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- A cross-generational workforce is commonplace now.
How do we navigate these different generations?
Hi, I'm Lea Woodford of SmartFem and Friends.
And with me today is Brad Szollose,
a cross-generational expert, speaker,
and author of Liquid Leadership.
Hey, Brad, welcome to the show, how are you?
- Thank you, Lea.
Thanks for having me.
- So, Brad, why are millennials getting such a bad rap?
- Excellent question,
and that's the number one question I always get.
First of all, millennials are misunderstood, completely.
I've been working in this generational space
for almost 20 years now, and I gotta tell you,
people still haven't figured it out.
But this generation,
I've seen them in the perfect environments
where they're getting flexible hours,
they can work remotely,
they have their lunches paid for,
and they can do whatever they want.
They can take vacations, things like that.
- Wear yoga pants. (laughs)
- Yes, wear yoga pants.
And they still lead as a group.
And how is it for baby boomers?
If we didn't like our job,
we just sat in the corner and complained,
and we'd type out our resume,
and we go, you know, this place is horrible,
and I'm gonna get outta here.
And then five years goes by,
and we're still not out of there.
Then we're like, you know, I'm really upset.
I'm gonna get my resume together.
And then we're like, you know,
I have a mortgage, and I have kids, and we don't leave.
We stay loyal.
Millennials still, to this day, will get up and leave.
And it isn't just the management side
of everything with millennials.
They won't buy traditional products.
They won't go to events sometimes
that marketing experts have planned for months
and they just don't show up,
and they can't figure out this generation.
So because they can't figure out this generation,
guess what they're doing now?
They're focusing on the next generation, Generation Z.
- So, Brad, why do you think
we have this generational divide?
- Let's go back in time, Lea.
How was your father, was your dad tough?
- Oh my God, yes, militance.
- Right, my father was tough.
And if you go back to the '70s,
this idea of child-centric parenting started to show up.
Also, toys started to change.
The interactive world started to happen right around 1977.
1984, it really took off,
but if you're a baby boomer,
you might remember this.
Remember this?
This is a GAF View-Master.
This was the most interactive device
that a baby boomer could use.
This was an interactive slide show.
And you know what was horrible about this?
If the sun went down and the power went out,
you couldn't use it. (laughs)
Now, I'm the cusp baby boomer.
And what does that mean?
Well, you have the baby boomer like my stepbrother.
He was 12 years older than me,
and he was worried about being drafted to Vietnam.
I'm a cusp boomer.
When I reached the same age,
I was worried about getting home in time
to see the ABC Afterschool Special.
So there's a very big difference there,
but we are all lumped into the same generation.
And for those of you who are watching,
think about this from your childhood.
I'm the generation that was raised with lawn darts,
you know, real lawn darts.
If you don't know what the connection is
between a pencil and a cassette, then you weren't there.
And eight-tracks, how long did that last?
- Not long.
- Right, so we had a software upgrade
when you were a baby boomer, you got a 45 album,
and you got that little plastic clip
you had to put in the center,
that was a software upgrade for a baby boomer.
And a hardware upgrade for a baby boomer
was bigger speakers. (Lea chuckles)
So, fast-forward to 1984, and all of a sudden,
more robust video games started coming into the households.
And these took years to solve, multiple layers,
and you had a new generation
that was trained completely different in business skills.
And they learned how to interact as a team,
look for people who have a specific skill set
and work with that team.
And if you don't have that skill set, they get rid of you.
Leadership is rotational.
And by the way, you don't read a box
when you play a video game.
You don't read the directions on the box
to figure out how to play that game.
Monopoly was a good example from our generation.
You remember playing Monopoly?
- I do, it was one of my favorites.
- Right, so you had to read all the rules,
and then the game always ended the same way.
Somebody would get upset, flip the board 'cause they lost.
They didn't bite off,
they were always payin' rent on some Boardwalk.
Well, you now have a new generation
that was taught to make mistakes, push against,
find out what those rules are by playing the game.
So boomers were taught if you make one mistake,
your career is over.
But this next generation was taught,
mistakes are the only way to learn.
And now you're looking at two different generations.
You think our brains might work differently?
Maybe a little bit more complex?
And that's the huge difference.
I mean, it's a generational difference,
but it's not like any other,
simply because this next generation was raised
completely differently.
- So, Brad, all these wonderful toys
have indoctrinated these kids to live online,
and now they don't have the soft skills
that's needed to work in today's corporate America.
- Absolutely, but think about it for a second.
When we were punished and sent to our rooms,
we had to sit there and read a book,
(Lea laughs) that was it.
Now a new generation is sent to their room
when they're punished and they're like,
yeah, I'll come out when I'm done.
You know, hitting 300,000 points.
So their toys were highly interactive.
So they didn't have to develop skills
like I have to look you in the eye
and actually speak with you.
And now, not all millennials are like this.
I don't want anybody to sit here and say,
well, millennials are this way and boomers are this way.
