Facing uncertainty can be challenging – being a business owner facing uncertainty is tougher.
Red Direction helps you [fast track and] grow your business – authentically, pragmatically, and resiliently.
Starting the Conversation:
How do we connect all of the generations to better understand each other so they can work collaboratively, loyally, and productively?
Host: Jess Dewell
Guest: Phyllis Weiss Haserot
What You Will Hear:
GENgagement is a core focus to increase business achievement.
The way we think and what we do align to our priorities and life experience.
Work toward common goals when engaging with multiple generations.
Interact with a purpose.
There is a fear reaching out to people that are different from you.
Multi-generational engagement is a solution to your business problems.
Make sure to have ‘no’ people surrounding you.
It comes down to bias.
#VBBRadio Audience Question: How do we start building multigenerational teams?
#VBBRadio Audience Question: Which is more impactful – generational or cultural divides in the workplace?
Bias and fear connected on a deeper level.
#VBBRadio Audience Question: With the amount of distrust how do you manage different generations in the workplace?
In addition to self reflection, add group reflection too.
How we judge isn’t always the most effective shortcut.
Feeling physiological safety increases motivation and innovation.
Could and should are a way to engage in dialog (not to shame).
Be vulnerable to ask for help.
#VBBRadio Audience Question: Is there a way to coach people to notice, recognize, and minimize generational bias?
What makes it bold to laser focus in on increasing the productivity of a company’s multi-generational teams?
Notable and Quotable:
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 4:25
Engagement, it means working harmoniously with people of all ages in generations and in other aspects of diversity too. And you can’t do that if you’re not interested in understanding how they got to be thinking and behaving the way they do.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 4:47
You don’t really define generations by what year you were born. Sometimes that’s just way off base. People are different based on the influences that while they were growing up now, not when they were toddlers, but mostly by high school, college age, and what was going on in the world, economically, socially, politically, culturally, that they relate to that resonate with them.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 5:41
The Millennials I don’t think are entitled, but they have so much from their parents, their coaches, their teachers, their other relatives. All behind them, helping them, and doing everything in groups. That has a big influence where the X’ers did not have that. They had more mothers going to work than ever before. Far more divorce that was going on. And it’s not like none of these happened before. But it happens more at particular times. And that definitely influence how people come to the workplace, whether they jump in whether they are prepared to know how to act, when they get there.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 8:07
“Gengagement” is about working toward common goals. So people can be more productive for their organizations. Happier in the way that they are working. Actually achieving outcomes much faster. Being more profitable. All of those kinds of things.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 9:16
It is very hard to understand or learn somebody’s perspective if the environment that you grew up with and operate in was not similar. And we aren’t talking about it as much at home. People are busy. Even parents don’t share that, or grandparents, with their kids as much. And there’s so much in the school curriculums that they don’t get to those things. It’s just there isn’t enough time and bandwidth for all of these kinds of things.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 10:22
In the last few years, things that were beneath the surface, in terms of divisiveness, have just exploded. And people are afraid to reach out to each other. And for the younger people more so than even the older ones. But there’s a lot of mistrust, and they’re not talking to each other.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 12:02
We shouldn’t want to be at work, surrounded by “yes” persons, only people who you know are going to agree with you, because then you won’t get other perspectives. You can innovate that way. Even if it’s a little uncomfortable, and things are unfamiliar. It’s also I think, very exciting to be with different people.
Jess Dewell 12:33
And you never know what you’re going to learn. And you never know what will come up, even when we’re doing the same work or when we come together because we were brought together specifically to bring two different types of work together.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 13:58
“Colaborationism,” is getting all the generations together to confront ageism, because it can hit anybody at any time. You can be susceptible to this. It’s bad. It’s the stigmas is and we can only get rid of it if we work together on that.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 14:36
I actually don’t believe in chronological age. I don’t think is except for Medicare, Social Security, those kinds of things, you need to have it. You can throw out any number, and you cannot describe what a typical person is of that particular age. I don’t think it matters. I think that you can judge people or hire people on that basis.
Jess Dewell 16:10
There are days I’m like, “Humm, okay.” And then there are other days, I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know anything. What can I learn today?” You know, so that that place of within myself, and I would challenge the audience to consider this. Are there days that you feel resigned? Are there days you feel done? Are there days you feel excited? Are there days that you feel like, you can’t wait to learn something new? And those are the types of questions that really just tap into our own personal awareness, to allow us to say, “Okay, I’m closer, I’m open today.” It could be that simple.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 17:02
People don’t just show up, there was nothing going on in their life, right? It could be anything. If we let people and we reach out and say, “It’s okay to talk to me about this,” or “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it.” But it just makes a kind of connection. And I think we are losing too much.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 19:20
When we see how people are thinking and sometimes resisting change. Well, why is that? We have to figure out what are the fears of the tension among generations that come from bias. Some of it does, but not absolutely everything. Sometimes it’s laziness, of not taking the time to figure out what is behind the hype you’re hearing. You just hear people say something that is negative about someone else, or a group or something. And you don’t think, “what is that?” And, “is there any truth to it? Why are they feeling that way?”
