Understanding and Managing Multiple Generations in the Workplace

About the Guest:

Kristin Scroggin is the  founder of genWHY Communication Strategies, noted for her expertise in generational dynamics in the workplace. Her professional journey began as a lecturer in communications at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she cultivated an interest in understanding millennial behavior to enhance their educational outcomes. Kristin's passion for unraveling intergenerational challenges and her acumen for communication strategies led to her current role, traveling across the country assisting organizations in navigating the often complex terrain of multigenerational workforces.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Chamber Amplified from the Findlay-Hancock County Chamber of Commerce, Doug Jenkins engages with Kristin Scroggin to delve into the intricate dynamics of managing a multigenerational workforce. Kristin talks about the unique traits, strengths, and preferences of Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Zs - providing a fuller understanding of how these generations operate within the professional landscape.

The conversation ventures into the significant impact historical events have on shaping generational mindsets. With a critical look at the power struggle between Millennials and Baby Boomers, Kristin provides strategies for businesses to harness the collective potential of a diverse age range effectively. 

Music and sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com

Transcript

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:00 - (Doug Jenkins): Coming up next on chamber amplified.

0:00:02 - (Kristin Scroggin): There is no right or wrong generation. I mean, that's important to know everybody brings. You're just looking through the world that you lived in. And it's funny because I'll have people that'll say, my kids would have never survived 1986. Well, yeah, that's because we were all raised on hose water and neglect.

0:00:19 - (Doug Jenkins): Welcome to the show. I'm Doug Jenkins from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce. On each episode of Chamber Amplified, we're examining issues impacting the local business community. Whether it's employee recruitment and retention, marketing, it issues, it's really anything that can impact your business. Our goal is to give our members tips each week on at least one way they can improve operations and thrive in the current business environment.

0:00:41 - (Doug Jenkins): So we're going back to a topic that I find really interesting today, and that's multiple generations in the workforce all at the same time. Now, if you manage employees, this is a topic that might feel familiar to you. You've got everyone from baby boomers to Gen Z working for you all at the same time. And, you know, they all work quite.

0:00:58 - (C): A bit differently than each other.

0:00:59 - (Doug Jenkins): And that's not to say that one.

0:01:01 - (C): Group does it better than the other.

0:01:02 - (Doug Jenkins): They're just different, is all. Each group has different needs. They have different strengths, though, and different weaknesses. And knowing what those are can help you and your managers or supervisors better understand the employees that they're working with and help lead them better. My guest today is Kristin Scroggin of genWHY communication strategies. I heard her speak at a conference last year. Really enjoyed it. She does an outstanding job of not only helping you understand your employees of all ages, but also helping you get them to all work together, or at the very least, tolerate each other.

0:01:30 - (C): That's a step in the right direction.

0:01:32 - (Doug Jenkins): Right? Well, thanks again for tuning in. Remember, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you can rate and review the show. It really does help spread the word. Now, let's get into it.

0:01:41 - (C): Let's talk a little bit about your background and how you got into studying the different generations and how they all interact with each other.

0:01:50 - (Kristin Scroggin): Sure. So I was hired as a lecturer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in communications, and I had this great plan, Doug. I was just going to make all my students love me. And if they loved me, they were going to work super, super hard. And because that is a very gen x mentality, right? If we love our boomer bosses, our traditional spouses will do anything they want. Anyone's we don't like, they just get whatever crap is left over. So I thought, I'll just do that same plan. And what I found was that my millennials were doing the opposite. It was like, the more that I loved on them and the more I parented them, the more they expected me to hook them up. Right. So I found that the guy who was really strict, who was really clear about his standards, was getting the highest quality work. So I really started studying millennials, purely selfishly, so that I could figure out how to get them up to maximum capacity.

0:02:41 - (Kristin Scroggin): And then before long, everybody was like, what do you know that we don't know? And now I travel all around the country and help people understand this better.

0:02:48 - (C): So when we were talking about this at Knoxville, it was in the context of leadership groups. It was at the America, the associated leadership professionals. But as you were talking, I'm like, well, this applies to all of the businesses that we deal with at the chamber of commerce, maybe even more so, because as we're finding there are not just one or two generations in the workforce anymore, it's four, maybe even five generations that are interacting with each other. So there's a lot to unpack there.

0:03:13 - (C): What are the things that you see?

