HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership—case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.
Are you struggling to manage people who are older than you?
Lindsey Pollack says cross-generational dynamics at work are only getting tougher to manage, with faster developments in technology and people working longer.
Pollack is a workplace expert and the author of the book, The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace.
In this episode, she takes questions from listeners who are struggling to motivate older direct-reports and senior employees who are skeptical about using new technology. She also has advice for what to do when you’ve been promoted ahead of your more experienced colleagues.
This episode originally aired on Dear HBR: in August 2019. Here it is.
DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR:, from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.
ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to let the conflicts get us down.
DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts and help you move forward.
ALISON BEARD: Today we’re talking about managing older workers with Lindsey Pollak. She’s the author of The Remix: How do Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace. Lindsey, thank you so much for coming on the show.
LINDSEY POLLAK: Thank you for having me.
ALISON BEARD: Are cross-generational challenges in the workplace worse or different than they have been in the past?
LINDSEY POLLAK: Definitely, yes! I myself am a Gen Xer which I always out myself at the beginning of conversations. And when I entered the workplace in the ’90s there were only three generations in the workplace. Well, we’ve seen expansion on the older end of the workplace with people working longer. And now we have millennials and now the new Gen Z is coming in. So, in the 20 years that I’ve personally been in the workplace, we’ve gone from three generations to five. And that changes a lot of the dynamics.
ALISON BEARD: We do hear that generations don’t actually have differences. You know, I as a Gen Xer am not really that different at age 40 than my parents were at age 40. Do you find that to be true?
LINDSEY POLLAK: I actually disagree. Just look at something like the average age of marriage. It’s gotten much older. So, a 21-year-old in the 1950s has quite different expectations than a 21-year-old today. Retirement, so a 55-year-old 20, 30 years ago has very different expectations of their career than somebody today. So, I really think it’s about the particular time in which you’re existing and what the norms and expectations are in that particular era.
DAN MCGINN: Here we go. Dear HBR: I lead a team of five analysts who are spread between two offices, in two Midwestern U.S. cities. Our company recently restructured and brought its analyst together into one business intelligence department. There were many internal applicants. At the time I was the youngest and least tenured, but I was chosen to lead the new team. I manage two separate groups of analysts with different job descriptions. I know the interworking’s of the business analyst well because I was one of them. I had to learn more about the parts inventory analysts. I’m struggling with the cadence of our communication. We have weekly scrums. That’s where each team meets virtually to talk about what they will accomplish that week and review the previous week’s work. I believe they’re important, but some team members see them as a waste of time. One employee disregards them because of my age and the fact that I’ve been with the company for just two years. We meet quarterly in person as a group to discuss our longer-term goals and the progress on those. Only I see the team members in my city every day. I travel to the other location once a month. Finally, our company’s also trying to take advantage of new online communication and project management tools. Some picked them up right away. But I have issues teaching some who are older and less tech-savvy. So, my question is, am I doing this right? I want to communicate well without micromanaging. How do I implement new forms of communication and how often should we meet as a group, and individually? Lindsey, what’s your initial reaction?
LINDSEY POLLAK: My initial reaction is this is a person who is not necessarily dealing with a young person managing older workers, but someone who has really never managed people before. And so I think there’s some classic mistakes or challenges that this particular person is facing that a lot of people face when they’re starting out. Whether they’re managing people of any generation or age.
ALISON BEARD: So, what are some of those particular challenges?
LINDSEY POLLAK: So, the first one that I noticed in this question is the very, very last word that he uses individually and that’s where I would start. He seems to be viewing this group as a team and that is incredibly important. But every individual on the team wants to feel important as well. So, he’s talking a lot about scrums and group meetings and visits. I really want to know if he has spent any one on one time with each person that he is managing. Obviously, there are some, there’s a level of discomfort when you’ve all been peers and somebody gets promoted, whether that person is your age or older, or younger.
ALISON BEARD: I do think though that the fact that these peers that he’s now managing are older them him, he’s definitely creating more tension. Peter Cappelli at Wharton has written about lessons from the military, you know these junior officers coming in fresh out of college to manage more experienced Sergeants, and that the thing you need to do is treat them as partners, to hear their opinions, particularly on important decisions. In our letter writer’s case, I think that might be around how the team is meeting and how the team is communicating. Get their input one-on-one, before you make decisions about how the team will come together.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I agree with that. One of the pieces of advice I would give to the letter writer is to do a lot of listening, and to not feel that all of the decisions, although he is certainly the leader and needs to take that leadership role, he’s not alone in this. The team can still have input that can be valuable to him. I know politicians talk about listening tours, but that seems like a good piece of advice for him and to your point particularly with some of the workers who are longer tenured.
