Office Hours with Adam: Bridging generational divides
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That's code PerfectManny20 for 20% off at OliveandJune.com slash PerfectManny20. Hey, it's Adam Grant. Today, office hours are in session. We're building on our recent work-life episode about age and generational myths at work. I'm fielding questions about what seem like age and generational tensions and bringing evidence to unpack what's really going on and how we can solve the problems in front of us. Up first...

My name is Tara Darrow, and I am a vice president at a large company, and I have a multi-generational team that I manage. So we met a few months ago, Tara, and I will never forget you raising your hand to ask a question that I've been thinking about really ever since. And, you know, frankly, the topic is one we could probably spend an entire season on. But bring it on. What's on your mind?

Yeah, Adam, I've been in the workforce for a couple of decades now and manage a team with people who are younger in career and older and longer in career like myself. And sometimes somebody walks work into my office and we talk about it. And frankly, I just need to give feedback that this is just not great work. And that feedback can be tough and it can have a razor edge to it. But

But what I'm hearing more and more from my younger in career colleagues is this

this concept of psychological safety and how do I ensure I protect their psychological safety. And I don't want to say it in quotations, but sometimes that's how it feels. It's a little bit of a catch-all for this concept of please don't give me hard feedback because my psychological safety can't take it. And so how do we find the balance of these two things and how my generation of like, hey, this isn't great work, go back and do it again,

is juxtapositioned with this idea of feeling safe and protected.

Wow. I'm hearing more of this too. So you're not the only person who's bringing this up. Somebody else said to me recently that they feel like psychological safety is being weaponized. And I think that, first of all, this is a gross misunderstanding of psychological safety. Amy Edmondson put the concept on the map in her research. And the idea of psychological safety is not that you're supposed to be shielded from discomfort.

The exact opposite, which is you can have uncomfortable conversations. As Amy says, the goal is to make everything discussable. And so what I would be inclined to say in a moment like this is actually a sign that we have psychological safety in our team is that I can give you honest feedback without worrying that it's going to bruise your ego or ruin your day and know that you're going to take it as an opportunity for growth.

But also a sign of psychological safety is that you can tell me you're having a hard time taking my feedback. And we can have a conversation about how I can deliver it more effectively, how I can help you receive it in a way that doesn't make you defensive or depressed. And that's the kind of relationship I want to build. So have you had that discussion? Yeah. The vision in my head is this two-way street I can share and you can take.

And that goes back to me. You can share and I can take. And yes, certainly I've learned from that analogy and used it both with my direct reports and even skip levels through my organization. But at the end of the day, feedback's always hard unless it's positive. Everybody loves positive feedback, but I don't think that's the world that we work in. I think it is surprisingly easy to hear a hard truth from someone who you know believes in your potential and cares about your well-being.

And one of the things that I've noticed over the years is that when I give tough love and it's not welcomed, I haven't done enough to build the relationship and make it clear I'm actually trying to help you here. And I think this information is in your best interest. And if I bit my tongue, I would actually be doing you a disservice.

So sometimes it's less the message and more the why behind the message. Mm-hmm. Sometimes you just want to be like, this is just fucking bad work. You know, like, it's just bad work and go fix it. And what I've tried to do is add something productive, like, hey—

It's not bad work because you didn't try. It's bad work because you just didn't nail the assignment. Now, listen, sometimes people don't try. And so I will call that out any day. But mostly it's you didn't understand. So can I reframe the assignment or can I help you better articulate what needs to get done to get it into a better place? And so that's something that I've also just put into my toolbox of, OK, am I being helpful as opposed to just saying this is fucking bad work?

Am I actually being helpful to set them down on the right path? Yeah, I like the shift there both because... Well, I like it for a couple of reasons. One is...

