176. From Stereotypes to Synergy: Communicating Across Generations

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: Communicating among the different generations in the workplace can be quite challenging. Some companies have between four and five generations working side by side. 

[00:00:11] My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

[00:00:25] Today, I'm excited to speak with Bob McCann. Bob holds his primary faculty appointment at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he is also the director of the Leadership Communication Program, and a secondary appointment at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering in Applied Science. Bob teaches courses in leadership communication, entrepreneurship, global leadership, and persuasion. Bob is also a consultant and founded the McCann Group. Bob, I'm really excited to have our conversation today. 

[00:00:56] Bob McCann: Thank you. It's really nice of you to invite me. I really appreciate it. 

[00:00:59] Matt Abrahams: Thanks. Shall we get started?

[00:01:00] Bob McCann: Let's do it. 

[00:01:01] Matt Abrahams: A lot of your research and work focuses on intergenerational interactions in the workplace. Can you give us some context around this issue? Why should we care about generational interactions? 

[00:01:12] Bob McCann: We should care because in our current landscape, we have four, five, maybe even six generations in the workplace at the same time. And so there's a tremendous opportunity for meeting and interacting with people who are different than you, for increasing a variety of potential outcomes in business in a positive way if we can maximize our intergenerational engagement. I think that it's a particularly important topic and a topic that means a lot to me. I mean, my dad is ninety-seven years old. And still works fifty hours a week. So I think all of us as researchers, as academics, we need to study something that we care about.

[00:01:54] Matt Abrahams: That's amazing, by the way. And certainly we're graduating students all the time who enter the workplace and they're working with people who've been there for a longer time. What, and how do you look at a generation? What is a generation? We have these names for them, but what does it mean? 

[00:02:08] Bob McCann: It's a good question, and there's not necessarily one answer to the question. So, we can look at a generation as sort of a span of twenty to thirty years. Then there's the more socially constructed generations that demographers might use that is often pinned around a specific event in time. So, for example, the great generation, as I mentioned, my father, that that generation might be tied to World War Two, whereas the baby boom generation, a very large one is more of a demographically based generation.

[00:02:38] Matt Abrahams: Okay. So there are lots of ways of categorizing. 

[00:02:40] Bob McCann: There are. 

[00:02:41] Matt Abrahams: The bottom line is we have people with lots of different experiences in the workplace at the same time, and those groups or generations tend to have certain characteristics that stand out. 

[00:02:52] Bob McCann: That's right. And I think sometimes we exaggerate or overemphasize the similarities and, or differences in a generation. But on the other hand, it's a handy tool. It's a handy tool as well. 

[00:03:03] Matt Abrahams: Yeah. So this academic year is the first year that all of our students are primarily Gen Z. We use these names to help categorize based on a timestamp. In your work, what are things that leaders and companies can do to help around these generational issues?

[00:03:20] Bob McCann: So if we start at an organizational level, it would well serve most companies in some sense regardless of whether they're small, medium or large to have age diversity as a part of their DEI efforts. So we often have, talk about gender diversity and we talk about ethnic diversity and sexual orientation and ability and disability and cognition and so on and so forth. That's wonderful as we should. However, ageism and age diversity sometimes gets forgotten. There are little things organizations can do. They can scan their own website to see if it, let's just imagine an older worker was looking at the Stanford Business School website, scan for images. 

[00:04:00] Maybe it would look like a more welcoming place for an older individual if they saw different images on the website. Certainly would want to have anti bias training. As you move to the next level it could be job ads, for example. We can look what kind of language do we use in our job ads. So if we have ads such as, I'm looking for a vibrant worker and a fresh face to work in a fast paced environment, we have to be careful for ageist code words.

[00:04:26] So I think that at an organizational level, intergenerational mentoring, where we have reverse age mentoring, is something we see a lot now in the research. Intergenerational team formation is something else we see. These are all sort of at the corporate and leadership level. And then ultimately, I think a lot of the research is quite useful. If we look, go back twenty years ago, it was that the problem of the stereotypes and so on was well researched, but the solutions were not. And now we're starting to see a lot of the solutions. 

[00:04:57] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. And underlying everything you shared is this notion that diversity in all types is beneficial to organizations, not just gender or cultural diversity, but also age diversity is really beneficial and anything you can do to foster that. How do the different groups communicate differently in the workplace? Can you help us tease out some of the fact from the stereotypes? 

[00:05:21] Bob McCann: Generally speaking, the stereotypes about older people tend to be negative. Communicatively challenged, frail, slow. Then we have workplace stereotypes. Older workers as struggling with technology or older workers as being less productive. These are stereotypes now. Older workers as being slower on the job. Older workers as being more loyal. Uh, older workers as being more trustworthy. 

