My dear friends, colleagues, clients and students:
Due to oversight, in the January 2007 issue of the
CareerQuest Newsletter, we forgot to thank two wonderful publications for their publicity and support of
CareerQuest's Boost Your Career Day marathon-telethon, held on Wednesday, December 27, 2006. These were the
New York Post (Chris Erikson,
Power Points, NYP@work), and
U.S. 1 - a Princeton NJ newspaper (Kathleen Spring,
Survival Guide, Free Professional Career Advice). Chris and Kathleen, a belated thank you and heartfelt apologies for missing you!
In this issue we present a thoughtful and practical article,
How to Work Across Generational Lines.
Keep your feedback coming. Please feel free to share this newsletter with your friends, remembering to give us the due credit. Many of you have asked us to restart our popular
feature,
Food for the Soul, which had been discontinued about a year ago, to keep the newsletter to a manageable length. Here is its comeback in this issue!
Until we meet again through the magic of e-mail,
Peace! Love! Shalom!
Don Sutaria, MS, IE (Prof.), PE
Founder, President & Life-Work Coach
CareerQuest
How to Work Across Generational Lines
by Don Sutaria
(One of the most popular articles in the
CareerQuest Newsletter has been
How to Work With Generation X (ages 20-29). It has been reproduced several times in various career publications. Based on its success, our surveys showed that there is a need for an article about working with people in their 20's through the 60's.)
The underlying idea here is how to make age differences work in the workplace, without causing an enormous amount of friction and damaged personal relationships.
The four generations currently in the workforce bring differing sets of attitudes, behaviors and expectations to the workplace. Even their values and vocabularies are different. Under ideal
circumstances, shouldn't we at least get along?
Depression Babies or Traditionalists: This is a large group of almost 75 million, born between 1926 and 1946. I am one of them, born in 1940. It spanned the Great Depression and World War II. Just look around you: in most cases they have a positive upward and onward attitude towards their job, keep their heads down and plug away, and rarely complain. Perhaps they have truly gone through the ringer during their formative years. Their heroes were Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Wayne, Joe DiMaggio, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. How about memories of Pearl Harbor, Bay of Pigs and Korea? By and large, this group is loyal, grateful and patriotic.
Baby Boomers: They were born between 1946 and 1964 and they number 80 million strong. They are actually the largest of the four groups we are discussing in this article, and also aging. Their heroes were people such as John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Gloria Steinem, Led Zeppelin, Jerry Garcia and last but not least, the Beetles. Places like Kent State, Woodstock and
Hanoi Hilton stir up special memories for them. Television changed their world dramatically like seeing the Vietnam War in their own living rooms. This generation too, had a special kind of youthful optimism that they could really change America and the world and that the sky was the limit! There were protests and turmoil all around them.
Generation X-ers: Believe it or not, this group hates this pigeon-holing label. They were born between 1965 and 1980, about 46 million of them. Their growing up years were influenced by the likes of Al Bundy, Bill Clinton, Madonna and Dennis Rodman. They lived through a dramatic ever-changing world which brought the downfall of the Soviet Union, Lockerbie plane crash and the proliferation of computers and the Internet. Technology and media defined and shaped this generation. They have developed a great deal of skepticism, observing the lives of their parents. It appears to them that they have been handed a broken world, which they are stuck with and need to fix. Refreshingly enough, this group still puts a lot of faith in the individual and in themselves. But faith in employers and institutions like government and marriage...Nooooooooooooooooo!
Generation Y-ers or Millennials: Wow! Some 76 million strong! They were born between 1981 and 1999. The "early birds" are just barely entering the workforce. They have lived through a lot; 9/11, Columbine and Space Shuttle disasters. Culturally they are tied in with Britney Spears, Kurt Cobain, Beyonce, Serena Williams, Prince William and Marilyn Manson. Observing them may re-kindle your hope. By and large, they were raised by mostly optimistic baby boomers. They appear to be confident and realistic. They appear to be willing to tackle situations which have gone askew, and take positive and concrete action.
The Tower of Babel -- "I Don't Speak Your Language": Now let us imagine placing all these four distinctive ingredients in the stew pot called the factory or office environment...and watch something happen!