You're offering advice as well as feedback and you're showing them how to do it better. But two, you're also acknowledging that there might be reasons outside of their control that limited the quality of what they produced. And in some cases, that might even fall back on you to say, well, you didn't understand the assignment because I wasn't clear enough in what I was looking for. And I created a very ambiguous project for you and I need to do better at that too. Yeah. Yeah.

But that's also a form of, I think, psychological safety, right? Which is that vulnerability that I would have also as a leader and showing that, hey, I might have screwed this up for you. Let's start over. I wish we had more leaders doing that. Like leaders who admit their own mistakes. To your point, we have good evidence that they create more psychological safety for their teams, which both then allows you as a leader to hear the things that otherwise they're hiding from you. But also it's modeling that.

growth mindset to them. And it's allowing them to say, yeah, here's what I screwed up. And here's where I need to improve. Now, on that point, Tara, I think one of the things that I've actually started talking with my students about, because, you know, we're going to send them to you. And you're gonna, you're gonna have to deal with whatever arrives. I've started telling them one of the best skills that they can develop is to become someone who takes feedback well.

to know that your boss is actually evaluating you on whether you respond constructively or defensively. And so if you want to prove yourself, you have to show that you're willing to improve yourself. I love that because it shows that you are receptive to input.

You recognize that you're not going to be 100% right every time. And by the way, that's the world. Nobody's 100% right on anything. And so there's always room for continual improvement. One thing I talk to my team a lot about is maybe the first miss is this far apart, was a mile apart. I'm going to give you some feedback and maybe next time you bring it in, you're just a half a mile away.

away. And then the next time it's a, you know, a third of a mile, but you actually almost got it. And that's what I'm looking for as a leader is just

taking that feedback and integrating it. I don't want to repeat myself of like, you didn't get that right. And I told you that last time. I want you to take that and be like, oh, I'm going to plug that in for next time. And that's my learning. So can I give you a little homework? Yeah. It sounds like to me, part of what would both help you and help your multi-generational team is actually doing meta feedback. Like let's give feedback on our feedback.

So that we have a discussion about how do you like to receive feedback? What are the moments where I've given it and it's motivated you? When has it deflated you? And that doesn't just have to be from you, Tara. It could be like, tell me about the best constructive criticism you ever received. What made it so beneficial? What made it so energizing? Tell me about the moment that somebody just crushed you. Why was that so devastating? And can we try to make our feedback conversations more like the good ones than the bad ones?

Is that something you might do? Yeah, 100%. I love the idea of recalling how it made you feel and then, again, taking it to the next level, which was what was the outcome of that? When you just got absolutely obliterated by feedback, did it make you improve? Probably not because you just went into a dark place. When you got feedback that was productive and informative, did it make you better? Probably it did. That really resonates. What's your homework for me? Okay.

What do I need to go learn more about? Well, I love how you said the whole point of psychological safety is this world of open feedback. And I would love for more people not to use it as a catch-all term, like a weaponizing term, to actually be informed and educated about what it is and the intent of it. It's supposed to be a positive thing.

productive thing to have psychological safety. And I think it's taken a negative turn. And I would love you to keep evangelizing what it is supposed to be. I will not evangelize anything because I'm a social scientist, not a preacher. I will, however, prosecute the misunderstandings that abound. And I'm not the only one doing it. Amy Edmondson has been

She's actually released, I think, both an article and a video recently. Here's what psychological safety is not, I think, for the reasons that you've walked right into. Yeah. And as a leader, another thing I really want to do is be vulnerable with my team. And to your point, share where I messed up.

I think that's really important, but maybe I'm the start of that. I can lay the foundation of like, if I can say it, you can say it. So I think that's also in my homework list. Well, I have so much admiration for your candor. And yeah, I think a lot of people struggle with what they perceive as a tension between honesty and loyalty. And I've never understood the conflict there. For me, honesty is the highest expression of loyalty. The more direct you are with me, the more I'll know that you're trying to help me grow.