Jess Dewell 24:09
We think, “Oh, let’s just put these people together.” Well, yeah, sure. But there is a bigger model. What are we trying to accomplish? What do we want this team to be able to do? And who are the people with their experiences that can add some sort of value to be iterative or innovative along the way?
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 29:45
It really is hard working with other people. And it becomes more complex every day because things are so much more diverse. If we go back to the 1950s, 60s and 70s, backgrounds were more the same. And if you look at the Gen Z or is now the youngest generation that’s just entering the workforce, and we’re told that in not too many years from now, white males are going to be a minority in the US. So there are a lot of changes that are going o. And again, we get to the whole thing about fears. People are afraid of what they may be losing. You’ve got to consider and try to think, “What’s behind why they are resisting change, “Why are they resisting working with certain people?”
Jess Dewell 32:18
I think uncertainty is our biggest issue in life. Whether it’s at home. Whether it’s at work. whether it’s where do we want to go and what do we want to do? How do we stay? Especially with change happening so fast. So we have changed happening so fast, not only technologically, but also on all kinds of other fronts.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 33:04
You have to establish a culture whether it’s within a team, or better still the whole organization, to not only be open to learning about other people, but taking time to talk to other people and find out about the. Or talk to the whole situation. You’re all in, and reflect about it. And that is something I heard in one of the other episodes that I was listening to before our viewers about this “Present Retreat.” Now, I think, if I understand correctly, that what an individual should do for a certain block of time, every week. Yes, I believe in that. We need to be reflecting, and we need to be reflecting in groups too. Not just to jumping from one thing to another. And I understand the time pressures. We’re all under that. But we have so much pressure. People who are paid by billing hours. And that’s how they’re judged, even more than the results that they are getting. Those things make it very difficult and not necessarily the most effective things or what your clients want. We need this reflection time. And we need time to be encouraged by employers to take that time to get to know people. The earlier it happens, the better it is.
Jess Dewell 35:59
In a “Present Retreat,” it is an individual. It’s an individual reflection, but it’s also the business reflection. It’s the reflection of the part of the business that “I am responsible for.” What do I reflect on that? am I showing up in a way that makes people feel safe and willing? And am I able to see where those obstacles are around it, and also where the opportunities are. Because I’m stopping. Because I’m doing that reflection.
Jess Dewell 36:43
If we’re getting to know people. If we are taking the time to understand where they’re at, and then we can recognize what the priorities in the business are with exactly who and what and where we have things happening in our organization. That becomes ike the secret sauce, if you will, to be able to know, “I can leverage here and go fast,” or “We’re going to go down this path, and it’s not going to go as fast. It’s okay. It’s still rewarding and rich.”
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 37:26
We’re talking here about psychological safety. That is such an important thing. I’m recalling a study of Google wanted to know what made for the most successful teams. And they studied everything. Every kind of diversity you could think of. And they found none of them was the answer until they came across when people felt safe to express their opinions. And that in a team situation or group situation, everybody needs to be encouraged or required to contribute some thoughts. And that was what made the teams more effective, more innovative, more productive. That the thing about having the diversity in different ways, but the psychological safety, to feel that they could and should speak out.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 39:51
People want of all generations really want to have some influence, and a voice in decisions that are made that are affecting them.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 40:24
We don’t like command and control. We don’t expect that people that we look up to as leaders all be this great authority figure, that we believe much more in collaboration and calling on various people, and that the world has gotten too complex to be able to do everything yourself.
Jess Dewell 44:20
The world is too complex to do things by ourselves.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 45:41
We don’t want to have groupthink all the time. And every time you’re asked to do something, to send out emails. Sometimes that’s useful, but crowdsourcing isn’t the only way, and you need to be resourceful yourself as well.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 47:20
What coaches do is ask questions. And they ask the why. And they get a response, and they ask the why about that response. And on and on, to make your really think through.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot 47:36
We need to really question why we’re thinking the way we are, or what we might know about someone, Or what we might want to know about them, and why and how that’s going to make a difference.
Tags:
multi generational teams, independence, stereotypes, GENgagement, diversity, sustainability, awareness, communication