[00:05:47] So there are a variety of positive and negative stereotypes that we can see in the organizations. There is the stereotype literature, which is robust. And then there's the communication literature, which looks at what are some of the communication patterns that we see in organizations and outside of organizations that may in some sense, play along with these stereotypes. So for example, you may be over accommodative, you may be under accommodative, you may dismiss someone communicatively because you view them as an out group as opposed to an age in group. 

[00:06:25] So a lot of the communication can track along in that way, too. Then, of course, there's age discrimination, and that is what I studied years ago. I started looking at age discrimination cases. And we started to bucket out different types of language that we found utilized in age discrimination cases. And attract very handily with these stereotypes, you could literally bucket them into the out to pasture stereotype. So it's really fascinating how communication and stereotypes, everything here go together. 

[00:06:56] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. And just as you identified some of the stereotypes that younger workers have of older workers, older workers absolutely have stereotypes of younger workers as not focused or not caring to the same degree. It sounds to me like part of what we have to do is be aware that this stereotyping happens. And then it sounds like there are things we can do through communication to help, one, bust those stereotypes, but also help facilitate interaction. And I'd like to drill down a bit more there. Are there things that you know from the literature or your work that can help bring better interaction among the generations?

[00:07:32] Bob McCann: The key would be quality contact over quantity of contact. So as an example, we now see many companies moving into shadow boards. So we have a board of directors, which may be senior, older person heavy, and younger people are brought into the boards to shadow the older board of directors people. So that is an example of bringing a young person into a group that they may be excluded, and the quality of contact there can be quite strong.

[00:08:02] Another one would be age mentoring. So a younger worker might mentor, and this is done in quite a few companies. Now I'm seeing it in the pharmaceutical industry and where a younger person might mentor an older worker on technology and an older worker may share wisdom with a younger person on something else. Cross training is another. So there are many organization, organizational initiatives that stress quality of context. So just getting together at the pub or the bar for a party, may not be quality content. 

[00:08:32] Matt Abrahams: I like these examples because there are things that you can build into organizations, inviting younger people to boards where maybe older people are sitting on it, forming teams in a way that's very diverse in terms of age and other perspectives. And it seems to me that the actual quality of the interaction is also important. So if I'm facilitating a meeting, perhaps I make sure that I'm hearing from lots of different people. It might be that the older person talks more or the younger person talks less or the language, that in vocabulary are different. And I as a facilitator of those interactions need to be very careful to make sure that everybody is literally speaking the same language and has the opportunity in terms of talk time as well. The operationalization of the communication, not just the ways in which we're organizing also are important. 

[00:09:21] Bob McCann: That's correct. And I think, is it Amazon where a lot of the younger employees are actually in different meetings are asked to speak first in the meeting? 

[00:09:29] Matt Abrahams: Right. So the more junior which tends to be related to age.

[00:09:33] Bob McCann: So it's the same idea in some sense. And I think these type of initiatives are really useful and they don't really cost much money. In many cases.

[00:09:41] Matt Abrahams: Right. And the research that I'm familiar with shows that meetings, for example, are more productive and people feel better about their contributions and how the whole group is working. You mentioned technology as an example of some of the mentoring that can happen. I'm curious, based on what you know about this, how technology plays in this, how does technology play both as something that can help in these circumstances and perhaps actually drive even bigger wedges in between the generations?

[00:10:08] Bob McCann: Let's just talk, I think the interaction between technology and training is an, if, can we go down that road? 

[00:10:14] Matt Abrahams: Sure. Absolutely. 

[00:10:15] Bob McCann: So there is research, some of it rather unfortunate, that older workers are often denied training. We also know from some research that when a trainer knows that an individual is an older worker, they will provide less quality training and shorter training to the older individual. There's some interesting studies done on that. 

[00:10:36] Number one, if we could work to bust some of those stereotypes in and of itself, that would be helpful. However, older workers do train differently, but from the research, it would suggest there is a preference towards live training. There's a preference towards storytelling and training. There's a preference towards self paced training. There's a preference towards an interactive engagement in training. So I don't think it's necessarily the technology that the older workers can't necessarily handle, but they need to be trained in many cases in a way that is differently.

[00:11:10] So all we need to do on a given weekday afternoon, go to an Apple store. The periphery of the store are all younger people, but in the middle of the store, it's all older individuals training. I think that's a perfect illustration of some of the differences.

[00:11:26] Matt Abrahams: I really appreciate what you did in your answer, which was to take a question that's based on a stereotype about technology and turn it into what I think is really more important. Which is understanding how people interact with and learn not just technology, but I think more broadly to capture and truly benefit from diversity of any type we really have to reflect on how people like to learn, like to engage. And we have to adjust. As somebody, prior to my academic career, who ran learning and development, it was very clear that you have to be very cognizant about how people best receive new information and training. This has been a fascinating conversation and one that I think opens up my mind and I hope everybody listening in to this notion that we need to be very cognizant of how we communicate when interacting with people older than us or younger than us. And there are things we can do institutionally within an organization, but also in our own practices to better serve those needs. 