And I would love to have a leader who's as forthcoming as you are to say, like, this is shit work. I don't have to wonder where I stand. And that means you're really clear on how I need to improve. But also, then when you praise me, I know you mean it because you're a straight shooter. Yeah. And I think I want to be a straight shooter and I want to make sure people feel good about all of it. And that's my goal. This episode is sponsored by Udemy.

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Maybe I should have you introduce yourself first. Hi, my name's Penelope Scandellari, and I took Adam's class in the fall, and now I've been doing research with him this semester. I love when people talk about me in the third person. It makes me feel like I'm totally part of the conversation.

So what brings you to office hours today, Penelope? I had a question about Gen Z, because it's something that I think Gen Z being lazy has become kind of a buzzword in these last couple years. Is that true? I've heard it in school, at work, my parents' friends, and I've certainly discussed it with my peers too. My generation's reaction is to often be defensive, which I don't know if it's the most useful way to react to this. So

what do you think is the appropriate response? Ooh, this is a fun question. Well, I have a few questions back for you first.

First question is, give me some examples of when you've run into this. What did people say at work? So at work, it's a lot of times in terms of the hybrid discussion. What I've noticed most is the conversations normally not about the pros and cons of working hybrid or remote, but it's more about, oh, working hybrid is because people are lazy. And there's generally a connotation that it's Gen Z, which is my generation. So...

As far as the return to office is concerned, I think this is a great opportunity to just bring in some data. Nick Bloom, I think, probably showed this most convincingly in his research, where if you look at the age breakdown on who wants the flexibility to be hybrid or remote and who wants to show up all the time, the people who want to be at home are actually people with young kids at home.

which is more likely to be millennials right now than either Gen Z or other groups. And Gen Z actually looks a lot more like empty nesters, where if you're young and single, you want to come to work. You want the mentoring. You want the sense of community. You want to be part of the culture. And there have been a whole bunch of polls showing that Gen Z is actually the most enthusiastic group, even more so than baby boomers, about being back at work.

I think that's very interesting. It's one thing to debunk the misconception that Gen Z doesn't want to show up for work, right? It's another to get at the deeper view that there's some kind of core laziness of this generation. So where have you confronted that more general view that your generation is lazy? Discussing with my friends and peers, I think...

Well, recently people value different things than maybe they did 30 years ago, especially in the workplace in terms of, for example, burnout and mental health and life satisfaction. And I think I've seen a really big shift even speaking with family, friends who are maybe 10 years older than me and speaking with peers my age. So I think my point of view is more just a shift of what the workspace looks like and what the current generation wants it to look like, not only for them, but for the future generations.

Okay, this is great. So this goes to the first question that I would ask if I were in your shoes. So let's say you have a boss or a mentor or an older family friend who makes a comment about how Gen Z is lazy. The first thing I would do is I would say, oh, that's such an interesting observation. What do you mean by lazy? And my hope is that they give you an accurate definition of laziness, like wants to avoid effort, unwilling to work hard.

And then that's an opportunity for you to say, I'm actually worried about how hard my peers work. A lot of them will do 16 or 18 hour days in school. I've seen the same in internships. And I wonder if the difference is less about how hard they're willing to work.

and more about what they're willing to sacrifice, which is a different conversation. Maybe the work ethic is the same, but there's lower tolerance for burnout or for indentured servitude. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I think that's a real question of what are you willing to sacrifice? Yes, what are you willing to put in? And I think the younger generations also at a point in their life where probably most people, as you were saying before, don't have as many families. And so it's also curious to see how the shift will be maybe in five or 10 years. I think so too. And this actually dovetails with one of the key points in last week's episode, which is that different generations have the same core values at work, but they're

But they often have different ideas about how to express those values and fulfill those values. And so here, they may want to achieve the same level of success. They may want the same number of promotions. They may want the same income. But they're maybe a little bit less willing to give up

work-life balance or mental health in order to get those things, which I think is a healthy change. I agree. I agree. This is my follow-up question for you is how do you communicate this change or what you're willing to sacrifice to people more senior than you? Because I think sometimes the balance is also very tricky. Yeah, I think that is a complicated conversation. I wouldn't necessarily raise this with somebody who I haven't yet impressed.