DAN MCGINN: Do people in his situation, people who are a new boss, who encounters resistance, are they sometimes too quick to attribute it to their age when it might not be because of their age? Is this sometimes like a false indicator?
LINDSEY POLLAK: I do think that’s true. I think that we often think of the one thing that makes us different or might potentially be a problem, and we draw more attention to it than perhaps other people do. It might very well be an issue, but I wouldn’t think it’s an issue with absolutely every person and I think it’s worth some investigating to see if there’s other factors at play. It might be beyond age.
ALISON BEARD: I mean I’m going to pushback a little bit here because I am a Gen Xer, in her 40s now and when I hear the words scrum and online communication and project management tools, my skin crawls a little bit. It takes me a while to get used to those sorts of things. So, I really do think that age and the disparity between this manager, our letter writer and these peers that he’s now managing, might center on a generational divide.
DAN MCGINN: One of the commonalities between things like scrum and things like these new online communication tools that have suddenly become so popular, is they feel very faddish. They feel like the thing that a company launches with great fanfare and then six months later they pull away from. So, I wonder whether this is resistance to sort of management fads as much as it might be to age.
LINDSEY POLLAK: You know, I think you’re right that every generation, probably those of us who’ve been around longer have a cynicism because so many communications and technology tools have come and gone. And so, we’re naturally skeptical about them. That’s why I think the why is important. If you say I want to use this, here’s why. Here’s what our strategy is. We’re going to reassess it in a month. I’d love to hear your feedback. That little description of the reasoning behind these choices could go a long way in getting buy-in. I think the other piece that’s important and Dan Cable talks about this a lot in his work, is giving people time to adapt.
DAN MCGINN: I wonder whether in some cases it can be useful to make some of this stuff optional too. Not just time to adjust to it, but in situations where it makes sense, maybe not making it a mandatory form of communication might give people a little bit more autonomy and a little bit more sense of freedom.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I think you’re right that adding some time and conversation around it is always going to be more valuable than just throwing it on people.
DAN MCGINN: Lindsey, might he be ignoring the political dynamics here? The fact that he came from one of the groups and is now managing the other group? The fact that he may have had rivals for this leadership role that he was given.
LINDSEY POLLAK: Absolutely. He mentions that he’s the youngest, least tenured person. He’s from one of two teams. That is a recipe for a lot of backward conversations and backstabbing potentially.
ALISON BEARD: How else can he build trust and credibility with this team though? It does seem like he’s setting a clear direction for how he wants things to be done. You talked about explaining why he wants it done that way. Is there anything else he can do to make them understand why he was chosen as their leader?
LINDSEY POLLAK: I think those one-on-one conversations are so important. As much as we’re talking about the technology that he wants to implement, I think it goes back to basics and breaking bread with people, sitting down and talking to them, getting to know them, listening to their ideas so that they can do the same with him. The other thing that brings up for me is I think he needs a little bit more confidence. He must be pretty good to have gotten this job or have something going for him. I think he seems to think, and I see this fairly often with millennials, that there is one quote, right way to lead this group and that if he can only find that Easter egg and figure it out he’ll win the game. And that’s not always true. There’s a lot of nuance. So, I would really encourage him to think about what kind of leader he wants to be, what direction has been set from his higher-ups on how to lead this team and if he can really set that vision for everybody, again there might be some politics going on and I think he has to address it, but the more he wavers I think the harder that will be for him to overcome.
DAN MCGINN: He seems to be dealing with this issue really in a vacuum without any acknowledgment that there’s a hierarchy and support system above him. I wonder if he needs to be tapping into that a little bit more to try to navigate this.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I think a lot of people aren’t aware of the resources available to them, to having mentors, to having the concept of a personal advisory board where there’s several people that he might call on. HR, his bosses, other people who are in a similar position. If they’ve gone through this restructure, maybe he’s not the only one in this position. I agree. There’s a sense of being alone and often that doesn’t have to be the case.
ALISON BEARD: So, do you think that he is being too aggressive in his weekly meeting cadence? Should he be doing things differently in terms of visiting the office where he’s not located?
LINDSEY POLLAK: I’m not sure if he has enough data on that, but I do think a goal should be figuring out what the right cadence is. He might not yet know that. And I think he should not be afraid to put it out there to the group. Again, not promising that he’ll go with their goals, but if every single person on the group feels that weekly is too often and it’s a waste of time, I think that’s information that he should take into account.
