Paul Anderson-Walsh (00.00)

When you're thinking intergenerationally, you're not talking about generations of a different species. You're talking about generations with different levels of expectations. And I think that's perhaps the big thing. And I think really for me the key is the relationship that we have generationally to work and potentially the relationship we have to institutions. And I think that in itself has become very different. 

So today, the idea, you think about our parents' generation, the idea from our parents of being in what you call the gig economy, having any number of jobs, having a portfolio thing, working from cafes, that's ridiculous. What we knew, there was a very ritualized way of going to work that you got up at this time, you could set your clock back. You got up by this time, you had your packed lunch, you went to the train station, you got on the train, you sat next to the same people you sat next to the day before and will sit next to tomorrow. You go to the office, you sit in the seat, you hang your coat, that's how it was. 

And I think it's that some of those absolute, some of those certainties, some of those touch points that have gone. And as those touch points have faded, changed, disappeared, what's happened is that you then have this technological overlay. So now you have this really interesting problem where you have a group of people in the workplace who you might describe as digital immigrants. So there are people, I would call myself a digital immigrant, but I'm working in my own community with digital natives, these are for whom people, for whom their first response is to WhatsApp, to text, to use something digital. My last response is to do that. 

And so you begin to see that expectations change, relationship to institutions change, relationships how we communicate change, relationships where we draw meaning changes, trust and faith in organizations is different now. And so I think the world has moved in a very interesting way. So it's not a change of species, as I'd say. It's much more to do with a change of expectation and environment. 

Siân Harrington (01.59)

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Work’s Not Working, a show about forward thinking people leaders, innovators and academics and how they think we can fix work to make it more meaningful, healthy, inclusive and sustainable. Brought to you by the People Space. 

I'm Siân Harrington. And on the show today, Paul Anderson-Walsh on how organizations are failing to adapt their leadership to the diverse needs of today's multi-generational workforce and what they can do to fix this.  

With five generations now working side by side, each driven by different motivations, the challenge for leaders is more complex than ever. From the Baby Boomers who value legacy to the Gen Zers seeking meaning and rapid growth, one size fits all leadership is no longer an option. Yet, says Paul, a simple shift in perspective could unlock untapped potential across your workforce. 

So later on, we'll hear why the traditional approach to leadership could be driving a wedge between generations. We'll discover the real impact of ignoring generational differences on team performance. And we'll learn how observational leadership could be the key to bridging generational gaps and fostering true collaboration. 

But first, let me tell you a little bit about Paul. Paul Anderson-Walsh is the CEO of ENOLLA Consulting, a consultancy helping organizations create a culture of human inclusion. The focus of Paul's work is to help end inequality in the workplace. He's a world-leading inclusion expert, a learning and development practitioner, author, speaker and the host of the Human Inclusion podcast. 

Paul is actively involved in social justice projects and is the founder and director of The Grace Project, a charity dedicated to working with people, helping them discover their identity and resolve issues of self-worth and self-esteem. He was formerly the CEO of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. 

I start by asking Paul about the issues leaders are facing with the five-generational workplace. 

Siân Harrington (04.06)

So thank you very much for joining me today, Paul. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Our podcast, Work’s Not Working, Let's Fix It!, addresses why today's workplace often falls short and how we can create healthier, more inclusive, meaningful and sustainable environments. Now you argue that one fundamental reason work isn't working for us is because organizations are not adapting their leadership to meet the diverse needs of different generations. So can you elaborate a bit on this and explain why it's so critical for the future of work?

Paul Anderson-Walsh  (04:39)

Yes, of course. Well, firstly, thank you for the invitation. I'm delighted to be with you and really keen to have this conversation. I guess the primary reason is a fairly obvious one, which is that organizations, although they often value diversity, I think one of the reasons they fail to get value from diversity is because of a lack of kind of inclusive leadership. So we've seen a lot of diversity management but we haven't seen a great deal of inclusive leadership. 

And diversity, if you want, represents a conversation about our individualism, our uniqueness. And therefore if you are going to make a kind of one-size-fits-all approach to your leadership, you're going to get yourself in a real problem. Because inclusion has to be personalized. In other words, one-size-fits-one. It's got to be done like that. And hyper-personal, I think I'd say.  And by understanding and therefore adapting to generational differences, I think leadership can potentially become an awful lot more effective. 

