Experiences and Needs of a Multi-Generational Workforce Make Everyone Work Better

The multi-generational workforce often seems like chaos. Different groups with different priorities, communication styles and needs: What could be harder to organize? In fact, this type of diversity is great for leaders.

Warren G. Bennis said, "Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right." To extend that, leading a diverse team is about inspiring everyone to be a leader - to be someone who does the right thing to achieve your organization's vision. Bringing out the strengths of each generation is a great way to do this.

Listen

Listening is key when you have a diverse group. Diversity provides the most benefit when it is celebrated — when everyone has a voice and is empowered to speak up.

As a leader, active listening also helps when identifying and facilitating opportunities. It provides useful, actionable insight. If you want to know what people do, want, feel and need within the context of your unique organization, your team members are the best source of information.

Guide

Leadership requires knowing where your group is going. More than having a clear idea of success, this involves sharing your vision in a way everyone can understand and own.

Guiding your team starts with refining your vision and establishing a culture that supports it. Your vision should be a clear statement of what success looks like to you. Your culture should support everyone in making that vision a reality.

In the multi-generational workforce, a strong, clear culture is one of your greatest tools. It helps you overcome differences and create a cohesive team.

In general, people will act according to the things they've learned growing up — and that varies significantly from one generation to the next. Where it advances your vision, you want the company culture to guide instead.

Teach

Once you know what everyone needs, once everyone is moving in the same direction, then it's time to bring everyone together.

Mentorship programs help you accelerate your journey. Mentorship is about more than teaching — it's about relationships, culture and providing ways to navigate organizational structure. It's about sharing all of the important parts of working together.

Mentorship promotes the exchange of important ideas, both cultural and technical. It also plays an important role in helping everyone on your team develop leadership skills, such as:

· Empathy

· Communication skills

· Active listening

Multi-generational mentorships provide unique opportunities for younger team members to provide their expertise to senior associates and vice versa. For example, a social-media mentorship program could be a relatively painless way for the non-digital-natives in your group to learn online networking skills from the millennials.

Collaborate

Complex collaboration unites people with vastly different backgrounds. It is necessary to solve contemporary problems, especially in large or cutting-edge organizations. It isn't uncommon these days to see a surgeon, a software engineer, an organizational strategist and a lawyer all in the same room, at the same table, working on the same problem.

With the right organizational structures in place, one generation provides what the other needs. One's experience complements and informs the other.

Through listening, sharing and working together — with the right guidance, of course — the experiences and needs of a multi-generational workforce make everyone work better.

Once these practices are in place, you ready to lead to success. What’s your next leap?