What Can You Offer a Millennial? (And vice versa.) EQ for DQ.

Diversity. In music, art, and science. In culture, background, and thought. We see proof of diversity igniting the creative spark just about everywhere. McKinsey has shown that gender-diverse companies outperform the national industry averages by 15%. And, ethnically-diverse teams notch that up to 35% compared to their homogenous competitors. But what about age? European studies have proven the success of age-diverse teams, but there’s very little research in the U.S. into the value of age diversity in companies.

Empirically, we know that generational silos offer no real benefit in the modern workplace – with five generations now working together. Yet, the pace of technology has fomented a strong bias toward Millennial digital natives. There’s growing anxiety amongst CEOs and boards about keeping up with change happening so fast that most companies report their digital intelligence (DQ) is actually declining. According to PwC, the percentage of companies that feel they are doing a great job of harnessing and profiting from technology dropped from 67% to 52% between 2016 and 2017, resulting in a hiring frenzy for those born seemingly with an iPad in hand.

But, as power cascades faster and faster to these digital natives, companies expect their young leaders to miraculously embody the emotional intelligence (EQ) that older workers have had twice as long to learn. Relational wisdom comes with time. And I’m suggesting that now is the time to create a more formalized means of mutual mentoring: Millennial DQ for Boomer (and GenX) EQ. This could be the essential intergenerational trade agreement of our time.

Or course there are challenges to promoting more intergenerational collaboration. One being stereotypes. Millennials are often portrayed as impatient, idealistic, and entitled, but this has more to do with their stage in life than a fundamental generational shift. And Boomers can be pigeon-holed as rigid and slow to embrace change, while their experience can actually make them more flexible and aware given the lessons of hindsight. The truth is, there are more similarities than differences among various generations with respect to what’s important at work.

Here are three ways to stimulate an intergenerational trade of EQ for DQ:

1. Value Wisdom as much as Disruption. Nearly 40% of today’s American workforce reports to someone younger and this number is growing quickly. But who’s leading who? When leadership development adviser Jack Zenger reviewed the 17,000 worldwide leaders who had gone through his leadership training program, he found the average age was 42. And yet the typical individual in these companies had become a supervisor at around age 30 and remained in that role for nine years—that is, until age 39—but had never received any other training prior to Zenger’s program.

The “dirty dozen” years between 30 and 42, where young managers are running things without any formal guidance, are becoming a massive organizational liability. As reported in the Financial Times and Fast Company magazines, Uber’s 3,000 managers were “promoted extremely quickly and often without instruction.” 63% of Uber’s managers had never led people before and, as stated by a senior Uber leader, “a lack of skilled management and teamwork were the main problems in a company plagued by scandal after scandal.” As a result, two Boomers, Liane Hornsey, as SVP and chief human relations officer, and Frances Frei, as SVP of leadership and strategy, were brought in to try and fix the problem. But the lack of experienced leadership and processes took a toll on the company, the brand, and its founder.

In my HBR article from April 2017, I suggested that a new work role was dawning for those in midlife, that of the “Modern Elder.” As I learned in my role as Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy and mentor to the CEO at Airbnb, the most successful companies create a powerful alchemy of brilliant young DQ geniuses mixed with seasoned vets who’ve developed a keen sense of EQ over decades. These Modern Elders – who are as much mentors as they are interns – offer more than EQ, leadership and strategic advice, they also come with a Rolodex (there’s an old school image) filled with other wisdom keepers who can help steer the enterprise beyond just the launch of a new, disruptive technology.

2. Create the Conditions for Mutual Mentoring to Flourish. Intergenerational alliance is at the heart of a culture that prizes its Modern Elders. It requires switching up the physics so that wisdom flows in both directions – old to young and young to old. This reciprocity means supporting your digital natives to educate older staff on how to use a smartphone more effectively, the ins and outs of social media, or the tech tools that can increase efficiency and success.

Sometimes companies formalize these programs as Jack Welch did when GE became the first company to publicize its reverse mentoring programs nearly two decades ago. The Hartford insurance company’s Reverse Mentoring Initiative is so successful that it led to two patents being written and filed due to this multigenerational collaboration. Barclays Bank in the UK created their Bolder Apprenticeship program for workers over 50 who want to be retrained in newer technologies by those younger than them. And, after IBM recently identified areas of the company where massive attrition could happen due to retirements, its response was to create “mentoring pools” of six-month relationships to help accelerate the process of deepening institutional wisdom.

You’ve heard of “speed dating.” What about speed mentoring? Once a quarter, employees of all generations could sign-up for a day to teach and learn subjects of interest. Everyone is offered a personalized itinerary matching them with those interested in their proficiency, with 10-minute teaching sprints that allow both parties to get a sense of interest, rapport and a skill-sharing connection that could grow. At Airbnb, we offered SkillShare events with a junior or senior employee creating an experiential workshop for learning that allowed fellow employees to understand who the experts were in certain prized subjects.

3. Redefine “Productivity” and Create 20% Time for Modern Elders. We’re still working with an industrial era “widget” mentality in the digital age. In some companies, this penalizes loyal, experienced workers who’ve accumulated many wage increases over a long period of time. Yet their impact on productivity may be far more comprehensive than the number of “widgets” they produce. Growing data shows that the presence of older workers increases the productivity of younger workers and reduces turnover due to wise guidance. And, as more seasoned collaborators, older workers tend to answer “yes” more often to the question, “Did you help anybody at work today?” as compared to younger workers. It’s time to find a metric to capture the value-add of experienced workers.

While it’s difficult to develop productivity measurement tools that capture these effects, there are some proxies that take into account the collateral team benefits of older workers. For one, your employee satisfaction surveys might ask questions about which team members were most valuable for team performance. Some companies ask their employees to stack-rank their team members from most collaborative to least and you could even use employee surveys to help identify Modern Elders who’ve become informal counselors by asking something like: “Who in the company – outside of your direct boss or a team member – do you look to for helpful advice?” or “Who in the company is a role model for wisdom?”

Perhaps take a page out of Google’s playbook, the now-legendary 20% rule. Given the engineering-driven culture of the company, and the fact that innovations often happen when an engineer pursues a passion in the context of their work, Google approved technical staff to dedicate 20% of their time on exploratory projects of their choosing. Why not offer qualified Modern Elders in your organization 20% time to dedicate to the role of an advisor to younger leaders helping to guide their growth and effectiveness?

In some cases, an in-house coach – an employee who understands the unique company dynamics – may be far more effective than a consultant who only comes to the office every other week or once a month. Training Magazine reported that corporate coaching and mentoring was cited by HR leaders as being the most effective of 21 different training modalities offered in most larger companies. But, external coaches also represent more than $1 billion in annual corporate spending. Could you shave your budget a little while also providing a new, enriched career path for some of your more experienced leaders?

Companies that recognize age as a rich diversity, and wisdom as a valuable resource across generations, will be able to calculate this “invisible productivity” and experience a competitive advantage in a corporate world that resembles, more and more, a tapestry where each of us shares our greatest talents, enriching others and an organization’s success in the process.

Chip Conley is a New York Times best-selling author and veteran hospitality executive who renewed himself in midlife by collaborating with the Millennial co-founders of Airbnb to create the world’s largest global hospitality brand. His new book, Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder, is now available.