And so you say, okay, what's the big thing about leadership? Think about the fact we've got all the generations, we've got five generations in the workplace now. And if we think about the knock on the door of Generation Alpha who are coming through. It's not an unreasonable idea is it to think that those five different generations might have different perspectives, different views on life, just as simple as that. 

Just at the most basic idea when I, from my generation, for me, work was a place that I went to. It's somewhere I went. Whereas there are other generations, younger generations that are coming after me, and to them work is something they do. So there's a big distinction between work as a place you go, and have laptops while you travel. They're very big conversations and we saw that when we came back in the RTO conversation. That's still become very tricky. 

But let's just think quickly because if I take, for example, I don't know, the oldest group in the most mature group among us, who are the Traditionists or the Mmaturists, when they come to the workplace – these are slight stereotypes, generalizations so I don't want you to say, every single person in this age group must therefore be like this. But there's a general kind of seal of flavour. There's something about recognizing that for a Traditionalist, what they're interested in is when they think about career achievement, they might be thinking about success through longevity or loyalty. 

So they might be thinking about tenure, they might be thinking about legacy. So remember, work is somewhere they go to. And that's an important distinction. And so for them, maybe the idea of personal growth in that sense is about mastering their role, it's about getting respect. And the respect piece becomes a really crucial piece as you'll see as we start to engage with the generations. 

Then who's the next generation? My group, the Baby Boomers, those who are born between 46 and 1964. So this is my community of people. And typically, instead of my generation, then what we're very much interested in is the idea of upward mobility. So you'll see with my generation a lot of status management going on. So names on the office, good titles and this sort of stuff had become quite important to my group. And what happened here was there was this sense of this kind of ever expanding desire, an almost voracious and insatiable appetite for expanding our expertise and our influence. So those two sitting together had similarities, right? 

But you'll soon begin to see how they begin to start to break apart because then we enter into the corporate world the Generation X people. So these are those between 65 and 1980, that sort of group. And when we're thinking about the Gen X people, they're now thinking about autonomy, they're thinking about work-life balance, they're thinking about promotions and getting them quite quickly, they're thinking about independence, they're thinking about learning new skills, they're thinking about a different kind of balance. 

So imagine now, even before we go any deeper, imagine a Traditionalist who is thinking about legacy, longevity, respect, career, who is managing a Generation Xer, who's wanting to say I want more autonomy, I want more promotion, I want more independence. Immediately you can begin to see there's going to be a little bit of tension there. So it could be that if a Generation Xer, and a lot of our managers now are within this Generation X community, there's a potential difficulty for them if they're managing more mature people because the drivers of that more mature group are going to be different.

And similarly, if I then bring in the Millennials who, course, the group that was born 1981 through to 1996, and that group again, they come and they want something else. Not only do they want to do interesting work, they want things that are meaningful. And that is a whole other problem because now I can't just give you menial things to do. I have to give you meaningful things to do. And they're looking for progression and they want to go in early into leadership. So you'll hear conversations around traditional organizations, but people talk about right of passage and apprenticeships, all this good stuff which I understand, but it was paying your dues and all this kind of stuff. That's not a conversation that's really understood now. So what they're interested in much more is work-life balance, career development and so on. 

And then we bring the Gen Z group and the Gen Z walk in and they go, yeah, sure, for us we want clear direction, we want progression, we want to be able to make good contributions, we want to grow. So you can begin to see what's happening here is that with these five generations all interacting within the workplace, all of them having very different drivers, it means that from a leadership point of view, you have to be very sophisticated in the way that you serve and treat each of those communities equally well in order to leverage the value from them. 

Siân Harrington (10:06)

Yeah, it's interesting because there's quite a lot of debate and discussion out there about whether we can say these generations are really different to each other. But what you're saying there is work develops and our understanding of what work is develops over time. It's not the same now as it was 20, 30 years ago. So, by default, when you're coming into the workplace in a different type of workplace that's going to impact, plus your life stages, plus what's happening in the world around you – all these things do mean that you come in with a slightly different perspective. Is there any research or data you've got that highlights those differences in expectations and are there any particular challenges any of those generations face do you think today when it comes to how they feel about value and engaging in their workplace? 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (10:52)

There's quite a lot of writing out there actually. There’s any number of books people have written. I think probably one of the good ones to think about is there's a book by Claire Raines that's called Generations in Work. It's about the clash of managing the Boomers and the Gen X and the Gen Z. That's quite an interesting read. There's a very interesting book that was written called The Generation Imperative and this goes to your comeback to me which is about actually understanding the generational differences in the workplace. And I think that is an interesting idea. That's by Chuck Underwood and that's worth, I think, a read. 