ALISON BEARD: And how about visiting that other office?
LINDSEY POLLAK: I personally think that’s critical, the more often the better so that they feel important to him, that he gets to know those people well. It might slow down over time, but I think at the beginning that face time is really important.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah, maybe go for two weeks straight at the beginning and over time he can taper down, but this idea that oh, I’m just going to go there for one day a month, that seems at odds with best practice in that area.
ALISON BEARD: When you’re young and you’re comfortable FaceTiming, or Slacking and think that that develops just as much closeness, you need to recognize that for older workers, it’s not the same thing.
LINDSEY POLLAK: That’s exactly right. I’m a big fan of the style conversation, Michael Watkins concept from the First 90 Days that you really have to communicate to the people you manage what your style is. His style sounds very techy and digital communication and that’s fine, but if he is in the position needing to build rapport with the people on his team, I think he needs to learn how they most prefer to communicate and again, front load that at the beginning, before asking them to migrate to the tools that he prefers.
ALISON BEARD: I do think the broader point we’re getting at is as a new boss he seems very focused on how he’s communicating, how often they’re meeting and maybe needs to spend a little bit more time focusing on the why as you said, Lindsey.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I want him to focus on the who and the why.
ALISON BEARD: Terrific. So Dan, what are we telling him?
DAN MCGINN: Well, number one he’s a new boss and some of what he’s experiencing are classic new boss problems. Number two, we recognize there’s a political dimension to this that two tribes have merged into one. He’s affiliated with one of the former tribes. He’s also probably had other people applying for the role that he has now that may be a little bit resentful. So, this is a complicated mix. Age is one of the dimensions. In terms of how to deal with this, we think probably the biggest thing he can do is to deal with the team, not as a big collection of people, but a bunch of one on one relationships. He needs to craft better individual relationships with members of the team. Talk to them about these issues. Make it clear that he’s not mandating weekly scrums or online communication platforms, that they have a say in it. Emphasize the why of all this and try to be empathetic to the concerns of the workers. Listen to them. If somebody’s resistant to learning a new technology or using a new form of communication tool, sometimes that changes when they see what’s in it for them if they adapt to this change. And finally, look up above you in the hierarchy and think about what kind of training, or coaching, or resources, or support and advice you can get to deal with this.
ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I’m a 33-year-old woman in a consulting company in Romania. I lead a team of five people. Two of my colleagues are almost old enough to be my mothers. They’re both women. The other team members are a guy my age and a woman my age. We all work in the same office and our communication is semiformal. Here’s the issue. I find it difficult to motivate them for activities such as cold calling. They do what I ask. Whenever I assign them something they do it, but it’s tiring and a bit frustrating to always push them. They always wait for me to give the next task to them. How can I change this?
LINDSEY POLLAK: Do we think that the issue is with everybody on the team or just with the two older women?
ALISON BEARD: I think it sounds like because she mentions the older women first, the ones that are old enough to be her mothers, that they maybe are setting the tone for the team.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I find it interesting that she said when I assign a task they accomplish it, but then they wait for her to assign the next task is where I kind of got the sense that there’s a pattern here that she has been playing that role of telling them what to do and then they do it. I’m not sure what she has done to date to try to get them to go the extra mile.
DAN MCGINN: And that gets into issues of corporate culture. Think about it. Romania was a communist country not too long ago, so it’s probably pretty legit to sit around and wait for the boss to tell you what to do next. I mean this is, these older workers who are old enough to be her mother, they’ve witnessed a pretty market change in the way companies are managed and the expectations of workers, and I think recognizing that might help her empathize a little.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I’m also curious that her frustration that it’s tiring and frustrating to push people. I wonder how she perceives her role as a manager.
ALISON BEARD: Because it’s a manager’s job to push?
LINDSEY POLLAK: It’s certainly part of the job, right? They’re clearly waiting for her to take a lead, so if you don’t paint a picture for people of what you want them to be doing, or what you’d like the reality to look like, I don’t know if they know what that looks like because they’re in such a pattern. So, if she spent some time thinking about, in my perfect world they would come in, in the morning, roll up their sleeves and be excited to make these cold calls. I’m not sure if she’s envisioned what that actually looks like.
