During my professional life, I spent many an hour sitting through various sociological seminars. They came in waves of trendiness, like the flavor of the month at the ice cream shop: leadership, management, sensitivity, diversity. cross-culturalism. They were supposed to make us smarter, more understanding, and better, more productive employees/managers. But they always seemed pretty useless to me -- some consultant being paid to explain what basic common sense, and a general consciousness of the world around us, told us anyhow.
Still, I don't rule out that there are people who go through life mostly unconscious, insensitive, and without common sense (you know the type - he's your boss, right?) and that such people might derive something useful from such seminars. I suppose that's why the trend continues, with intergenerational interpretation leading the pack these days.
There are blogs devoted to the subject, and today in the Washington Post you can read a portrait of one such consultant who in her sessions identifies the key characteristics and attitudes that help distinguish Gen Y from Gen X from Boomers (and even the poor pre-boomers, who never even got a name for themselves).
It's an intriguing idea that generations in the workplace are so different now that they need to be interpreted to one another, and that hired experts are needed for the purpose. Perhaps there's no harm in it, but I suspect it's very unnecessary. Ms. Loehr makes the dubious assertion that the first decade of the 21st century is the "first time" four generations have been mingled in the workplace at once. Really? It seems to me that's always been the case, but the generations have learned to work together without consultants' help.
Second, I have to wonder if the differences between the Gen Y/Millenials and their Gen X parents is really all that "different." I sense that each generation, like Tolstoy's happy families, is different from the preceding one in much the same ways. Ms. Loehr tells us that Gen Y is "authentically confident, well-educated, tolerant and diverse, community-focused, tech-savvy, and socially, politically and eco-conscious."
My parents were born in 1904 and 1909, respectively (Gen Antediluvian). They might not have used the same terms exactly (especially not the opaque phrase 'authentically confident') yet in comparing me or my sister to themselves, they probably would have come up with much the same concepts. They were less confident, for example, because their life experience included the Great Depression (which whacked them just as they were entering the work force), and mine did not. If Gen Y is heavily into networking and contacts, isn't it largely because the technology of the cell phone and social networking websites makes it possible? But my parents would have perceived that my generation was spending far too much time networking with friends on the telephone.
Maybe the best lesson Ms. Loehr offers is that a member of one generation considering a member of another must realize it's "not bad or good, it's just what they grew up with." Tolerance - OK. But even that can be taken too far, if it's assumed that whatever you grew up with is enough to get you through life successfully. A "new" generation may have its own take on things, but it will also quite naturally learn a few tricks from its parents' generation. We humans pass down experience. We haven't always needed interpreters to help us do so.
Nice blog!!
Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Financieel adviesbureaus | July 11, 2009 at 04:02 AM