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Talent Management Perspectives

Published November 2009

How to Resolve Generational Conflicts in the Workplace

 

  Deanna Hartley

As the four generations that comprise today's workforce strive to coexist and drive business value, everyday misunderstandings and conflicts are virtually inevitable.

As a result, employers are often called upon to mitigate tensions and create an environment in which individuals, regardless of age, are valued and can contribute to the bottom line.

The first step is to tease out some of the underlying causes of workplace conflict.

"A lot of conflict is based on assumptions and projections - individuals expect things to be a certain way and when they aren't, they're either put into stress because things aren't working out the way they're supposed to or they take it personally," said Richard Goldman, chief operating officer of Birkman International Inc., a provider of personality assessments.

"For instance, if [person X] is a very direct communicator, and they're to the point, and someone else needs [X] to be more diplomatic, they may say, 'Why is [X] so abrasive or mean to me?' It doesn't mean [X is] abrasive; it just means they're more direct and that's how they are with everybody," he explained.

The identical concept can be applied to understand generational conflicts because all generations make certain assumptions about other groups, Goldman explained.

For instance, boomers may assume all millennials are capable of and prefer to multitask while on the job.

"We look at work styles and whether people prefer to work on one project at a time and stay focused or whether they like having a lot of activity and a lot of things going on at once, [and] we don't see any statistical differences between the generations. Yet we make broad assumptions about them," Goldman said. "The millennials, from a personality standpoint, have no more proclivity to multitasking than someone [in their 50s], so we could be putting a lot of the younger people in stress because we assume they're all [proficient] at this."

Generational conflicts in the workplace also may stem from implicit or unconscious biases - and a classic example of this is the view many boomers hold toward millennials.

"In broad terms, younger people don't respect hierarchy as much; they don't have the expectation of staying with the same company for their lifetime and moving up the ranks and [working] their way to the top one promotion at a time - and corporations don't have that expectation [either]," Goldman said.

"That will come in direct conflict with baby boomers because that's how they succeeded. [They must] overcome these implicit biases [like], 'Gosh, I worked real hard to get to this corner office; why does this kid not respect me?' Well, they may respect you as a person, but the fact that you got your title doesn't mean much because they don't invest a lot in a title."
 
Introducing certain exercises and techniques - such as personality assessments or survey tools - to different generations of employees could go a long way to mitigate or thwart generational conflicts.

"One of the things we look at to eliminate conflict is a fair amount of self-awareness as to 'What are my values?' 'What are my preferred work styles?' and 'How does that fit into the dominant corporate culture where I'm working?'" Goldman said.
 
"If you do this as a group exercise, you could have millennials and boomers lining up on [the same] side. Once you look at the conflicts from a work style preference or value preference, you tend to depoliticize things, and you tend to make this not a war between individuals, but about conflicting ways of doing things."

Talking about and bringing out these issues into the open allows employees to re-examine their unconscious biases and establish better working relationships with their peers.