It's not that.
These are clues, not boxes to fit people into.
Because I've met boomers who act like millennials,
like myself, and millennials who act like boomers.
And Generation X is kinda like Sweden.
They're right in the middle.
They know each generation and they can work within both.
But now Gen X is coming up at the management positions,
and they're not taking the reins so quickly.
So we have a whole generational divide
taking place in all these companies,
and it really goes back to how they were raised as children.
Child-centric parenting was a very big ideology
that started to be talked about by all the experts,
you know, whether it was Carl Rogers or it was Dr. Spock,
they started to say you don't paddle a child,
you treat them special
and let them find their innate skills.
And my father, who's a first generation
of Hungarian immigrants in the United States,
when he heard about child-centric parenting,
my dad was a doctor of chiropractic medicine,
so he had some authority,
and he gave it his stamp of approval,
and he said, "This is a load of crap."
(Lea laughs) And most parents
did back then, you remember?
It's like, what're you talkin' about?
Kids would come home and go,
you know, I can call the police on you.
They're like, well, you better do it right,
'cause when I get home, we're gonna paddle you.
That all shifted into
children now could have this extended childhood.
There were no boundaries.
They weren't paddled.
They weren't told there was right and wrong,
and they got awards based on self-esteem.
We want you to feel good first
rather than having skills to survive in the real world.
So I'm sure a lot of you have heard some of this,
you know, you get a trophy, you were last to win.
Here, here, honey.
And that's a good thing and a bad thing on many levels.
Because you now have young millennial women
who don't have what the boomer women
had in the back of their head,
which was dad going, you can't do that, you're a girl.
Now, millennial girls, they've had their fathers
in the back of their mind telling them,
you can do it, baby.
You can do it, go!
And so they don't have that voice of limitation.
And I'm sure a lot of people watching today,
they'll realize that the millennial young adult
from 36 on down to 21, 18, things like that,
their self-esteem isn't wrapped up
in proving their dads wrong.
Their self-esteem is I can do this.
I know I can do this.
So it's a different paradigm in that generation's mind
that's going on.
- But the other thing,
it feels like Peter Pan Syndrome.
Because we've, you know, we have a 10-year study now.
These kids are failing to launch.
We just saw in the news,
we have a 30 year old suing his parents
because they want him to leave the house.
- Do you know what a Grup is?
- I do not.
- That is a Star Trek term, my geeks out there.
That is a Star Trek term
for when Captain Kirk and the crew
came to this planet and they discovered
there were these young children playing,
and they were 200 years old.
And as soon as they started to go through puberty
and cross over into becoming a teenager,
they were called a Grup, which is short for grown-up.
Well, that's a term now that's being used
for 40 year olds who are riding skateboard,
or want to take their children who are 10 or 11 to a concert
to see Boston live, things like that.
So our boundaries have shifted from well, in your 20s,
you need to prove yourself,
and in your 30s, you probably want to establish yourself
and get some management and buy a house.
And in your 40s, you're gonna raise kids.
50s, you're gonna get that corner office,
you're gonna be managing, that's all gone.
The woulda-coulda-shoulda of the boomer hierarchy
that we had to work our way up through
no longer exists.
That pyramid of at 20, you're supposed to do this,
and at 30, you're supposed to do this,
at 40, you're supposed to do that,
that's flattened now.
And that's why you see young CEOs
running billion-dollar corporations now.
And that's why you see 40 year olds
going off to write the great American novel.
There's no defined boundaries for age anymore.
- You know, you bring up an excellent point now.
Let's talk a little bit about ageism.
You know, because we're dealing
with a multi-generational workforce.
And, you know, it used to be,
you were a young kid, you knew nothing.
Now you've got a 20-something year old
that's managing a boomer.
How on earth do you do that?
- It's very interesting.
If you look on any job application,
they say they do not discriminate
against race, creed, color, religion, all these things.
There's one thing not on there: age.
They can legally discriminate against you for age.
It's the big elephant in the room
nobody's talking about.
And here's what's been going on,
the dirty little secret that's been running around.
You are seeing 50-somethings competing
for the exact same jobs that 20-somethings
are competing for.
And the 50-somethings are being pushed out.
And there's this ideology that's running around where,
I can get a millennial for a lot cheaper
to do all this work,
and I just need them to do the tech stuff.
Well, guess what?
You're missing out on something that's incredibly powerful,
because a lot of boomers are not these,
I'm gonna use one of my dad's terms,
they're not these dumb idiots
who don't know anything about technology.
I mean, look at us.
We use technology all the time.
I'm on Facebook Live, I use LinkedIn a lot,
so why are we getting this stereotype
just because you're having
a little bit of gray hair show up?
And that's the thing that I believe
a lot of corporations are missing out on.
Now in other countries,
it's a little different.
You're older, you have this amazing experience that we need,
that's the way a lot of these companies
look for people who have that experience.
Like in Germany, they're not gonna kick you out
because you're older.