ALISON BEARD: Right.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah it’s a great observation. When I think about cold calling, I think about the way that a sales force typically operates. It’s all about aligning the sales people’s interest in doing what’s a pretty hard task, getting rejected over and over and over. A couple of years ago I did some reporting where I went down to Yelp, the online ratings company. And their revenue model is they have thousands of salespeople who are cold calling businesses to try to get them to advertise. And I watched how the managers there tried to motivate the people. And it was very much about holding up exemplar so they would say you guys should try to be like Ramsey who’s our top-performing caller this month. He’s signed 72 new accounts. If Ramsey can do it, you can do it too. They also talked a lot about meaning and the idea that every call you make you’re helping the company meet its goal. If we meet our goal the company will be able to go public a little bit sooner. They talked a lot about sort of how one small task of dialing the phone would help the organization sort of climb this mountain. It was a really masterful example of connecting a quotidian task with meaning.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I think that’s exactly right. Seeing what the end goal is and we don’t know what her business is. She mentioned a consulting company that they know that they’re helping someone or that they’re accomplishing a goal for someone, or even team spirit. I had a horrible telemarketing job in high school for about a week, but we were a team and we had fun together and we pushed each other. That was our incentive. So, finding what motivates each person and the team, and for her as a team leader to really decide what she wants from them, I think would be really, really powerful. I think there’s a lot of focus here as there often is when you’re frustrating on what you don’t want. I’d love to hear how she would envision her ideal scenario with her team.
ALISON BEARD: She doesn’t use the term, but I do wonder if part of her concern is that these people are passive-aggressively trying to thwart her. They don’t respect her as a manager and so they’re doing the bare minimum, sort of in a sign of defiance.
LINDSEY POLLAK: It could be defiance or something I often here is a fear of younger managers is also that older workers might want to coast. So, I’ve been here a long time. I know how to do the job. Why should I go above and beyond? Right. That’s not my role. That’s for you young people. So, I think there’s a fear of that as well.
ALISON BEARD: So, what should she do about it?
LINDSEY POLLAK: So, I think again, it’s about figuring out what is the why? There has to be some vision of why they should do more than they’re asked.
DAN MCGINN: I think it can be also useful to think about the five employees that she’s managing kind of as a portfolio. The fact that these older workers might be coasting and just wanting to do what they’re asked to nothing more, that might actually relieve pressure on her and eliminate the problem of all five of them wanting to get promoted next year. Older workers who are happy just to do what they’re asked to do, that can really make your life a little bit easier as a boss.
ALISON BEARD: So are you saying that maybe she should not worry as much about the older workers? Have them continue to do the assignments that she gives them, but then focus on developing the two younger ones who are her age.
DAN MCGINN: If the issue that she’s concerned about is that they’re coasting, I think what she needs to do is set a standard of the bare minimum you’re allowed to do. Make sure that they’re over it and then yeah, maybe focus on the others for more stretch assignments, developmental assignments and things that will position them for promotion later on.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I think it’s a great habit of a manager to really understand what motivates each individual on your team. I was consulting with a nonprofit and they had an Employee of the Month program. And they asked me if it was still relevant and if all generations liked the idea of being recognized as Employee of the Month. And I said, Well you tell me. How do people react when they’re named Employee of the Month? And they said, Oh it’s really funny. Half the people come in and they take selfies and they invite their family, and they have a big party, and there’s always a portion of people who take a sick day when they’re supposed to be given Employee of the Month. And I said wow, it sounds like that’s not really a goal for them to be named Employee of the Month. So, if you want to find out what incentivizes people, ask them. See how they react to different situations and different honors and different incentives. I’m also wondering here, I like that we’re talking about the team and the different roles that people can play. I wonder if this young manager can sort of deputize or somehow set up little teams within her team. If there’s someone who’s really motivated and excited they can work together with somebody who’s a little bit less motivated than the others. There are always different ways to pair people and get things done. I wonder if there’s some opportunity there for her as well.
DAN MCGINN: I wanted to ask, do you find that this idea of calling people sometimes presents generational issues and that younger people at times are very reluctant to do it?
LINDSEY POLLAK: Absolutely. I think if your only experience is answering a mobile phone that was for you, you’ve never really had to handle phone calls without knowing that the call was somebody wanted to talk to you without knowing exactly who it is because of caller ID, being able to have it go to voice mail. Very few people of a younger age have comfort with the phone and I think in many ways that’s sort of a superpower of some of the older generations. That they are much more comfortable on the phone and handling those kinds of conversations. Which is why I’m a really big fan of apprenticeship and mixing people up in the office so that especially if you’re in a phone call driven culture, that younger people can listen in and kind of eavesdrop on the conversations of older people because they’re so much more comfortable with using the phone.