 There's an interesting book, which just should be read because of its title called Gentelligence, which does what it says on the tin. And what that's thinking about is how you start to leverage the strategies that you might want to apply when you're starting to work across onto generations. And then there are other books. There's lots of research done by Deloitte, by Harvard, by McKinsey. There's lots of studies out there. 

Siân Harrington (11:52)

Yeah. That idea of the gig economy is a real challenge for businesses because young people today say: I don't like this work. I'm going to go. I'm just going to up  sticks. I don't even have anything to go to. I feel much more comfortable about making that decision. Whereas we would, perhaps us older generations, we would not leave until there's another job lined up or think that we need to do our two years to prove that we have stickability. 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (12:20)

That's right. That's extraordinary, isn't it? I've got some clients, Siân, that I'm are in very traditional firms, a number of them are in construction and they publish these magazines and in the magazines at the end of the magazine you'll have the 40 year achievers and you've got people that have been in the firms 40 years. And I read this and I think to myself in the days to come, it'll be four years. They've been here for four years. This is a great achievement because it's all so ephemeral now, isn't it? It's all so disposable. It's very interesting. 

Siân Harrington (12:52)

So you've talked about observational leadership. How effective is that in bridging these generational gaps? What does that look like and how can you think of any examples of where that's been successfully implemented in your view? 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (13:04)

Yeah, I think that I think this observational leadership thing is quite an interesting idea. I'll tell you where I started to think about this. I remember reading some time ago, I'm sure you're aware of the work that GE did, and it was actually a Jack Welch idea which was ‘Eyes On Hands Off’. And I thought it was a very interesting concept. And I was thinking to myself, would that work? Could that actually work from an inclusive leadership point? In fact, I wrote an article recently in a magazine about it, and I'm saying I think it does because, to me, the idea of this Eyes On Hands Off idea, we'll talk about Hands Off later on, but the Eyes On piece is really much more to say, actually there's a really key thought here that when senior leaders maintain a kind of strategic overview of this Eyes On, and what they then do is they empower lower level managers and employees to handle day to day operations without the kind of need for micro management. So what the Eyes On is saying is let's make sure we give you direction. So this is where we want to go. But let's go really light touch on directions, which is how you get there. 

And I can tell you a very personal story about this because I think that this is something I'm working through at the moment in my own organization, where we're doing some legacy transition work where I'm moving up into a more executive role within the business. And interestingly, my son and another lady within the team – and I can talk more about this if you like, and the rest of my children who are also in the business  –  you have to give them the space to be able to figure out how they want to do stuff because I think one of the challenges of my generation, because of the generation that raised us, was that we can be a little bit too prescriptive. But the idea of the Eyes On is important because if I'm going to give Eyes On what that means is I'm going to give you really guided autonomy. And that guided autonomy with accountability, I think is really helpful. 

So if I'm thinking about somebody who's a Maturist, you think about a Traditionist, the benefit here for the Eyes On idea is that what I'm going to do is I'm just going to monitor them, watch how comfortable they are with the technology, how comfortable they are with the new practice. And just my Eyes On is really going to be focused on making sure they feel included. 

If I'm going to go Eyes On with a Baby Boomer, some of my generation, what I'm going to make sure is that their contributions are recognized. And actually that's an important thing for me to see with my eyes. I'll be aware of their desire for acknowledgement and really own the fact that from an Eyes On perspective, what they're going to want is they're going to want legacy projects. They're going to be recognized for those kinds of things. 

But if I was talking to a Gen Xer what I might do is I might want to try and keep Eyes On their life balance, that they're not getting out of proportion. They're not over-egging on one side. And that's an important thing. 

Whereas Millennials on the other hand, the Eyes On place shows up here in just checking on their growth and their wellbeing. And what's so interesting, I think about this strategy and Gen Z is another one, thinking about how they're integrating into the workforce, what's so interesting about this is that the observation of leadership is about thinking to yourself – I suppose the pivot in my head is about saying, when I first went to work, you used to turn up to go and report to personnel. And personnel was very interesting concept. It was somebody very warm, very friendly, a cup of tea and a big biscuit and the rest of it. Well, there was a moment in time where they decided, and for good strategic reason, to move away from being called personnel to becoming HR. Now there's some good strategic reason why they did that. 