0:03:16 - (Kristin Scroggin): So there's so many things. The big thing that I really focus on right now is, you know, every generation is made. No generation makes itself, you know, no. No millennial ever woke up and was like, oh, I hope I win 11th place this year. Like, their parents did that to them. They decided to go down to, you know, the PTA and hire and pay for participation trophies, like, every generation gets made. And so the more that you understand that people are just working through the world through their particular lens and what they've been made to see the world as, you spend a lot less time, you know, being angry at them for just being who they've been made to be. So there's a lot of focus around that that I think, really, people need to understand.

0:03:58 - (C): I really like that because it is. And I think the younger generation is always the one that's better pointing out. It's like, hey, you, the older generations are the one that you parented us. Like, you gave us this world. I don't know. Is it as combative between the generations as the memes on Facebook and Reddit would have us see more? Is that just kind of the default that a lot of people go to?

0:04:21 - (Kristin Scroggin): It is. No, it really is. The war between the millennials and baby boomers is very real. And the main reason why is because in America, you must have two things to have power. You must have money and majority. And the baby boomers have pretty much held the title of money and majority through their whole entire lives. Well, now, all of a sudden, you've got millennials. This is the biggest generation we've ever had.

0:04:42 - (Kristin Scroggin): So they have the majority, but they're still fighting for the money. So you have. What's happening is as the. As the boomers are losing numbers, right, as they're losing majority, millennials are gaining money, and so the war is on for who's gonna be the main power thing. And that's why all the gen xers are in the middle, like Martha, Marca, Marcia. Right. Like, we hate all of you, and we still get our work done because we've never held any power. We don't understand what comes along with that. But, yeah, the war, the natural power struggle, it's almost like, Doug, I don't know if you have a kid that acts just like you, and that's the kid that makes you mad every second of the day.

0:05:19 - (Kristin Scroggin): That's really what's happening with boomers and millennials is they're both born at the height of their respective technologies. They have a lot to say. They're very social in their own way. They don't print retractions. Right. They don't take it back. And so this idea of sort of a natural power struggle is happening between those two groups. And then, of course, generation Z will. I mean, generation alphas will come in later on, and they'll be the worker bees for the millennials, the same way that the gen Xers were worker bees for boomers.

0:05:47 - (C): So, yeah, that's. That's an interesting dynamic, and we're going to get into how it all plays out in the workplace in a second. But you brought up Gen Z's or alphas. That's not the same. Is that the same generation, or is that different?

0:05:58 - (Kristin Scroggin): Right. Yeah. Gen Z's are the second half of the millennial generation, especially because they have a lot of older parents. So there's actually a lot more overlap because the same people that parented millennials also in many situations, parented gen Z's. So the parents really are the key. Please feel free to go home and tell your parents that they really did mess you up. And for those of you that just had babies, you, too, will mess up all your kids. You'll be paying for therapy like the rest of us. Right. Because you're trying to work through a world that doesn't exist anymore.

0:06:28 - (C): So we're kind of establishing the conflict between it.

0:06:31 - (Kristin Scroggin): I don't know.

0:06:32 - (C): I just sit here being born in 1980, and I just pick if some days if I want to be Gen X, I'll be Gen X. And then if. If millennials are annoying me, or if I think millennials are right, then I'll be like, no, I'm one of them. I'm just a saved by the Bell millennial and not a spongeBob millennial.

0:06:45 - (Kristin Scroggin): That's right. You're a zeniel. Me. Right. You're a xeniel. Right in the middle. Interpreters between the two worlds.

0:06:53 - (C): I played Oregon trail in the school library like any good Xeniel did. So we've established there's the conflict there, and that's natural. It's just gonna happen, and it doesn't. Eons from now, it'll be the same thing.

0:07:08 - (Kristin Scroggin): We'll never stop.

0:07:10 - (C): The relatively new part is all of those generations mixing in the workplace and then managers having to try and figure out how to manage all of those. And not that everybody's just. Their personality is exactly what the stereotype for their generation is, but there are different ways that different generations handle things. So what are the things that businesses can be doing to try and make this mixing of the generations a little bit more palatable, if not more enjoyable?

0:07:37 - (Kristin Scroggin): Yeah. So one of the big things that, I think, again, it comes down to understanding each one of your generations. So what we have to understand is that boomers were really trained, especially the older boomers, the ones that were in their seventies were really trained, that their job and their identity is intertwined, that you being a good worker is part of you being a good person. And so a lot of that comes from the fact that their parents were children during the great depression, and so they looked at their boomer kids and said, you must be working. Doesn't matter whether you're happy or not. That's not relative. You just must be working.