DAN MCGINN: I never thought of talking on the phone as a superpower. [LAUGHTER] I feel very heroic all of a sudden. So, Alison, what’s our advice?
ALISON BEARD: So, we’d like her to start by learning what motivates each of the people on her team and that might defer by their age, but also by their personality, or their previous experience. She should ask questions to figure out whether incentives could be competition or community, or purpose, or recognition and experiment with different ones. We want her to paint a picture for people of how she wants the team to operate and a better vision for the future how this group is going to help the organization and how they’re going to create a happier workplace together. And then she should also consider that the younger group might be more motivated by advancement and development opportunities so they’re possibly prime candidates for her delegating or deputizing the task assignment roles. And the older people might be more motivated by a pat on the back, telling them it’s been a job well done, or connecting them to the customer and the purpose of the organization.
DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: I’m a 25-year-old software engineer with hardware experience. I do work on the weekends and sometimes during the week for a regional nonprofit. I feel like my older bosses are discriminating against me because of my age. This organization hosts several events throughout the week with around 100 attendees. I do tech work for them, pretty basic stuff to make sure computers and TVs are working. Recently they instituted a new and confusing management structure. I have two immediate bosses now. It’s confusing because both are equals and oversee the exact same people. I’m close friends with one of them. He’s a building contractor. He says he doesn’t know why he’s even assigned to any part of the tech department. The other manager is slightly older than me and very shy. He doesn’t do much, but follow directions from above. Their supervisor is an older man in his late 40s. He’s very experienced in tech but lacks some basic knowledge about the specific systems we are using. His boss, the regional supervisor is a much older man in his 70s. He has no technical knowledge. All of these people are extremely nice and reasonable. But I think they don’t respect what I have to offer because of my young age. I try my best to present my solutions to simple problems as respectfully and humbly as possible. But most of the time they shrug me off. Or, they tell me they’ll have to contact another person to verify what I’m saying. Meanwhile, the problems often cause disruption and technical delays at the events. What can I do?
LINDSEY POLLAK: This sounds like a very complicated and frustrating change for everybody. So, I have a lot of questions about this situation and all the complicated relationships. But it seems to me, my first instinct is he needs to find an advocate in this mishmash of all these different people. And I’m not sure who that one is, probably the one he calls a close friend, but I feel like he needs some help navigating this very complicated structure first and foremost.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. My initial inclination was to figure out a way for him to clarify what exactly he is expected to do and what advice he’s expected to offer with certainly his immediate bosses, but perhaps also with the supervisor and the regional supervisor to just say, this is what I’m bringing to the table. What exactly would you like me to be doing here to make sure that everyone’s on the same page? Because it seems as if none of them are.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I agree. A clarification: And I know that he feels he’s discriminated against because of his much younger age. It also feels like a very structured totem pole hierarchy that he’s not just young, but at the bottom of this very complicated new way of arranging people. And so, I think he kind of has a double whammy here of being younger and at the bottom of the totem pole. I think one of the things he could do to gain some respect and elevate himself in the minds of these other people, particularly because they don’t have a lot of technical knowledge is probably not just go to somebody and say what should I be doing, or what are my goals, but say based on the new structure, I think this is what my role is, or here’s what I recommend I can do for the team and put his stake in the ground in a very respectful way as he says he does, but I think that’s an opportunity for him to be seen as a contributor, not just as a junior person.
DAN MCGINN: I’d be hopeful that part of the problem here is the newness of all the, of the relationships. And especially when you have responsibilities like his which are fixing technical problems, it seems to me that pretty quickly he’ll establish a track record here that either the solution that he proposes works or it doesn’t work. It’s a pretty binary outcome. And if he can track over time the last seven problems that they brought to him, he proposed a solution and it worked —
ALISON BEARD: Or, they didn’t accept a solution he proposed, and something —
DAN MCGINN: He turned out to be right.
ALISON BEARD: Something bad happened.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah. It seems like over time this might get a little better. Is that too optimistic do you think Lindsey?