So once somebody is wowed with your competence and your contribution and your commitment, then it's a chance to say, hey, I actually love the work I'm doing. I care about making a difference. I believe in our mission. Whatever it is that resonates for you about the organization and the job. But then, hey, I would love to get your perspective on something that I'm struggling with right now, which is as I look up the hierarchy in our organization or as I watch people in this industry grow,

I don't know that I want the life they have. Like, I don't want a nanny to raise my kids. I don't want to be working Saturdays until 11.30 p.m. I know there are moments because I'm passionate about something or because there's a client need or because there's a deadline where I will end up burning the midnight oil, but I don't want that to be my default lifestyle. At the same time, I want to work really hard for things that I care about and believe in. You know, what's your viewpoint on how to navigate that tightrope?

and see what comes back. And I think the answers you get are pretty revealing of the organization's culture and also maybe the industry's norms. And then you can gauge, is this a place where I can have the life I want, not just the career I want? That answers it perfectly. Then a question just thinking forward is how do you see the work culture shifting, not only for my generation, but for the generations to come? You know, it's interesting. I think from the trends that I've been tracking recently,

It's likely that some organizations are building a competitive advantage by making reasonable work-life balance a core part of their culture. I used to see there were a lot of organizations that said, like, yeah, this is a work-hard, play-hard culture. And then if pressed, they'd be like, yeah, that's how we do work-life balance. It's all in at work. But then, you know, when you're not working, we're serious partiers, right?

And then I would push them a little bit and I would hear things like, yeah, I have great work-life balance. I have work and that's my life. And there are a lot of companies now that are deliberately pushing back against that norm.

And saying we are going to differentiate ourselves and we are going to attract and motivate and retain people by setting boundaries and making sure that you have quality of life outside of work and time for family and friends and health and hobbies and the other things that once upon a time people just ignored.

And I think we'll see a growing number of workplaces do that as four-day work trials continue to show encouraging results, as AI makes it easier for people to do their jobs in less time. There are still a lot of old school leaders out there, and they're still, for the foreseeable decade or two, there's still going to be a lot of jobs that require human time and energy and oversight.

And so I think we're going to see what might be a trifurcation of organizations that differentiate on balance, organizations that say, hey, this is going to be like joining boot camp in the military.

And then organizations that either have sort of ambiguous or vacuous cultures and have not made a statement or taken a stand. And I think it'll be fascinating to see how those organizations do. I think the sort of the pro-balance cultures in the short run might seem less productive and less profitable. And my guess is in the long run, they're going to be much more sustainable when it comes to quality of work and innovation. I agree.

I agree. And I think I've been in college for three years and I think in the three years I've been, there's already been a lot more differentiation in terms of company culture and the way companies brand themselves for recruiting, especially in certain industries where there's a lot of competition. I've seen a lot of people who may be company culture for the first couple of years.

of their career is not their biggest priority, but I think people are starting to give it more value because they've seen what it looks like to work at a company that doesn't have a culture that prioritizes your health or your well-being. That's really interesting. It reminds me of something I've noticed anecdotally, which is it seems like the very top firms are slower to adapt to these kinds of trends.

Whereas if you're number two, you can never hire the person you want because they always go to firm number one. You have a strong incentive to say, wait a minute, what else can we do to compete? And I'm wondering then if that's actually going to lead to what researchers sometimes call the fat cat syndrome, where the top performing organizations rest on their laurels. They don't change. They don't adapt. And that leads a new breed of cultures to rise and become more dominant.