0:08:06 - (Kristin Scroggin): So you have a group of people who are highly competitive because there were so many of them. And again, you've got this sort of high competition and high job identity intertwining. And so because of that, in many ways, many boomers are going to see people as a threat to them in a way that maybe the other generations don't see themselves as a threat. And one of the biggest places we see this, Doug, and I know you remember probably hearing about this in Knoxville, is this idea of knowledge transfer, which is a huge issue that companies are dealing with across the country.

0:08:38 - (Kristin Scroggin): You have boomers that are holding it very close to the vestibule and. Right, they're not, they're not training the next generation on the things that they need to know. But again, what people have to understand is that that's because they were told that if you don't have a job, you're not a good person. So they're going to be careful about, like, why would you give all your information to somebody who can work at double your speed and half your pay rate? Like, that would be dumb if you've been told your job and identity go together.

0:09:02 - (Kristin Scroggin): So one of the big things that I would really push here is instead of doing this sort of one on one mentoring, which is not honestly going to work between millennials and boomers, they see each other too much as competition is, how do you develop leadership development programs? What are you going to do to bring your, raise your new generation up? Give your SME's an opportunity to stand in front of them?

0:09:23 - (Kristin Scroggin): They don't seem as a threat when it's, you know what my general rule is if it's a smee, talk to three, right. You need at least three people so it doesn't feel like competition to them. So leadership development programs are really the answer at this point in time of getting that information out of your baby boomers. When they get to be the queen or the king and they talk to the peons, they're far more likely to do it to tell that information than when it's Britney versus Rhonda. Right. And those two people are at full scale war.

0:09:53 - (Kristin Scroggin): So that would be one of the first ones is understand that it's not because your boomers don't trust you or they don't like you or they're micromanagers. It's that their job and identity is knit together in a totally different way than other generations. The next thing you need to know is a little bit about Gen Xers. Gen Xers are hyper independent. We were all latchkey kids, even down to you, Doug. Right. You, magical thing called playing outside.

0:10:18 - (Kristin Scroggin): And for motion Xers, if you, if you micromanage us at all, we will shut down. Or just know that if you, if we have to do a meeting and a stand up and a report for every single thing for you, you're getting it slower. So most Gen Xers are kind of hyper independent. As long as you say go forth, get it done, it's on your hands, they're more likely to do it. But the more micromanaged the gen Xer feels, usually the worse it's going to be. So you could be shooting yourself in a foot by having constant updates with any Gen Xers. And Gen Xers have a tendency to manage in the same way that they would like to be managed.

0:10:54 - (Kristin Scroggin): So we have a tendency to be, if I haven't told you that anything's wrong, then nothing's wrong. And so this is a real problem for their millennial, the people that they manage that are millennials and Gen Zs, which have much higher feedback needs. And so what happens is, you know, like, for me, no news is good news, right? I'm not getting told off today. I'm in a good place. Millennials and Gen Z's. No news is I need to completely freak out, spin ridiculously out of control because my boss hates me and I have no idea if I'm doing well or not.

0:11:25 - (Kristin Scroggin): So understanding. You know that just because you don't need it doesn't mean that the next generation down doesn't need it. Big. For those of you that are Gen Xers listening to the podcast, we one of the easiest thing you can do right now is just do, just be intentional about catching people doing right as often as you catch them doing wrong. And when you see somebody doing right, like, just pop your head and be like, Doug. Yes, more of that. Do more of that, Doug. And then walk away. It doesn't have to be a big formal process, but just giving those sort of atta boy, atta girls more frequently is a huge difference maker for a reward heavy generation, which was the millennials and the Gen Zs.

0:12:03 - (Kristin Scroggin): And then the big thing you need to know about millennials and Gen Zs and just kind of, I'm kind of like, I know I'm kind of hitting you with a lot of stuff really fast, but, but big things with your millennial and Gen Z's is understand that, you know, again, their feedback cycle is faster. You're going to have to catch them doing right more often, and setting expectations is really clear for them. The idea of being like, I don't know, kid, figure it out.

0:12:25 - (Kristin Scroggin): These kids have never lived in a world without a rubric and a syllabus and a tools list for every project they've ever done. You can't come in and hit them in the job description that says and other duties as assigned and think they're not going to freak out. So clarity has a lot to do with how you get your millennials up to, up to the highest possible capacity.