LINDSEY POLLAK: I like the idea of a combination of trust and verify. And so, here’s the data. The last three events that we did, here’s what I did. Here’s what the outcome was. Here’s what happened. Really document everything in a respectful way. He says that they shrug him off, which feels very patronizing and I can understand why that would be upsetting to him. But I think one of the anecdotes to that is to show data of what he has done and what the result has been. I think that’s a really nice solution. That doesn’t guarantee that they will respect him, but it certainly ups the chances.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I loved to unpack that last paragraph a little bit. He says that he presents his solutions to simple problems respectfully and humbly, but I wonder if he’s presenting them in a way that these nontechnical older supervisors understand. He says they shrug me off. If that because they’re thinking about more important things than what he’s bringing them? They’re saying they have to contact another person to verify. Why exactly are they doing that? I just think there are lots of questions there.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I like that you pointed out that they said they have to contact another person. That was a little red flag to me that maybe they don’t understand what he’s saying, or he’s not communicating in a way that feels important or meaningful to them. One way that people describe generational differences in conversation is that we’re speaking different languages in some ways and I wonder if in this case, he is. That what he sees as simple, or as important, or as consequential, doesn’t come across that way or is not perceived that way by the other people. So, I think he needs to learn how to speak their language a bit. Even if he’s doing a good job to make sure that they understand exactly what he’s talking about. But that little red flag that they’re contacting another person to verify that says to me that he might not be communicating as clearly as he thinks. I think that’s a great point.
ALISON BEARD: I think one of the things that he needs to do is not just present data to his bosses who aren’t as tech-savvy. I think he should really emphasize personal stories. So, talk to attendees after events and share feedback. How the technical work that he’s doing has improved the experience for them. I think that might be a better way to communicate with these older bosses.
LINDSEY POLLAK: I like that Alison because it shows that he’s not just caring about the technology. That he really cares about the people.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I had a related thought on that. This is a guy who’s a software engineer with hardware experience. And when he says he’s doing this on weekends and a little bit during the week, it sort of sounds like this is more of a side gig for him, it’s not really his primary job. I wonder if he is overqualified for this work. He describes it as pretty basic stuff to make sure computers and TVs are working. It sounds, he makes it sound sort of simplistic. Like he’s almost looking down his nose at the sophistication of what’s necessary to do this job. So, I wonder if there’s a little bit of that attitude coming through in ways he’s not aware of in the way he communicates.
LINDSEY POLLAK: You know one of the things I’ve been hearing people talk about is the need in this multigenerational workplace and in our digital knowledge economy to combine EQ and DQ. So, emotional intelligence, how to get along with people, and DQ, the digital intelligence. He’s got the DQ. I wonder if he needs a little bit of the EQ.
DAN MCGINN: So, is the thinking that younger people have very high digital IQ, but low emotional intelligence?
LINDSEY POLLAK: I don’t want to stereotype it as all younger people, but I find that nobody ever questions the intelligence or the IQ to add one more in, of younger people. But they often say they’re so savvy with the technology, but they don’t seem to know how to explain it to other people, or how to have those face-to-face conversations. This guy is really young. He’s 25. He’s obviously into technology. I wonder if his communication skills and ability to talk to some of these older people in a way that builds those relationships is something that he needs a little bit more training and thought.
DAN MCGINN: I know another tactic he might try. So, he’s got two bosses. He’s got the supervisor and then he’s got the regional supervisor who’s in his 70s. I wonder if he could try reaching out the regional supervisor, the guy in his 70s via Instagram, just send him a DM. Say: What’s up? See if he can just sort of try to smooth things out that way.
ALISON BEARD: I think maybe Snapchat.
DAN MCGINN: Snap, OK.
ALISON BEARD: [LAUGHTER] So, Dan. What are we telling this software engineer?
DAN MCGINN: Well first we’re saying that there could be issues here apart from age. He has to recognize that this is a new set of reporting relationships. There hasn’t been a lot of time to establish trust yet. We think if he could start to document every problem that comes along and whether his advice turned out to be the right advice, he might have a better set of data and a better trend line to help convince his new bosses that more often than not he’s proposing the correct set of solutions. We also think he needs to show care for the attendees and emphasize to his supervisors that when things go wrong on a technical front, there’s a real cost in terms of the overall experience for the people who are at this event. We think that he needs to think a little bit more about whether he can get an advocate and whether he can get more influence. This is less about discrimination and more about him not having as much influence as he would like in this situation. We think it’s fixable over time and he needs to think about proving his value and communicating a little bit more clearly.
ALISON BEARD: Terrific. Dan, thank you for that summary. Lindsey, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us.
LINDSEY POLLAK: This was really fun. Thank you. I’ll see you guys on Insta[gram], my Gen X people. [LAUGHTER] No, thank you. This was really, really interesting. I really enjoyed it.
HANNAH BATES: That was Lindsay Pollack in conversation with Alison Beard and Dan McGinn on Dear HBR. She’s a workplace expert and the author of the book, The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace.
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This episode was produced by Curt Nickisch, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener.
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