But the problem is that unfortunately through certain ears or through a certain lens, HR has become thinking about humans as resources. And I think we perhaps have overrun that base. What Eyes On is saying is, look, don't think so much about humans as resources. Think about how you resource humans. 

What is it you need to do to resource humans? And if each human is different, and there are some generational lazy categorizations that we might make around that, I need to think about being really observational, really intentional about saying, what do you, Siân, need in order for you to be your best self and do your best work? Do you need more space, do you need less space, do you need more direction, do you need affirmation, do you need congratulations? What do you need? And that's what Eyes On is trying to do. 

So it's trying to say, let me give you guided autonomy, admittedly in exchange for results because we're trying to drive business. But it's hugely important to think of Steve Jobs' idea, hire great people and resource them and then get out of their way. 

Siân Harrington (17:48)

Yeah. That's really interesting, the guided autonomy, Eyes On Hands Off. But I would argue that most organizations don't even think this way. They still adopt a general one-size-fits-all approach to leadership, regardless of the needs of their employees. Creating that type of leadership is great and I can really understand that but how do you practically get there? For example, would you need to put your groups of employees into different sets so that you could say this type needs this or this type needs this? Or is this very much down to individual managers to get some training and understanding of this? What practically can we do to take ourselves away from this one-size-fits-all to understanding that you need to manage and lead different employee generations differently? 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (18:34)

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think so I think my answer to that would be there's a very important difference and distinctions that we made between the difference between equality and equity.

So when you think about equality you're thinking about treating everybody the same. Now the problem with that is that everyone's different and equity is about treating everybody equally well. 

So it goes back to the point I made at the beginning that you've got to hyper-personalize your offer for each individual employee. Now you could say, and it's a nice point, you could say, okay, let's have all the Gen Zers together, working on that part and we'll have all the Boomers on that part. Now the problem you get with that is that you lose all the value, right? Because the real value comes is when you get them to work together, when you get them to integrate. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to get something much more ambitious than co-operation, Siân. You're trying to get collaboration. 

So I think what you need to do, I think what we as leaders and managers need to do, we've got a framework which I think I can tell you about 30 seconds, so it won't take too much of the time but it will go to your point. What we're interested in doing is saying, look, I know that I want to lift this group of people from a group of people that might co-operate in a polite way to absolutely collaborate in a very intensive way. 

So I have to set up an environment that ‘hears’. What do I mean by that? What I mean by an environment that –  ‘hears’ is the acronym - this is a kind of baseline program that we run with our organizations where every single person H – hears -  in other words, they listen and they listen not only to what other people are saying but they listen to themselves. They listen for their own story. They listen for their own biases. Every single human being, regardless of what generation that you are attributed to, you assign yourself to or whatever social identities you may wrap around yourself, is biased. It's a human condition. 

But what we're trying to do, and these managers are who just stack people in the same order and don't think about management individually, it's because most organizations are over-managed and they're under-led. And that's where you have to start. This is our base problem. But if I can begin to ‘hear’, not only am I going to hear your particular need, but I'm going to hear my own story and I'm going to begin to hear my own bias and make some choices to interrupt it. 

If I can H, hear, then I can E, begin to treat people equally well. And equal treatment is fundamental. But what's driving my treatment of people is two things –  what I believe about you and what I've committed to see you be successful. Now that treatment conversation, the problem I've got is, generationally, stack it that way if you like, a lot of what I believe about generations, young people, old people, those people, whatever it might be, whatever I believe about those folks is often something that I'm not actually even aware of. 

And what's fascinating is, although we like to think of ourselves as very rational people, we're not rational people, we're emotional people that post rationalize and we're running on scripts and stories that we are 90 plus percent of unaware of. So I've got to begin to challenge and confront my bias. 

So it might be if I've got an age issue, for example, I'm a young person managing an older person or I'm more mature person managing a younger person, then there might be an awful lot of value in us setting up within that organization a reciprocal mentoring program where we begin to understand the difference in how I see the world, our different perspectives, the world I see it. 