0:12:47 - (C): I think what's important to remember for managers, business owners and the like is that all of the generations bring in strengths and weaknesses, because there's a time where that boomer mindset is the mindset that, like, hey, this project has to get done. We are going to get it done. Our feelings don't matter right now. There's a time for that, but then there's also a time to back off that and be like, hey, all right, let's get together. Let's kick around some ideas on this project. We don't have to run in eight different directions on it. We can be a little bit more collaborative. And that's maybe when your millennials can lead the way on that, too, and probably are going to get a really good job done on that.

0:13:24 - (Kristin Scroggin): Absolutely. There is no right or wrong generation. I mean, that's important to know. Everybody brings. You're just looking through the world that you lived in. And it's funny, because I'll have people that'll say, my kids would have never survived 1986. Well, yeah, that's because we were all raised on hose water and neglect. Right. Like, your kids never had anything that's not purified in 70, you know, sunscreen plus, they've lived in a different world.

0:13:48 - (Kristin Scroggin): But what we also have to remember is they're being equipped for a different world. They need to be able to do things that you're not going to understand. They need to have different equipments than what you needed. So understanding that, what I tell people is, we're in the churn right now. We're redefining what the new version of work in America is going to look like. You need the wisdom of your boomers. They've seen that, been there, done that.

0:14:12 - (Kristin Scroggin): You need their wisdom. You need that autonomy of your Gen Xers who are just going to put their heads done and get it done. And then you need that agility and really, honestly, optimism, in many ways, of those millennials, you need all three groups. So any group, whether it is a board, whether it is an association, whether it is a group of leaders, if you don't have all three of those major generations represented at this point, you're probably missing out on something.

0:14:40 - (C): Looking ahead just a little bit, I think part of the discussion we had in Knoxville was that each generation is also shaped by historical events that happened in their formative years. So, like you said, boomers, they were kids of the depression. What about alphas? Because a lot of them were children when the great Recession hit. Do we anticipate that they might be a little bit more quote unquote boomer?

0:15:04 - (Kristin Scroggin): Like they're going to be actually more like traditionalists. They'll even be more, more stuffy than any boomers ever were. They'll be more like the greatest generation, which, by the way, name themselves. So the big, the big thing that you need to know is that those, those, the traditionalists were children during the great Depression, and the Jinn Alphas are children during the great Recession. The younger of the baby boomers were children during the spanish flu. I mean, not boomers, sorry. The younger of the traditionalists were children during the spanish flu, and then the younger of our, of this generation of the gen Alphas were children during COVID So there's actually a lot of similarities we see.

0:15:43 - (Kristin Scroggin): I don't know if you have any kids who are under 17 at this point. Point, but they're the stingiest people you'll ever meet in your whole entire life. They're completely freaked out about money. And so actually, this is, we're seeing already a great opening for trades to come back in, and people will be very interested in that because this is the first group we've had, honestly, since the GI Bill, who is not interested in spending $200,000 on a college degree and never making more than 45k.

0:16:11 - (Kristin Scroggin): So any organizations that are really intentional about building apprenticeships and internships and pipelines from the high schools into their programs is going to win the game here, because we definitely see with those gen alphas, if you're going to ask them to have a college degree and spend a lot of money, your compensation should really match that. They're freaked out about money in a totally different way.

0:16:35 - (C): I've never thought about it that way. But that is, and especially with some of the jobs and the in demand jobs that we have here in Hancock county and Findlay and Ohio in general, those are those trades that maybe it's going to be a little bit easier to reach those kids because they've got some sensible thinking. Sensible is not the right way to say that. That means that others who didn't work sensible, but they're just thinking about things pragmatically.

0:17:01 - (Kristin Scroggin): Yeah, and that's the thing, though, Doug, is that you've got to go get them. Like, unfortunately, in a lot of companies, we sit around and wait and hope that they're going to find us, when really we need to start around middle school, going in, introducing ourselves, saying, here's what we do, here's what we offer. Also, things like, what I've learned is a lot of Gen alphas understand different jobs, but they don't understand industries, so they don't understand that you can be a computer programmer in agriculture. Like, somebody has to program all of those, you know, all of those tractors to run.

0:17:31 - (Kristin Scroggin): So, you know, if we can get into them earlier and say, here's the industry, here's how you can do whatever your unique talents are. And then if you do have a unique, specific specificity in trades or whatever, here's the kind of classes you really need to take through high school to get you prepped to be able to do that in the same way we did college prep for years and years and years. We need to also be intentional about prepping people to go into trades, military service industries, things that have been on a struggle. When we told everybody they need to go spend a lot of money on.

