Generational theory at work: how to resolve age conflicts in a team

Internal corporate contradictions can become no less of a threat to the company than external economic challenges. We tell how the manager can restore peace and mutual understanding among employees of different ages

Today, more than a quarter of the country’s labor force is made up of our country, aged 50 years and older, found out at the Center for Labor Studies of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The reason for such age employment was, on the one hand, the global aging of the population: according to UN forecasts, by 2050, every sixth person in the world will be over 65 years old. On the other hand, a general increase in life expectancy, which led to several consequences at once.

Firstly, many states were forced to revise the norms of pension legislation, postponing the exit of millions of their citizens to a well-deserved rest. Second, the choice of people themselves to remain economically active, whether due to falling incomes or based on personal preferences, has become a new trend. According to the report of the Ministry of Labor for 2018, one in five of our country continues to work even after retirement.

The fact that today people with different life experiences, different values ​​and work motivation have to work side by side often becomes the ground for disagreements and deep conflicts. More than half of employees experience intergenerational conflict in the workplace in one way or another, according to a study by The Institute of Leadership & Management.

The causes of conflicts can be different. For example, when managers who are “backward” in the eyes of young employees run those processes in which they do not understand. Or when yesterday’s university graduates are too zealous by the standards of conservative adults to innovate. The problem of intergenerational communication is becoming one of the most painful and topical. And here the theory of generations comes to the aid of business. This theory attempts to clearly highlight the characteristics of each generation in order to help leaders bring rapport back to the office.

Why is black ice cream better than blue?

The theory of generations in its modern form was first presented in the book by two American researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss “Generations: A History of America’s Future from 1584 to 2060”. Published in 1991, it has become one of the most widely read and cited bestsellers. In many ways, it is on the methodology presented in it that all modern empirical research in this area is based.

The main idea of ​​the authors is quite simple. After analyzing American history, Howe and Strauss came to the conclusion that history itself has a cyclical structure. This allowed them to bring out four generational groups that are stable in their characteristics, which successively replace each other.

At the same time, people united by certain age limits are characterized by similar attitudes and values. The latter are due to the originality of historical experience, namely the peculiarity of cultural, technological and economic-political development, witnesses and participants of which these people have become. And that is precisely why the attitudes characteristic of a particular generation turn out to be untranslatable into the language of those who were born later than them or preceded them in the past.

The strength of this theory, according to sociologists, is that it can be used to highlight large value shifts in generational consciousness. The latter, according to Elena Omelchenko, director of the Center for Youth Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, can be called “peculiar key points through which people find a common language, share common themes and meanings, and feel themselves involved in a single historical experience.”

At the same time, it is important to understand that the “nodal points” of each generation described by Omelchenko work as patterns that are formed from childhood and are used by a person as if subconsciously. Evgenia Shamis, founder and coordinator of the research center “RuGenerations – Russian School of Generation Theory”, gives the following example from her own experience in this regard:

Messengers instead of scandals and praise for little things

In general, the experts we interviewed, based on the theory of generations, proposed to identify several fairly stable features that distinguish different generations in terms of their behavior inside the office. They mainly affect the specifics of communication, understanding of fair remuneration, motivation for work, as well as methods of organizing the work process.

Summarizing all the recommendations, they can be presented as follows:

According to Evgenia Shamis, “millennials really don’t like situations where it is necessary to sort out claims in a live conversation – they strain them. If they arise, they try to resolve conflicts in instant messengers, in correspondence. It’s easier for them. Therefore, all the problems that they have with banks, they try to solve with the help of chats with bots. But for generation X, on the contrary, a direct, immediate dialogue is very important, so they will always try to get through to the manager of the same bank.”

Elena Vitchak, professor of business practice at the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, also notes:

Another way of communication, as well as organizing the workflow, is preferred by baby boomers. Evgenia Shamis says: “Because this generation got into the boom of magazines and books, they developed the habit of reading everything on paper. Therefore, they prefer to receive written instructions. But this does not mean at all that they do not like and do not want live communication. On the contrary, it is very important for them when meetings or meetings for the whole team are held regularly at work, while for Xs it is important that they are personally agreed upon, and such meetings play a smaller role. Recent studies show that Generation Z is characterized by a willingness to compromise, that is, greater flexibility in communication. While all other generations will more often try to lobby their point of view.”

By the way, such flexibility of the youngest generation, which is about to start going to work, has its own explanation, Elena Omelchenko believes:

In motivation to work play a role, in particular, purely age aspects. “When I hire a person aged 22 and older, I understand that I must provide him with interesting tasks, create a support mechanism for him and regularly show him development prospects. A person comes for experience and skills. Therefore, a young specialist must understand who exactly will help him, what deadlines he has, what the result should look like. In other words, the company and the leader help to adapt and create an environment in which you want to stay for a long time,” says Vitchak.

However, there are many differences due to generational factors: “For example, public recognition is super important for millennials, including for completing small tasks. That is why a bad option when interacting with them is to say “you can’t do this”, “you can’t do it”. Other generations may not even pay attention to it, and for Generation Y this can be a very powerful demotivator, because they are so eager to succeed and doubt that they are worthy of the result that they are sensitive to any criticism. Therefore, it is so important to give them those tasks where they can express themselves individually,” Shamis sums up.

In addition, millennials, unlike all other generations, need to feel that they are constantly acquiring new skills, expanding the boundaries of their profession and continuing to learn. This is due to the fact that it was the generation Y who first found themselves in the face of such a rapidly changing labor market. Therefore, they try to always “be prepared for frequent job changes,” says Keith Cooper, head of research at The Institute of Leadership & Management.

Adjustment for personality

Nevertheless, the theory of generations should still be treated with caution and not taken too literally. First, as Elena Omelchenko notes, this approach nevertheless “gives a too generalized idea of ​​age groups, sometimes ignoring deeper details and differences due, for example, to social experience or the specific experience of a family.” From this, by the way, it becomes clear why in the academic world the attitude towards this theory is rather skeptical.

Secondly, says Natalia Bogacheva, psychologist, assistant professor of pedagogy and medical psychology at Sechenov University, “the very idea that it is possible to accurately predict the characteristics of a generation that may not yet have been formed, based on what we know from the past, seems dubious. Because this postulate itself is based on a scientifically ambiguous idea of ​​the cyclical nature of history.”

Therefore, this theory can be applied in practice only by making constant adjustments for the individual characteristics of a particular person. In the end, too literal perception of intergenerational differences can lead to a kind of “ageism in reverse”, when, under the noble guise of a desire to understand an employee and his needs, in fact, such properties that he does not have will be attributed to him.

“People’s values ​​are influenced not only by their belonging to a particular age group, generation, but also by personal experience and family upbringing. For example, a number of studies show that adolescents from prosperous families more often name family creation, career, education as the leading values, while less prosperous adolescents often place higher value on material values ​​and receiving momentary pleasures that they were deprived of, Natalia says. Bogachev.

At the same time, generational differences themselves, if directed in the right direction, can only enrich the collective. “Each generation in the office has its own unique professional and life “optics”, its own set of unique skills that they can share with each other,” Bogacheva believes. “And if a leader can instill in his team the value of mutual enrichment, make the practice of learning from each other the norm, this will significantly improve mutual understanding in his team.”