How can we cooperate effectively between generations?

What are we talking about when we use the term “intergenerational”? It could be summed up in the way and the ability to make generations work together. This subject is not recent in the sense that already ten years ago, when Generation Y arrived on the job market, we talked a lot about how to get to work, to manage, to manage this new generation which at first glance does not have the same aspirations as the other generations and there was a lot of crystallization around this. We also heard: “They are not manageable, they are not committed, they are not motivated.”

This continues to happen with Generation Z, but what we are now hearing most frequently in businesses and which has happened to be quite new in recent years is: “The old or the oldest, anyway, they are not able to learn new technologies, they are going to be outdated, they don't want to develop on this kind of thing.”

We start to hear things that finally crystallize oppositions and if we take a step back, we are typically prejudiced as we are with gender bias. This is when the subject starts to get tense, and it becomes an important issue for organizations.

Aude Bohu, Deputy CEO of Talentis and Executive Coach, talks to us in more detail on this subject.

What tensions prevent generations from cooperating?

What is tension? You could say that overall, there is perhaps sometimes a lack of interest among young people in the oldest by saying to themselves: “We cannot work with them or we cannot mobilize them because, in any case, they do not want to.” We feel resistance on both sides, to go to each other and to do things together.

But the reality is that it is a huge opportunity to make them work together because there is experience on the one hand and maybe new ideas, a new way of looking at things on the other. And today, this challenge is that we will focus on what separates us and not on what brings us together.

It's all a matter of state of mind. Do I have a state of mind that makes me want to learn, to develop, to be open or do I have a state of mind that is ultimately static? It's really the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset that we talk about a lot today. Either I have a state of mind that wants to mobilize, to challenge myself and to move forward, or I have a state of mind that is more fixed, that stays more in the current situation.

How can the company help these generations cooperate?

So that's what you have to work on and it's not because you're young or old, that's not going to discriminate. It's really the way I approach things, the way I want to grow, the way I want to contribute to my business.

So we always come back to the same subject: the project that the company will be able to give to all of its employees by bringing them together around specific projects, around the company's project, around any type of mission and by making them intersect each other as much as possible.

In the end, why do we hear stuff like this? In reality, they don't know each other. Whereas when you bring them together, when you put them around a project, there will be positive friction that will create sparks and that is where innovations will be nourished.

There is certainly the experience that the older ones may have accumulated, but there are other types of experiences that the younger ones also have. These are experiences in particular on all new technologies, where they went to learn by other means, etc. And all this is nourished and enriched for a common project.

So the subject is not Generation X, Generation Boomer, Generation Y, Generation Z. It's how we manage to work together around a common project. And this project is also the company that must propose it or else let people also organize themselves in the company to offer something in common.

And what can we offer managers?

When you are a manager and you have a team to build, try, if you are young, not to be young; try, if you are older, to do more than have people who have the same experience as you. Mix the experiences around you, that's the first thing that's important.

The second thing is to encourage group work as much as possible, working with mixed teams. Eventually, if you feel that there is friction around it, put it down. What brings us together? What is it that hooks us? We put them down and we see and we move forward together. The idea is to open a dialogue, a proximity.

How do the different generations at Talentis work together?

At Talentis, we are a team of about twenty people. We have five dozen represented, from 20 years old to 60 years old. We asked ourselves the question by saying to ourselves: “In the end, what brings us together? What separates us? ”.

What succeeds us is probably this project, this dynamic, this desire and this state of mind to learn, this state of mind of openness, of curiosity for each other, of wanting to feed on one, to feed on the other and to give everyone the opportunity to express themselves regardless of what they are, with the experience they have and to value everyone's ideas. You might think it's easy on our scale because there are 20 of us, but it's a bit the same thing with a big team.

If each manager at his own level, in his own team, succeeds in building this kind of thing, he is likely to think that after that, organizations will also evolve like that. There is the company project, but there is also everything that each manager can do at their own level.

‍