0:18:01 - (C): College degrees, there's just so much to cover here, and we can't do it all in the time that we have. So definitely link to genWHY in the, in the show notes here. But before we go, completely separate topic. But it was another favorite part of the presentation, struggle time. We've got to talk about struggle time and how managers can use it to their advantage. As soon as you said the concept, I will say here at our chamber, thankfully, I never even think about using it, but the first person I thought of was my wife and her workplace, or I guess I should say former workplace at this point, I was like, you need to put people on struggle time. Kristin, please introduce people to this concept, because it's brilliant.

0:18:41 - (Kristin Scroggin): Yes. So struggle time will completely change your life. Struggle time was actually invented by a third grade teacher who was one of my daughter's teachers. Her name is Joanie Ogle. And here's what Joanie does. Every time she teaches anything, anything new to her students, she looks at them and says, okay, everybody, struggle time. And for the next 2030 minutes, they can't ask her any questions. They can't ask each other any questions. They just struggle to find the answer on their own. They get comfortable with not knowing and trying to use, you know, problem solving techniques to find the answer.

0:19:12 - (Kristin Scroggin): And so, you know, one of the things that I tell people all the time is if you think about the person that drives you the most up the wall at work, chances are the reason they bother you is because they ask you questions all day, every day that they could find the answers to if they just took 20 to 30 minutes of their life to do it. So I just want you guys to think about how good you're going to feel after you've listened to this podcast and the next time that person calls you, you say, struggle time, Brenda, and then you hang up the phone, right?

0:19:40 - (Kristin Scroggin): You might want to explain what it is ahead of time. Work about it, right? But the bottom line is, for most people are not emts. Most people are not emergency room. They're not in the middle of a war. There's nothing wrong with you delaying the response temporarily to empower the person to seek their own information, provide the resources, make sure you've done good onboarding, have really strong training.

0:20:04 - (Kristin Scroggin): But struggle time will change your life because a lot of why people never get into flow, Doug, is because they get interrupted all day, every day. And so you really need to get into flow. And the best way to do that is to get in that habit of struggle, timing people and just saying, you know what, Doug? If you, if you still don't have the answer to this in an hour, hour 15, you call me. I promise I will tell you the answer to it. But I'm going to struggle time you for the next little bit.

0:20:29 - (Kristin Scroggin): This works really well for your children, too, by the way, Doug. You can, they can call you and be like, honey, if you haven't found the peanut butter in the next 2 hours, then you call me back and daddy will tell you where it is. But till then, you're just going to have to struggle to find the answer on your own. And it really is very empowering. It helps people understand they're not going to like it at first if you've been there, storage unit for their brain, they're not going to like it at first, but it really gets people doing what they're supposed to be doing in the workplace.

0:20:55 - (Kristin Scroggin): Struggle time will change your life. Write it on everything you see.

0:20:59 - (C): I love it. And as soon as you said it, I'm like, boy, that is a concept I think a lot of people could use. So I'm glad we could talk a little bit about that as well.

0:21:07 - (Doug Jenkins): Kristin, I really appreciate your time on the podcast today.

0:21:10 - (C): Thanks for joining us.

0:21:11 - (Kristin Scroggin): No problem. I had a great time, and good luck to all of you. If you need anything in the future, just look me up@geny.com. Dot.

0:21:20 - (Doug Jenkins): Thanks again to Kristin for joining us on the podcast. Been looking forward to having her on for quite some time and really think the information that you shared can help you with the environment in your workplace, which can ultimately help out with employee retention over the long haul. Chamber amplified is a free podcast for the community thanks to the investment of members from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce.

0:21:40 - (Doug Jenkins): Because of our robust membership, we're able to focus on providing timely information to the Findlay and Hancock county business community, run leadership programs for both adults and teenagers, and be an advocate for the area while also providing tools to help local businesses succeed. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, just let me know. We can talk about how an investment in the chamber helps strengthen not only your business, but the community as a whole.

0:22:01 - (Doug Jenkins): That'll do it for this week's episode. If you have ideas for topics that we should cover on future editions, just send me an email djenkinsindleyhancockchamber.com dot remember, if you're listening on our website, that's great, but you can make sure you have every episode of Chamber amplified delivered straight to your phone. Just search for Chamber amplified in your favorite podcast player. Click subscribe and you're all set.

0:22:22 - (Doug Jenkins): Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time on chamber amplified from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce.