn't. And they can kind of bridge that gap and explain, well, this is why so-and-so might think of things like this. Because the rule is, this is Jason Dorsey, generational expert. I'll give him the credit. But he says, if you remember what the technology was before, it still seems like new technology to you. And that's really important to remember. If you're talking to someone like me, the iPhone still seems like new technology to me versus if you're talking to my daughter, she does not remember life first. well without having her own iPhone. I mean, she's vaguely—

It's so interesting because I'm floored. My son is 35 this year and I'm floored at just looking at his lifespan, how much technology has changed and evolved just in his lifespan alone. From microwaves to VCRs and like a craziness how much stuff has evolved and how crazy it's all gotten. As we get into talking about having people do generational inclusion, are there any cautionaries? Like as people start thinking about, yeah, we need to do something in our organization to start becoming more in sync. What are some of the cautionaries you would have?

Well, first of all, generational stereotypes is a problem. And while we're joking around about what we identify with, what generation, when we start using that too much at work, that creates silos. You know, we all understand that. And even when I'm giving a presentation, a lot of times I don't ask people to identify with a generation because some people are, you know, they're a little offended by that or they don't relate or whatever. So, let's not make jokes about Boomers or Millennials. Let's not do that at work. That just creates more problems. And then, don't assume by looking at someone or maybe in your mind you're thinking, I think they're a boomer and they're an older boomer, so I don't think they're going to understand this new technology. We can't assume that. There's traditionalists that walk around with iPads and they very much understand technology. And then there's younger people who still aren't comfortable with technology. You know, if you had a problem and asked them to help you, they wouldn't even know what to tell you. They know how to use it, but they don't really understand it. So all of those stereotypes can just become a really big And we shouldn't assume that older people in our workplace don't want to learn new things because a lot of times they do. Just like we shouldn't assume that younger people aren't interested in leadership training because they're not up for a leadership role. You know, a lot of times they do. They want to improve themselves. They want to develop those leadership skills. So, all of those are easy assumptions that we can make that get us in trouble.

And it's so funny because a lot of those assumptions can be beat out. Like, I'm of the mindset that the era of annual evaluations has seen its time and we should wrap those suckers up and park them away. That we need to, as managers, we need to now evolve into more of a coaching relationship rather than a you-do-this relationship. We've gone from being transactional managers now to being relational. Managers. And I think taking on the coaching aspect, I think would be such a stronger stance because that's how we're going to learn if we have anybody in our team who is aspiring to be a leader or wants to take on more responsibility and so on. The old baby boomer mindset of just putting on the blinders and keeping your head down and just doing the work is gone.

Yeah, exactly. And you know what? The world is changing so quickly that if we're not using that constant feedback give and take, coaching, we're not going to be able to adapt, to react, to change the way we need to. And so, sometimes I hear people complain, oh, the younger generations, they just want immediate feedback. That's the world we live in. I mean, think about it. We have to have that feedback to keep us on course because think about how much things have changed in the last 2 years.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

And yet, there's such power in that because if we look at it from our customer perspective, we want to know if our customers are dropping off. We want to know very quickly why dropping off. I mean, it's not in the 1920s. You might be the only company creating grommets at the factory and selling grommets. But now, in that mindset, we have 300,000 companies producing grommets and we're losing market share. And so, we need that immediate feedback and so do our people, which is a different way to be able to look at that as well.

Yeah, definitely. So instead of being annoyed with it, we should use it to our advantage.

Yeah.

And get their feedback too because sometimes those people at the ground floor see things we don't see.

Yeah. Shawn, this has been just an absolutely phenomenal conversation. As we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts?

Well, I think it's all about inclusion. And I think organizations that are inclusive in every way, we like to talk about diversity but it doesn't work without inclusion. So, the next time you need to make a hiring decision, Hire someone in an age category that you may not have on your team right now. And then, be inclusive and watch your return on investment go up.

Love it! This has been fantastic. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Yeah, it's seanjohnsonspeaks.com. And you'll see my email, my phone number right there. And schedule time if you want to have a conversation. Schedule some time with me or just give me a call.

Fantastic! And check down the links. In the links, we have all that information for you including links to Shawn's matrix, her comparison matrix, as well as links to her brand new book. It's going to be on there before the end of day today. So, make sure you check that out. Shawn, thank you so much. I can't thank you enough for sharing your expertise and your passion and your knowledge around this. I think it's very important nowadays. I can't thank you enough for taking time out today.

Thank you, Marc. It was a lot of fun.

Thank you. If you have any questions about today's episodes or would like a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with you and your team, please feel free to book time on my calendar. I have tons of resources I can share with you. And if I don't know it, I have a theory that between me and the rest of the world, we know everything. I can find somebody who can help you out. The link is down below. It's the one that's written in with meetwith.marchaine.com. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, go ahead and subscribe to this feed and follow me on social media. I'm bringing you fresh content virtually each and every week. It's great and it's a great way to keep up on it. So, my name is Marc Haine. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.