They need you.
There are plants, BMW plants over in Germany
have gotten rid of millennials,
use millennials in sales rooms,
but use the boomers in construction plants.
Because if I have 100 boomers,
I know I can take the field.
If I have an army of 100 boomers,
I can do anything with them.
But with millennials, if I have 100 millennials,
I have to persuade them,
because they've been taught to be independent thinkers,
to think outside the box.
Their talents are important.
They need to speak up and speak out, things like that.
So it's a little different in the behavioral paradigms
of each generation.
Like I always tell the corporations I work with,
what motivates a baby boomer
will never motivate a millennial or a Gen Xer.
- Well, you know, what's really interesting about this,
as we're talking about the millennials,
but what I've seen, I've raised my kids now,
I'm working on my husband's children,
but, you know, they were raised,
indoctrinated into the tech world.
And they all think
they're gonna be the next Mark Zuckerberg.
And they put everything in that.
They wanna start at the top,
I lead a whole bunch of millennials over at the magazine,
and they all think that, you know, just show up,
wear your yoga pants,
and there's this sense of entitlement.
Can we talk about that?
- Absolutely.
Well, that's a misinterpretation.
You have a generation, and like I said, I love millennials,
because they bring a breath of fresh air,
but they are causing disruption.
They don't know they're supposed to
know their place in the company.
That's were the disruption's taking place.
They walk in with a master's degree,
24 years old, 28 years old,
and they believe they can sit down with you and I
and just talk, you know, we're on equal level.
We're peers.
And when this first started to happen back in the '90s,
you had young people that were coming right out of college,
first or second job, and they wanted
to meet the CEO at a company and say, hey Chad,
I'm gonna show you how to run this place,
'cause I had a business degree.
And it started to drive everybody crazy,
because it's like, wait a minute,
you're supposed to come in at the bottom,
work your way up, and then you might be able
to talk to the CEO when you get to this level.
And were, be 40 years old.
This shocked every corporation around the world,
because this was happening globally.
They'd walk right in, they'd say, hey,
I'm gonna show you how to run this place.
Or a lot of people have had this happen in interviews.
The head of HR is sitting there,
and they're sitting back,
the interviewer and the interviewee,
and they look up and they're like,
how long did it take you to get into that position?
They're like, oh, 16 years.
Huh, what are you, a slacker?
I'm gonna do it in four.
And so everybody's like, are you kidding me? (laughs)
So this was causing disruption,
all because you go back to childhood,
you have a generation whose mom and dads
looked 'em right in the eye
and had adult conversations with them,
as if they were peers, not parents.
My father was a benevolent dictator in my home.
- Mine too.
- Right, and he had the speech.
Everybody had the speech from their dad.
It's like, I'm your father, I am not your friend.
When I tell you to get out of bed,
you put your work clothes on.
When I say jump, you ask me how high.
Maybe when you hit about 35,
I will find you interesting enough to have a beer with you.
Until then, we got work to do.
And every boomer knows that speech, okay?
And that got shifted
into this crazy way of speaking to children,
where it's like, hey, honey, don't get up.
It's only 10:30, I know you were out late last night.
But your dad and I have a question for you,
and that is, should we get a divorce?
What do you think, honey?
And some of you are laughing at home,
but you did this, 'cause the experts told you
to raise your kids this way.
And now we're shocked that the hierarchy
was flattened in the household,
parents became peers, concierges, time management experts,
driving everybody to soccer games, karate classes,
dance lessons, French lessons, all these experiences.
As soon as the kid looked like he might like soccer,
we spent $400 to buy all the equipment,
and then we were shocked when they had 12 years of this,
they went to college and they were listened to every day,
and everybody's hanging on the edge
of everything they were saying,
and they'd walk right into the corporate office
and they'd say, hey, we're gonna show you
how to run things better.
What happened when you were 25, Lea?
Was your boss listening to everything
that came out of your mouth,
telling you you were a genius and you were amazing?
- No. - No, never happened.
So I don't want anybody to judge this as good or bad,
but this is what took place.
You have a generation now
that has a specific skill set that we need.
But we've removed huge amounts of the disciplines
that made boomers successful,
like getting up at 5:30 in the morning,
listening to your boss, finding a mentor,
working your way up the ladder.
We removed all that,
and we looked 'em in the eye and said,
follow your passion, baby,
go do what you want in life.
Don't let other adults stop you.
You tell them off.
- Wow. - And now we're shocked
that we have young adults who see themselves as equals
inside the corporate world,
inside academia, inside the world,
they see themselves as equal
to those who have 40 years' experience.
- Wow, this is a great conversation.
I wish we had time for more, Brad.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Can you tell our viewing audience
how they can get ahold of you?
- Just Google Liquid Leadership
and you'll find me, easily.
- I could talk to you forever.
- Thank you. (Lea laughs)
- This has been Lea Woodford
with SmartFem and Friends.
Thanks for watching. - Thank you.
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