[00:12:26] I end every one of these episodes with three questions. One, I make special just for you. And then two that everybody else answers. Are you up for answering these? 

[00:12:34] Bob McCann: Go for it. 

[00:12:35] Matt Abrahams: So one of the areas that you study is persuasion. If you were to go into an organization and try to persuade them to implement one thing that you think would make a big difference in how folks of different generations communicate, what would you advocate for? 

[00:12:50] Bob McCann: Who am I persuading? I like the, I always need to know who the audience is. Am I persuading the senior leadership?

[00:12:55] Matt Abrahams: Yeah, your leadership. 

[00:12:56] Bob McCann: I would persuade them to implement initiatives to have all employees in the organization, regardless of how small or how large it is, to diversify their networks. Your LinkedIn network, it could be the people on your phone, it could be your, all the people that you feel that are in your network. Scan for diversity, scan for age, scan for culture, scan for gender, find opportunities around common interests that you can meet and engage with people that are different than you. Because if they can create opportunities for the organization, the people in the company to deeply engage with people that are not like themselves. I think that could probably have as big an impact as anything you would see in an organization. So I'm trying to go maybe deeper than you thought. 

[00:13:49] Matt Abrahams: No, no. I think that's absolutely wonderful and important. And I like how you rooted it in everybody look at what you are doing. Look at your phone, look at your LinkedIn network. Notice that and as a leader, what can you do to expand those networks for the people? I think that's fantastic advice. 

[00:14:06] Question number two. Who's a communicator that you admire and why? 

[00:14:10] Bob McCann: Indra Nooyi. 

[00:14:10] Matt Abrahams: Tell me more. 

[00:14:12] Bob McCann: In business school, we always hear rockstar. This person's a rockstar, and that person's a rockstar. I think it's overused, quite frankly, not with Indra Nooyi. The language that Indra Nooyi uses is vivid. The storytelling is audience centric and engaging. You feel like Indra's stories are our stories. The way I've seen Indra work audiences and react and be in tune with them and engaged is fascinating. I think Indra Nooyi is one of the most authentic speakers I've ever seen. Just listen to the word choice, her body language, her ease, her articulation.

[00:14:59] Matt Abrahams: She certainly is a good communicator and as the former CEO of PepsiCo, somebody who is very important in my life since I enjoy so many of those products regularly. So she is the chief executive of the PepsiCo company and that's a very good speaker and a very good choice. 

[00:15:17] Final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

[00:15:24] Bob McCann: So as you know, I, or maybe don't know, I was raised just outside of Boston. So we think in terms of sports. So Bill Belichick, the New England Patriots over and over and over talked about the three phases of the game. Offense, defense, special teams. So there's our NFL football analogy. I feel that we need to be prepared for our offense.

[00:15:43] So I'm very, I really am a systems person here. It's probably 'cause I teach at the school of engineering. Starting with the offense, your metrics, your data, your statistics, your stories, your internal evidence, your external evidence. I work with the students to make sure their offense is strong and they're generally pretty good. I think they undersell the stories, they undersell the soft evidence. They probably overdo the quantitative evidence. 

[00:16:06] But the defense I think is less. By defense I mean, being ready for friction, being ready for objections. I'm sure you know the book, the human element. I think students under prepare for that. If you can be ready for those objections, in many cases, the defense can become the offense. 

[00:16:21] And then the final is the sort of special sauce, the special team for the NFL analogy is that we then look deeply at the audience and we look at our micro level and our macro level persuasion. We look at different persuasive techniques. So really for me, it's those three things. If someone always understands the audience, they're in tune, they're ready for Q and A, and they can prepare for those three areas, I think they're going to be in good shape. 

[00:16:46] Matt Abrahams: I like the analogy in that. It signals that we shouldn't focus just on all the reasons why for something. We also have to think about when our message meets the people in the resistance, hesitation, concern, and we need to be prepared for that. And I agree many people are underprepared. And then we need to look at the tools that we have, the special tools that can help us leveraging some of the influence tactics that you mentioned. And absolutely, I agree that everything is predicated on understanding the audience and appreciating where they're at. 

[00:17:14] Bob, this has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate you giving us insight into yet another area of diversity that we need to be thinking about in our communication and organizations, particularly around age and generations. Lots of very practical and tactical bits of advice. Thank you. 

[00:17:29] Bob McCann: Thank you, man. It's a pleasure. 

[00:17:33] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast To learn more about diversity in the workplace, please listen to episode 67 with Michele Gelfand and episode 21 with Sarah Soule. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Michael Riley, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts, be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. And check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter.