Generational Diversity: Plan for Awareness, Flexibility and Mentorship

It's easy to find information regarding how different generations act in the workplace. What is more difficult to find is how to lead multiple age cohorts towards a common goal.

Luckily, some direction and practice are all you need to succeed here. To start, here are the three main missions that change diversity from challenge to opportunity:

· Acknowledging the effects it has on your organization

· Developing ways you can adapt to it in your unique situation

· Encouraging your team to benefit as much as possible from it

Awareness

Generational diversity in the workplace has been around for a long time. It's here to stay. In fact, the level of diversity is increasing in many American companies. Almost everyone is aware it exists.

Awareness goes beyond that. It goes beyond just knowing cultural splits often correspond to age differences. Effective leaders use a specific type of awareness, based on knowledge of their own organizations.

What do you know about your team? What are their ages, their roles and their places in your organizational structure? Based on that knowledge, and based on what you know about the skill sets and priorities of various age groups — and this is the big question — how might generational diversity influence their behavior?

Next, it's time for action. How are you going to test your theories to improve your performance?

Flexibility

Just like you need a few different clubs to succeed in golf, you need to use different skills to succeed as a leader. Leading generationally diverse teams is a great example.

Some of your team members will prefer a more hands-off approach. Others will want to frequently interact with you. Some will prefer to multitask, while others will want to fully focus on one project at a time.

In the end, it helps to have the flexibility to handle individual behavior. Making some generational assumptions could be a good starting point — but nobody has any type of obligation to act like the other members of their age cohort.

Flexibility means having the resources to deal with generational tendencies and the mindset to accommodate individual outliers. The complexity can be a leadership challenge at first, but your effort will pay off.

Mentorship

One of the biggest potential benefits of generational diversity is the opportunity for learning. Can you imagine a team with all of the strengths of every generation?

It's a possibility when you get everyone working together, lifting each other up and collectively supporting your vision of success. In short: It's possible with mentorship.

Expanding your level of complex collaboration can help drive inter-generational mentorship. It starts with acknowledging that every member of your team has something to contribute — something to teach.

You put effort and dedication into creating a culture that works towards your goals. Even with diverse viewpoints, awareness, flexibility, and dedicated mentorship can bring everyone together, moving towards a common vision of success.

What steps are you taking to improve generational diversity within your organization?