Don't be fooled by your generational perception!

Leadership is about aligning people. It is about understanding those who you are charged to lead, and unifying them around common values. Some leaders are making the mistake of assuming that because their team members are categorized in a certain generation that they can circumvent the process of truly understanding their employees for who they really are. Regardless of the generational makeup of your team, what matters most is your teams values, not their generational profiles. While their generational profile might be an indication of their values, there is not always a one-to-one coorelation. It goes without saying that we live in a complex world. Each individual comes from a unique and varied background, regardless of when in time they were born. Positioning individuals in generational categories, while it can offer some insight into why individuals are showing up to work the way they are. There is a great danger in assuming that we will all show-up to work based on our generational profile. I am willing to bet if we made less assumptions about the people we work with and make some attempt to understand them for who they really are, the job of aligning our team with shared values would be much easier. Remeber that when working with people,  "fast is slow" and "slow is fast."

Daren Blonski
Sonoma Learning Systems - Your Leadership Challenge Resource

Comments

[Wally Bock]

The simple fact is that we don't manage generations. We manage people who we need to take individually. Using generational models can help you improve the odds of choosing the right behavior when you and your team member are new to each other. Otherwise treating people based on their generation instead of their individuality is prejudice.