Gen X-ers have no qualms about changing jobs every year or two to advance. Why shouldn't they, when employers show no loyalty and they have seen their parents being downsized, after years of loyal labor? A traditionalist may be horrified at this approach. Gen Y-ers couldn't care less, because changing jobs is normal everyday routine.
Gen X-ers need frequent and constant feedback because that is how they are wired. Baby Boomers do not like that.
Eventually, a labor shortage is predicted for the United States. The older generation needs to train the younger generation, and pass on the wisdom, knowledge and experience, especially at
managerial levels. If I don't speak your language, how can I communicate effectively?
Experts like Stillman and Lancaster tell us that their research shows that each one of the generations seems to be undervalued and disliked by the other generations at work. What a sad
picture? But all is not lost. Stillman and Lancaster give us some survival tips.
Then we can all get along...
Survival Tips:
- Give people the benefit of the doubt: Don't assume everyone is playing by your rules with your definitions. Too often, somebody may feel that a rule was "broken" by a colleague, when that
person didn't even know the rule existed.
- Flexibility is in: Employees of different generations thrive in cultures where they can be who they are and express themselves, where they are encouraged to learn from, and not become, one
another.
- Our way is not the only way: Instead of being stuck in our own mindset, we need to find a way to connect with one another. We need to listen, to consider other possibilities, not to assume that
our way is always the best. Every generation in the workplace or at home can be pronounced guilty at some time or another, on this score.
Closing Thought: Dear reader, let's make a mutual commitment. We can make a concerted effort to expose ourselves to generational diversity at work and at home. The result may be wonderful
insights gained that no one is right or wrong, just different. Then we can all get along...just a shade better than we did earlier.
Food for the Soul
What Mr. Fred Rogers Can Teach Career Coaches
Fred Rogers died on February 27, 2003, of stomach cancer at age 74. He was the creator and host of the enduring show,
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood for more than three decades. It was my two sons' (Norman and Dale) favorite show in the eighties. My oldest son, Norman, around age two or three, refused to call me Dad for quite a while, and every evening when I came home, called me "Mr. Rogers" (something I secretly cherished!). I don't know to this day why he said that. My wife Elizabeth thinks it was because I was kind and gentle with them, and spent a lot of time with them.
Perhaps when a client comes to see a career coach, that person's ego has been badly bruised by the world. In many ways, the client is looking for unconditional love from the coach. Using this hypothesis, I want to share with you some characteristics of Mr. Rogers which we may want to emulate.
These are gentleness, sweetness, sincerity, a voice which seems to lower the anxiety level, consistency, unconditional love, focused attention (listening), and providing a safe
haven during a counseling session.
Mr. Rogers' philosophy of the show can be summarized as follows:
- Discover something new.
- Listen to people's stories.
- Sing.
- Take your time.
- Be generous.
- Imagine.
- Feed the fish! (Don't forget the little acts of kindness.)
Let's pay a tribute to this great man by integrating some of Mr. Rogers' values and philosophies in our practice of career counseling, and all of us, coaches and clients, will benefit from them.
Don Sutaria is Founder and President of CareerQuest (formerly New Life Career Counseling), located in New York and New Jersey. CareerQuest is also mentioned in "What Color is Your Parachute?" Sutaria is a consultant to individuals and various corporations, offering executive coaching and career management services. He has developed unique methods for capturing jobs in the new millennium. He appeared on a Phil Donahue TV special on unorthodox methods of job hunting. Known as "Career Doctor Don", he has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Star-Ledger, The Union Leader, WorkingSmart, SmartMoney, Fortune, and on WINS and WOR radio. He specializes in counseling of international professionals, Generation X (age 20-29), career changers, freelancers, consultants, mid-career executives and people over age 50. He really believes that your career is a pathway to your soul.
Mr. Sutaria has over forty years of diversified industrial and management experience, complemented by training in career development and hands-on experience in career advising. He is an international cross-cultural trainer. He has also served on committees of several organizations, and conducted courses, seminars and symposiums at Columbia University, New York University, Nyack College, Alliance Graduate School of Counseling, and Rutgers. He is a member of the Association of Career Professionals International, Career Counselors Consortium, and Society for Human Resource Management.
Don earned his MS degree in Management from Kansas State University, an IE (Professional) degree in International Management and Personnel Relations from Columbia University, and obtained New York University's postgraduate Certificate in Adult Career Planning and Development.
