Sticking Points

How to Get 5 Generations Working Together in the 12 Places They Come Apart

Haydn Shaw

• Publisher: Tyndale Momentum
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781496448224
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Updated with new findings on Gen Z!
With five generations in the workplace at once, there's bound to be some sticking points. This is the first time in American history that we have five different generations working side-by-side in the workplace: the Traditionalists (born before 1945), the Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964), Gen X (born between 1965–1980), Millennials (born 1981–2001) and Gen Z (born 1996–present). Haydn Shaw, popular business speaker and generational expert, has identified 12 places where the 5 generations typically come apart in the workplace (and in life as well). These sticking points revolve around differing attitudes toward managing one's own time, texting, social media, organizational structure, and of course, clothing preferences. If we don't learn to work together and stick together around these 12 sticking points, then we'll be wasting a lot of time fighting each other instead of enjoying a friendly and productive team. Sticking Points is a must-read book that will help you understand the generational differences you encounter while teaching us how we can learn to speak one another's language and get better results together.

1: Sticking Together or Coming Apart

CINDY SNEAKED OUT before the conference wrapped up. Seeing me by the registration table, she looked at her watch and asked, “Can you answer a question about your presentation? I’ve got a big problem on my team.”

“Sure,” I said. “We have a few minutes before people start coming out.”

She glanced at her watch again and started in. “For six months I’ve been working with Human Resources, trying to figure out what to do with Cara. I’m leaving the conference early to finalize the paperwork to fire her. But after listening to you, I’m wondering if maybe there’s something generational about this. I lead an information technology department, and Cara surfs the Internet three hours a day.”

“Sounds like a lot,” I said. “If she’s surfing that much, her work must not be getting done. Who on your team is picking up the slack?”

“No work falls to other people,” Cindy said. “She actually carries the heaviest workload in my department. She supports more software programs and more users than anyone else.”

“Oh,” I said with surprise. “Seems strange to fire your highest producer. Do her customers complain about her work?”

She hesitated. “No . . . she has the best customer satisfaction scores of anyone in our department. The vice presidents often tell me to do whatever it takes to keep her because she is the best in my department. That’s why Human Resources and I have been trying so hard to figure out how to make it work with her. But we are stuck.”

“If she does more work and has better results than anyone on your team, why are you firing her?” I asked.

“Because she sets a bad example for the rest of the department. I have other techs asking me why they can’t surf the web if Cara can. Plus, we pay her for a full day, and she’s not working three hours of it. What if everyone did that? At first I offered to promote her since she is so good; I knew that would fill her plate. But she says she likes the job she has. I’ve coached her for a year now that she needs to stay busy. I’ve offered her extra projects, but she says it wouldn’t be fair.”

I finished her thought. “She says that being able to surf the Internet is her reward for getting her work done faster. She shouldn’t be punished by having to do 30 percent more work than everyone else without 30 percent more pay.”

Cindy almost shouted, “That’s exactly what she said!”

Cindy was in the middle of a sticking point.

“My wife and I have two kids in their twenties, but they are certainly not like we were,” Stan, a fifty-six-year-old accountant, stated once we had found a seat. We’d met in the food line at an open house for a recent high school graduate. At first when people find out I do leadership training and consulting, they nod politely. But when I mention I’ve been researching the different generations for almost thirty years, they can’t stop talking.

As I started eating, Stan continued. “By the time I was twenty-five, I already had a house, a kid, and another on the way. But my kids don’t look like they’re ever going to settle down.”

The brisket was good, so I kept eating and listened to Stan. He went on, “Our oldest son, Brandon, is a good kid, but he’s taking his time figuring out what he wants to do. He’s twenty-six, and he moved back home five months ago because he says things are just too expensive on his own. Living with his parents doesn’t seem to faze him or his friends. I would have died of embarrassment. And I know his mother would never have dated me if I’d lived at home, but it doesn’t seem to bother his girlfriend, either. She’s a really nice girl with a good job, but after dating for four years, they never talk about marriage. Most of my friends were married by twenty-six; most of Brandon’s are still dating.”

“That seems about right,” I said. “The average age for marriage has jumped. My oldest son had thought about getting married at twenty-two, and everyone said he was crazy. I thought he was crazy, and I got married at twenty-two. Actually, his grandmother thought he was crazy, and she got married the day before she turned seventeen. It’s a different world.”

Stan hadn’t touched his food. “I’m not saying he should get married. He hasn’t finished his college degree or found a job he wants to stick with, and he still plays a lot of video games. It’s not getting married later that I don’t understand; it’s that he and his girlfriend don’t want to get serious. I’m a little worried about what’s going to happen to him and his friends.”

Stan was stuck (and his brisket was getting cold).

Hector had asked if we could talk at a seminar lunch break, and he got straight to the point: “Haydn, my team is stuck. We had an important presentation recently that started out fine but ended in disaster.”

Hector Perez was a forty-three-year-old vice president of a new division formed to help his midsize manufacturing company move into green technology. Even discouraged and noticeably tired, Hector never stopped moving his hands. He waved his fork like an orchestra conductor as he talked: “Larry Broz, our CEO, is great. He asked me to fly in my team, who are mainly Generation Xers like me, to make our pitch to the management team for increasing research and development spending on green technologies. Larry’s why I left a great company to come here. He may be almost seventy, but he thinks as young as I do. And my team did great. They looked professional, they knew their stuff, and even when the executive team began to throw out strong challenges, they listened and responded like they were old pros.

