Generalizing a Generation Means You're Usually Wrong.

Big elephant in the room? It’s probably the article you read this week, or last week, or the week before, or the week before that about generations in the workforce. And chances are, you read that article and started thinking about either the millennial or GenX’er that you work closest with. Or, you are a millennial or a GenX’er, and you immediately became defensive of every negative comment and started doubting the sincerity of every positive comment.

The fact of the matter is, we read more generational business articles than we can count. I’ll pause for a second – go ahead, think about the generation articles you’ve read this year alone. Think about every article that’s already popped up on LinkedIn, including this one, that you’ve clicked on to learn more about a certain group of individuals. - - - Exactly. You can’t even count all of them. And you probably don’t really remember each one. They run together. And they run together because they’re all so similar. They either preach the praises of the group or shame the collective whole for nothing more than being born in a certain time period. Stop me if I’m wrong.

That’s exactly why this post is going to be different. You’ll see.

It’s true, I’m a millennial. And it probably didn’t take you very long to figure that out. A quick scroll through my LinkedIn page and you can see that I graduated from a four-year university, I was overly involved in extracurricular activities in college, and I’ve already changed jobs within the first two years of my career. Living up to the standard yet?

But aside from those simple, surface level topics, what do you know about me? What do you know about my work-style, my thought process, or my motivations in the office? What do you know about the levels of priority I give to my work or the values that I search for in a team or company? And what do I know about yours?

Checkmate.

But, when you read the articles about millennials in the workforce, all of these questions are answered, right? So you think. Thus, the generalizing of generations begins, and you get caught in the never-ending circle of articles floating around LinkedIn teaching you “how to work with millennials” and trying to understand why millennials care about avotoast, while simultaneously saving the articles about the GenX workforce for later reads.

It’s not tough to come to this point, and I’m sure most people will agree with me: generalizing a generation through these articles is dangerous. Calling out a group and assigning labels to a mass of millions of individuals is harmful not just to that group, but to the sum of the whole.

My first job out of college was a pretty unique opportunity. I worked with people across different business areas in varying roles, and, yes, spread through many different decades. In fact, one of my most relied upon teammates for almost a year is getting ready for retirement, and I’m still fresh in my career journey.

For nearly a year we worked together, and not once did we bring up the topic of generations or of differences due to age or experience. We just worked together. We relied on each other and we learned from each other. She’s been at her current company for over a decade, and I was there for less than two years.

At the same time, I worked with others in my same generation bracket. A few that changed careers often and surfed off of other people’s Netflix accounts. A few that settled into positions and didn’t search for new opportunities to grow. A few that pushed to the next level, set goals, never ate avotoast and bought houses instead (sorry, that article reference is just too funny to not hit on), and a few that lived up to every millennial "standard" that each article discusses.

But what I never worked with? A bucket of people that are the exact same. I never interacted with a group that shared so many commonalities in work style the way that those articles portray – on the millennial side or the GenX side.

And that in itself proved that we can’t generalize generations. At all. Ever.

Think about this: you’re driving down the highway and every red vehicle you pass, you call it an Audi. It might be a sports car, it might be a truck, it might even be a limo. But, you call it an Audi because it’s red. You don’t see the style, or the detail, or take a second to pay attention to the actual vehicle. You see the color, you call it an Audi. And almost every time, you’re wrong.

Now think about all of the people that you work with and apply that same logic. Every time you see someone that’s in their 20's to mid-30's, you call them entitled (or selfish, or over ambitious, or egotistic, or insert-common-millennial-word-here). Or you see a GenX’er and assume they don’t have as much wit in technology, or are too-detailed, or focus too much on processes. They might be a genius, pushing the company forward. They might be the smartest person in the world, but you’ve called them some negative, reputation-harming word. And just like that red car, more often than not, you’re completely wrong.

When you generalize a generation you shut yourself off to learning people. When you shut yourself off to learning people, you shut yourself off from your own opportunities to learn and grow. You buy in to the articles that try to teach you how to work with different generations, instead of actually trying to work with people. You cast pre-determined labels on individuals instead of teaming up and collaborating with them. You miss the opportunity to potentially innovate on a world-changing level, just because you’ve assigned a judgment based off of an article you honestly can’t even remember that well. And ultimately, you start calling every red car an Audi.

And almost every single time, you’re wrong.