Meghan Gerhardt, author of Gentelligence: The Revolution Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce and expert in intergenerational collaboration, talks about her new book and provides strategies for connecting with, teaching, and learning from varied generations. The result? Instead of working against each other, employees can finally bring their varied skills and experience to the table, all for the betterment of the team. Learn all about building a team poised for whatever the next generation has to offer.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Meghan Gerhardt holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the University of Iowa. Years of research and time in the field have taught her that intergenerational cooperation is a necessary yet overlooked aspect of an effective team. She is passionate about providing team-building strategies and workshops to help leaders maximize the potential of a multi-generational team.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
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DEFINING TERMS
“Gentelligence” is a term I came up with a few years ago, and it’s really about narrating these conversations about generational differences in the workplace in a smarter way.
Meghan defines “gentelligence” as looking at intergenerational cooperation in the workplace as an opportunity rather than framing this dynamic as a threat. Unfortunately, however, Meghan says that this is exactly how the gap between generations is customarily viewed, especially over the past 10-15 as Millenials have entered the workforce.
Instead of digging in our heels, we should be excited about the potential. Meghan says that there “can be power in intergenerational innovation and learning,” but that means that we’ve got to do away with a focus on generational shaming and bias.” It seems like the workplace at large knows all about how to effectively manage diversity, but somehow “none of that is being applied to generational or age differences.” According to Meghan, it’s time for change.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
The inspiration
“I’m a university professor. That’s my day job. And so my world is all about learning from people who are both older and younger than me. I became a university professor when I had just turned 26 — so relatively young. I had a ton to learn. I needed a lot of advice and guidance and mentorship. But it also was very natural for me to ask my students often — first Millennials and now Gen Z — their perspective on how they would do things, so reaching across the generational gaps in both directions has always been the way that I have worked. And when I started doing talks to different companies on generational differences in the workplace, I realized that it wasn’t necessarily as clear to other people that there’s a lot of potential for learning there.”
Bridging the gap
“One [organization] that we highlighted in the book was called Papa, a great organization that even has a gentelligent business model. It’s about pairing young people, mostly college students, with senior citizens. […] They thought, ‘There are great things to learn on both sides. What would happen if we paired them together?’ And now it’s this highly successful healthcare company.”
A few roadblocks
“Age bias, which is both towards younger and older people, has been called one of the last socially acceptable biases. So that’s not to say that other kinds of bias aren’t prevalent and raging, but we aren’t very apologetic about making a remark or joke about somebody based on their age. There’s no federal legislation protecting younger workers under age 40 from discrimination. Just like older people are often thought to be resistant to change or not good at tech, younger people are often judged to be less reliable, entitled. We don’t have any research showing that that’s actually true.”
We’re not so different
“But we have research showing that while certain values are more frequent in certain generations, there are four values that all generations share at our core. Regardless of your age or generation, you want to be seen as competent. You want to have connections with other people. You want to do things that are meaningful, and you want to have some degree of autonomy. We think that we’re so different, […] but our values are largely the same. It’s just that the way that we demonstrate that can be very different, right?”
Strengthening trust
“We hear a lot these days about the importance of psychological safety and Amy Edmondson’s great work on that. […] Left to its own devices, age diversity, or generational diversity, is going to be a mess. You know, there are all of these reasons why we’re not going to see things the same way and all these potential areas for misunderstanding. So it has to be managed. Leaders have to go in and proactively give opportunities to strengthen trust.”
Finding connection
“Research actually supports that one of the best ways to [strengthen trust] is to promote intergenerational interaction. So if we’re not prompted or not facilitated in some way to do it, we all sort of stay with our own similar age groups. And so strengthening trust is creating opportunities for people to work across generations. […] From an organizational perspective, it’s about creating opportunities to get people to work together on meaningful things, where they all have different talents and perspectives to lend.”
A seat at the table
“We might feel like we have diversity, but is age diversity or generational diversity represented? And you might not think, well, what do I want with a 25-year-old? Or why would we want a 68-year-old here to talk about the changes we’re going to make in five or ten years. Well, both of them need to be at the table and everybody in between, because what perspective are you not getting by not having them there? When you build a team, you always want to think, what’s the unique perspective or expertise that we want to make sure we don’t miss? And we just have to expand that consideration to include age.”
LEARN MORE
You can find out more about Meghan by going to her website, profgerhardt.com, or by following her (@profgerhardt) on Instagram and Twitter. Also, Meghan’s book, Gentelligence: The Revolution Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce will be out on June 8th. Pre-order it now!