“But then the meeting crashed, and our proposal went with it. One of my team members, Rachel, was taking notes on her phone. She finished quickly, but later, when the head of operations launched into one of her pet topics, which we’ve all heard many times before, Rachel began working on Slack on her phone again, in full view of the others in the meeting. The head of operations stopped speaking and stared at Rachel’s phone. Rachel didn’t apologize and mentioned how she was taking notes for the team on Slack. The head of ops had never heard of Slack and asked me why my team ignored meeting etiquette. I tried to make a joke about my team being on their phones in my meetings to ease the tension, but that got the head of ops even more fired up.

“The whole meeting just fizzled,” Hector said. “Once the CEO got the head of operations calmed down, we met for another half hour, but it was awkward, and the energy was gone. People were still thinking about Rachel using her phone rather than the strategy. Larry finally put the meeting out of its misery and asked the executive team to submit additional comments in writing. He pulled me aside and said he has heard of Slack and his grandkids take notes on their phones faster than he can type, but I need to help my team know how to communicate with other generations.”

Hector continued, “Rachel was just doing what our whole team does in our own meetings. She’s doing stuff on her phone while I’m talking, too, but it doesn’t bother me because I know she’s dialed in to what we’re doing. On the flight home, the team agreed that Rachel should have left her phone alone but wondered how senior management could be so out of touch with how people work now. I’m stuck in the middle. The senior execs want me to coach my team to be more ‘buttoned down,’ but my young team members wonder if they’re just spinning their wheels here, if this is the place for them long term. Two of them referred to our senior team as ‘OK Boomers.’ If senior management can’t adjust to current meeting etiquette, will they ever be able to embrace these new green technologies they want us to implement? I came here to make a difference, not keep the peace.”

Hector was stuck between generations.

Cindy’s and Hector’s companies didn’t know it, but they had run into seven of the twelve most common generational sticking points I’ve identified from interviewing and working with thousands of people. And Stan’s family was tangled in four different sticking points as well. When people from different generations answer the same question differently and assume their answer should be obvious to everyone else, that’s a generational sticking point. Each generation in these situations thought the others were the problem. The groups tried in vain to ignore or avoid their generational differences. Typically, as at Hector’s company, the generation in charge tells a younger generation to get it together, hoping that will solve the problem. But it never does.

These groups’ approaches predictably didn’t work, and they weren’t sure why or what to do about it the next time. Generational friction is inevitable today, and “the next time” will come more and more often and create more and more tension. If only the companies and family I described had known the following:

• For the first time in history, we have four and sometimes five different generations in the workplace. These generations might as well be from different countries, so different are their cultural styles and preferences.
• Of the four approaches organizations can take to blending the generations, only one of them works today.
• Focusing on the “what” escalates tensions, while focusing on the “why” pulls teams together.
• Knowing the twelve sticking points can allow teams to label tension points and work through them —even anticipate and preempt them.
• Implementing the five steps to cross-generational leadership can lead to empowering, not losing, key people.

But they didn’t know these things. And neither do most organizations or families. Sticking points are inevitable, and they often get teams and families stuck. But they don’t have to. The same generational conflicts that get teams stuck can cause them to stick together.

Stuck in the past or sticking together going forward: it’s a matter of turning a potential liability into an asset. And it’s not that hard to do, as you will soon discover. (In later chapters, I’ll pick up the stories of Cindy, Stan, and Hector and share the advice I gave them about working through their generational sticking points.)

“They Don’t Get It”

The most common complaint I hear from frustrated people in all generations is “They don’t get it.”

“They,” of course, means a boss, coworker, or family member from a different generation who the speaker believes is the cause of a problem. And in my experience, “it” usually refers to one of the following twelve sticking points —places where teams get stuck:

1. communication
2. decision-making
3. dress code
4. feedback
5. fun at work
6. knowledge transfer
7. loyalty
8. meetings
9. policies
10. respect
11. training
12. work ethic

Anyone in today’s workforce can identify with most, if not all, of the twelve sticking points.

“They don’t get it” is usually a sign that a sticking point is causing problems. Team members of the same generation begin tossing around stereotypes, making comments to each other about the “offending” generation. Each generation attempts to maneuver the others into seeing the sticking point their own way.

Surprisingly, “They don’t get it” can also apply to those who think we shouldn’t put people into generational categories as much as to the people who launched the “OK Boomer” memes and T-shirts, or the Boomers whose arrogance inspired them. (It’s my life’s mission to help workplaces so Boomers won’t be viewed as “OK Boomer” coworkers and the younger generations won’t need to mumble the insult under their breath.) Both the judgers of other generations and the judgers of those who talk about generational differences make the first mistake —viewing a sticking point as a problem to be solved rather than as an opportunity to be leveraged. The goal becomes to “fix” the offending generation or generational conversation rather than to look for ways to work with other generations. The irony is that when we say another generation doesn’t get it, we don’t get it either. Or when we say people who recognize and talk about generational differences don’t get it, we are dismissing their perceptions and concerns. Once we get it, we realize that these sticking...