I've also seen it with smaller firms. I've worked at two smaller companies for the past two years, and I think the culture has played a humongous part of my experience. Every time I think back on my summer, that's one of the first things that I remember. Awesome. Thank you so, so much for doing this. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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I'm Harry Huggins. I am a audio producer. Hey, Harry. Welcome. Hi, nice to meet you. Same. I appreciate you coming to Office Hours. What brings you in today? I have been interacting with a lot more Gen Z coworkers lately. I volunteer with a organization in New York that does a podcast workshop for high schoolers in the city of New York. And I'm a

And we've experienced a lot of issues with people not being able to figure out email. Like the Gen Zers in the high school program keep not doing email etiquette, as I would call it. And I understand that it's like a learning process, especially for high schoolers. But this is by far not the first time that I've experienced that problem with younger generations. Is there a specific example that will really bring it to life?

Sure. So I want to anonymize names here. So I will say Caitlin and Benny are the high schoolers that I'm working with. And every week we're supposed to meet. And every time they send me an email saying, okay, what time are you free? I respond to both of them. They're supposed to keep both of them, me and the people who are organizing this whole volunteer program CC'd on this.

They never keep anyone but me on the reply. And so someone shows up to the meeting and we don't know what we're doing. Like there's no itinerary added to the calendar because the person who's in charge of the itinerary wasn't on that or didn't know that they were going to be there. And I mentioned it every time. Hey, you should make sure to just reply all on these. It's important that all the information is there, but it doesn't change anything. It just always happens. Yeah.

Well, okay. I have a few thoughts on this, Harry. My first one is if people are going to err on one side of replying all too little or too much, I like your version of the problem. As opposed to yesterday, I got an email that was sent to something like 130 people and someone replied all. And then all of a sudden, people start to reply all, please don't reply all. You're just compounding the problem.

So I think your version is less annoying, personally. Interesting. But there's so much information being lost and extra steps being added. I don't understand how to teach email etiquette beyond saying this is what you should do because it's the right way to use email. Yeah.

I hesitate to generalize, but it does seem like with my younger colleagues, anywhere I've worked, getting them to communicate about anything is like pulling teeth. In person, I can do it. But like, it's like if you're not in the room with them, you don't exist. And that getting over that like hump of, hey, you just need to communicate as much as possible seems impossible. That's such a fun question. So I have run into some of this also with my students, too.

And the place that I always start is one of the basic findings in the last century of psychology is that if you want to motivate somebody, you have to find out what they value. And the conversation for me starts not at let's make the norms clear, but rather at, okay, what do these people actually care about? And how do I connect the norms I want them to follow to something that they care about?

So one of the conversations I've had with my students is, how do you want to interact with me? And what do you expect of me? And one of the first answers I get is, well, we really want you to be responsive and available. And guess what? Now I have an opening.

I'm like, great. Well, you know what really helps me be responsive is if you send me an email with a really clear subject line and then the body of the message has three to five sentences, no more, telling me what your question is, what problem you're trying to solve, what door I can open for you. And if you come with a really clear ask, I will respond usually in less than an hour.

But if you don't, it may take me a while to figure out what you're really after. Or I might just prioritize people who made it easy for me to be helpful. Right. And that conversation is a very different one than here's what I want you to do. So question is, have you tried that approach yet?

You know what? No, I definitely am more like this is the reason why this is the best way to do something first. And I try to be understanding. I try to be like, I understand it is hard to get over that like shyness of communicating with someone that one like isn't your best friend and like isn't texting you all the time. But I haven't been like, what do you want from me? I guess. Yeah.

No, I mean, I think whenever you find out what somebody's goals and values are, right, you can then try to build a bridge between the changes you're hoping they'll make and what they already think is a priority. Right. The other thing that I've sometimes seen happen is to say, look, if more than one person is running into this challenge, you may want to do some training, but you could also try to make this more fun than training as a learning opportunity. The principle I'm thinking about specifically is...

self-persuasion. There's a classic paper by Elliot Aronson where he brings together decades of evidence to show that if you send somebody out to make a persuasive argument...

