How Can CEOs Nurture Cross-Generational Communications and Mutual Understanding?

I often laugh when I am asked to what generation I belong. Born in December 1981, I am literally with one foot in the millennial generation (born after 1982 according to some research) and with the other foot still in Gen X (I have a strong work ethic, I am fiercely independent etc.).?

As my dear friend ?? Jaroslav ?krabálek would put it, I am just a millennial early adopter ??.?

Funnily enough, as life would have it, recently I have also started to notice Gen Z aspects sneaking into my habits and communications. This first one is the anxiety about global warming and the future of our Planet (not worried about it? Go spend a summer in the South of Europe and you will be healed – well, you will be unhealed: you will become anxious, too).?

The second one is my appetite to embrace tech to drive a good, resilient business. Maybe this is less generational and more about survival; thanks to AI I feel that, for the first time in my life, I can build the scalable service-oriented business I dream of without having to sacrifice my life for it.?

So you may wander why I’m ranting here on the various generational identities I carry.?

Here is why.?

What We Could Say to Each Other… And We Don’t

On Monday evening we had our regular meeting as part of The Empowerment Dynamic Community, of which I am a member and certified trainer. This time the topic was cross-generational management.?

Sitting in the Zoom room with most colleagues baby boomers, I kept listening and listening and I suddenly felt a sense of rage growing up inside me.?

Colleagues were speaking about the importance of using the phone to talk to each other and of long, real, in-person meet-ups as if these were the only way to build a real relationship and…?

… and all I could think of was: “Who the f**k has time for that when you’ve burnt this Planet to the ground with your mindset and lifestyle and now we’re left to live and pick up the pieces – and take care of you?!”?

Seriously, I was taken aback by the power of my reaction.?

Surely enough, the trigger was as much what was being said in the room as the mix of emotional burden I carry in relation to my parents and their expectations from the world and from me.

My parents, too, are baby boomers, having their mental, emotional, and communicational habits shaped in the era of plentitude (even though Romania between 1957-1961 when my parents were born and afterwards was nothing but plentiful).?

As I was sitting there, noticing my emotions, I felt something else needed to happen before we could actually engage in an honest, open cross-generational dialogue. Instead of expectations, what I could have welcomed from the baby boomer generation was an epiphany.?

It was almost like I needed to see this generation that was born and grew up in the phenomenal growth era after World War II bowing their heads and say: “I am sorry. We screwed it up. We really thought growth would last forever, so we allowed this mentality to creep into our mindset and in the way we thought about life, raised children, and did business. And you suffered, suffer, and will suffer because of that.”

What a sense of relief that would have brought. And the reply could have been:

“I am sorry, too. I did suffer, I still suffer, and I will suffer. But that’s the way of the world. I take responsibility for my own faith. And I am glad you are still here.”

Sometimes all we need to do to allow love, communications, and mutual understanding to happen is to remove the barriers that make it impossible today.?

Aka to truly see each other. To truly listen and talk to each other.?

The Road to Mutual Understanding Goes Through Epiphanies and Speaking the Truth ???

In 2018 I had the privilege to conduct a full-day panel discussion for a corporate client.

The special thing about that day was that we had 5 90-minute panel discussions made out of 4 to 5 people representing each generation in the workforce:

1.????? The Silent Generation: The generation born between 1925 and 1945. They were still doing some work even though most of them were now retired.

2.????? The Baby Boomers: The generation born immediately after World War II, between 1945 and 1964.

3.????? The Gen X: The generation born between 1965 and 1980. In Czechia this generation is called Husak’s children.

4.????? The Millennials: The generation born between 1980 and 1994.

5.????? The Gen Z: Born between 1995 and 2012. This generation was already starting to slowly permeate the organization through internships and entry-level jobs. ??

During the panel I asked each of them these questions:

1.????? What would you like us to know about you and your generation?

2.????? What truly matters to you?

3.????? What are you afraid of?

4.????? How do you prefer to communicate with others and why?

5.????? What habits in other generations upset you and why?

6.????? When do you feel loved?

7.????? How would you like us to approach you if we wanted to develop a good, solid, trust-based relationship with you?

Now, I am aware that a panel of 4-5 cannot be a generalization for an entire generation. But you would be stunned by what we discovered about each other during that day.?

From the fear of death, powerlessness, and being useless until the end comes (the Silent Generation) to the confusion and the sense of vulnerability of the Baby Boomers (a sense of losing power and control, of the world getting unhinged under their fingers), to the Gen X crushed between the needs and expectations of their children and parents, to the Millennials eager to live and not repeat the mistakes of their parents, and to the anxious Gen Z literally lost in a world that is not meeting there where they are – online (which is why, paradoxically, they strive to go to an office regularly, which they perceive as an anchor point for their social life and professional becoming).?

During the day of the panels there were moments of laughter, and there were moments of vulnerability that moved me to tears. I have rarely done more important or impactful work than that day.?

My main conclusion??

We HAVE TO talk to each other. Otherwise, the rage I sensed during our Monday panel can only fester and, nurtured by stereotypes, projections, and staying in our own social media-powered bubbles, the distance between us will only grow wider and we will miss so, so much at work and in life. ??

What Can You, the CEO, Do to Nurture Cross-Generational Communications and Mutual Understanding in Your Company?

Exactly what I have just described: invest in deep human inter-connections.?

First of all, what all CEOs need to do first is to step down from their white horses and to understand that their (generational) perspective is not the only perspective out there. Most probably you, the CEO, will also be a blend of multiple generations, with some influences bringing you awe and some bringing you rage. But hey – that’s just multi-generational living, as anyone living in a multi-generational house could testify.

The solution is not to live separately from each other. We have so, so much to share and so much to give to each other.?

Here are a few examples of what CEOs and their CHROs could consider to nurture cross-generational communications across the organization:

1.????? Storytelling nights. Nothing amplifies empathy like storytelling. Consider doing a TEDx-like storytelling night in your organization, with multiple generations coming to tell their stories. What an awesome connection moment that could be.

2.????? Recorded panel discussions, in-person or virtual, with the recordings then becoming available in your company library. This content can be leveraged endlessly to nurture awe and mutual understanding across the company.

3.????? Storytelling booklets. These could be the outcome of leveraging the content from the storytelling nights and the panel discussions. You could share them in-house, as part of your onboarding process, with your clients, or during your employer branding and recruitment campaigns.

4.????? Communication habit-sharing panels or small workshops. When we understand how others use tech to communicate – and why – it becomes easier to understand them, to develop our cognitive empathy with them, and not to take their generational habits personally.

And so, so much more.

The work for CEOs starts with understanding how much building mental and emotional empathy across the organization is necessary today. And building empathy is like a muscle: you need to go to the gym regularly to develop it.

One panel discussion, as remarkable as it is, is not enough. Nurturing cross-generational communications and mutual understanding needs to become part of the regular people management agenda of every CEO and C-Suite level executive.?

As the empathy in your company grows, so will your empathy with your stakeholders and customers of all generations. Whan then becomes possible is the potential for outstanding innovations in terms of new services and products that will take your company into the future. As it happens, cross-generational communications and empathy building is good for the bottom line. All we need to do is choose where to start – then to just never stop. ?

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Would You Like to Organize a Cross-Generational Panel in Your Company to Fuel Empathy, Mutual Understanding, and Smart Innovations? Let’s Talk.

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