The person they're most likely to convince is themselves. Maybe what you do is you take your high schoolers and you ask them to be in charge of creating a simple playbook for email etiquette inside your organization. And they're in charge of onboarding the new high schoolers.

Oh, interesting. And they're going to work with you on like, okay, what is the key information that needs to be communicated? And then as soon as they've crystallized those principles, then they get to do two things. One is they've written them down and explained them. And so now they're remembering them. And two, now they have to make the case to other people that those are important. And they're more likely to internalize the message when they're delivering it.

That sounds really fun. It feels like tricking people into doing what I want them to do, but I mean, I'm sure they'll surprise me with some other ideas for how to do that. Odds are that if it's done in a way that seems manipulative, it confers. Yeah. Yeah. And so if you're worried that people are going to feel tricked, I would just be up front and say, look, I think a lot of people are frustrated about email etiquette around here. You clearly do not want to do the things I'm asking you to do. I

I clearly am not happy with the way that you're handling it. And I realize you are on the forefront of technology. Instead of me telling you what to do, can you come up with your top 10 list of email etiquette principles that would save us time and allow us to have productive communication? And then I'll take a look at those and I'll probably have some additions, subtractions and edits. And then you're in charge of setting and managing our email etiquette and making it work for us.

Yeah, I like that. I think that could work. I do feel like there's a decent chance that people just don't want to do email regardless. I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but like over communicating was like beat into me when I was intern, you know, and I don't know if that's just not being done now or if it's because chat is so much more ingrained from an earlier age. I don't know if it's just like a lost cause. Yeah.

I don't know either. I mean, when you try something new, you're always running an experiment and it may or may not work. I do wonder if, just going back to the point that it's easier to motivate people if you're appealing to their values, what if you took one or two of them aside and you just said, hey, I've heard from our past high school team members that they really want to be successful here. And there's a lot of uncertainty as a high schooler about how to succeed in a work environment.

Well, let me give you the lowest hanging piece of fruit I could possibly offer you. You want me to think that you are a rock star and write you the greatest letter of recommendation you've ever gotten? Crush it on email. If you are emailing multiple times a day and you are over-communicating, I'm just going to think the world of you. And that is literally the easiest thing you can do to ace this internship. Is that a conversation you could have?

Yeah, I think trying to attach it to their motivations for doing well, because they do seem... They're very highly motivated people, but they don't see how email matters. I think maybe I could give some examples from my own career. If they could connect it to something where like, oh, he knows what he's talking about. He's gone through this too. Maybe that would work, at least to get them more motivated, because I'm not convinced that they see email as a useful tool. But I would... Just in this case...

you got to do what your boss is telling you to do at some point. I think that's an entirely reasonable ask. Okay, so Harry, as you leave office hours, what's your biggest takeaway from this conversation? Or what are you going to do that you hadn't thought of?

I'm going to have the high schoolers try and come up with their own protocols for communication and like suggest some things that have worked and have not worked in the past and have them invested in this so that they know what they're doing ahead of time. And also, I think sharing my horror stories of bad communication can help them see why it's important to do this the right way and not just half-ass it.

This is a good application of path goal leadership, which is basically as a leader, like you describe the end and you say, look, I want to have a mechanism for communication that does not leave people out of the loop and doesn't waste a ton of our time. And here are a couple of paths I've tried that didn't work. It's up to you to find some paths that do. And let's work together on that.

I'm excited. I'm excited for this. Well, I look forward to hearing how it goes. Thanks for joining Office Hours. Of course. Thank you very much.

Penelope, I have to tell you that you've left me with a mystery in this conversation. No one has ever mistaken me for Gen Z before. Why? Why do you think I'm Gen Z? I think it's your approachable teaching style. I don't think I've had as many approachable teachers and professors in the past. Oh.

It's the informality. Yeah, I think that's what it comes down to. Okay, so I hate power distance and you encode that as Gen Z. Yeah. So interesting. My kids do not agree with that at all.

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