One of the things I find very interesting as someone who is a young father is that now I notice with my children and a number of them, all of them, who are in our business, one of them essentially runs it, is that what I've seen is that when we work together in a collaborative way, if I may say this, I hope he wouldn't say this is wrong, but one thing I know is this, is when I spend time with them I feel a bit younger and when they spend time with me, they get a little bit wiser. So actually what happens is we get this really nice mutually reinforcing exchange of values and understanding and so on and so forth, which takes us into the A of our model where both of us will show up and be authentically who we are or perhaps more fundamentally don't have to be inauthentic about who we are because we have the R in our HEARS model, which is that we have respect for ourselves and respect each other.

Then we can do the S bit, which is the activism to seek to get value from each other's difference. But I think that for managers and for leaders in organizations they have to really think seriously about not managing a kind of amorphous whole but recognizing that each individual has to, you have to have a tailored approach. You do it with clients, so you should do it with your employees. 

Siân Harrington (23:27)

Where do you think these biases and perceptions come from? Because we hear often that GenZ is difficult to manage. Boomers feel really undervalued at the moment in the workplace. Is this an anxiety from people who've been in the workplace and got those perspectives from many years of going to work as you said? Where are the perceptions coming from? Because these are constantly being heard but actually not true in reality in most places but it's a perception that's there. So whenever anything does happen, it's GenZ, roll eyes, or there's a Boomer. It's become a of a bad thing to say, hasn't it, on social media? The young generation calling you a Boomer is now seen as a bit of a negative thing. So it works both ways. 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (24:11)

I think that's a great question. I think that the, I think stereotyping isn't just a generational problem. You can take any aspect of diversity that you want and we can find a stereotype for it. So I can give you stereotypes about women. I can give you stereotypes about people of colour. I can give you stereotypes about people from LGBT+ communities. And so we can go on and on, right? I can give you stereotypes about neurodiverse people. And so it goes on. 

I think these stereotypes are generated by mythology, by story, by potentially I might have had one incident with a young person and I morph it into a story about everybody that's under 25 or I'm having a bad episode with somebody, I don't know, in a car or whatever it might be and suddenly now all those people are like this. And I think those stereotypes just grow very quickly and they take on a life of their own. And what's interesting about stereotypes is they're typically based on false information but what's scary, and this is a very scary thought that we're into now, is that today an opinion becomes a truth, right? And so now it’s a very odd world. So I think that those little stories and a mythology around Boomers or Gen Zs being lazy or whatever else it might be, just all nonsense to be honest.

Here’s what I would say to you. I was doing some work with somebody, we were talking about neurodiversity, and they said to me, and it just really stuck with me, because I think you can apply this universally – they said to me, if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. And I think if you've met one Gen Z, you've met one Gen Z. And if you've met one Baby Boomer, you've met one Baby Boomer. 

Siân Harrington (25:53)

Yeah, that's a really good way of thinking about it. So you talk about five leadership styles. So there's a different style for each generation. Can you give me a brief overview of those and why they're particularly suited? So we've touched upon a couple of things already like the guided leadership but what other styles are there out there?

Paul Anderson-Walsh (26:12)

I think when you start thinking about styles, and I think the overarching point, I think, is that you have to start thinking about the key notion of inclusive leadership. So I think that whatever else we do needs to sit there. So, to me, leadership is inclusive leadership. I think that's the key thing to say. 

But then when we start thinking about how we deal with the styles, there's different things I think, perhaps slightly different, how should I put it to you, maybe think about signatures, which I think might be quite a nice way of thinking about it. 

So for example, if I'm going to work with a Maturist, the oldest community, the most mature community, I might start thinking about actually recognising that the style is much more to do with making sure that they have a much more, shall I say, more authoritative mentoring is more of their signature style. So I'm going to have to think about how do I leverage their experience through maybe mentoring programs, through formal recognition, through ensuring they feel respected and valued? Because this is a major problem within the organizational life, by the way, which is the whole idea of ageism, which is maybe another story. 

But if you're working with a Baby Boomer, for example, which the signature style that's required for a Baby Boomer is much more to do with participation and recognition. So now I've got to think about from a leadership point of view how do I set my leadership strategy, my inclusion strategy up, to encourage their involvement in decision making, for example, to make sure that they offered, they're given public acknowledgement for their contributions. 

If I'm working for with a Generation X type person, maybe here I'm going to be thinking more to do with this is much more the hand -off person, this is the hands-off piece really bites. So they are going to want much more autonomy. So now I'm going to have to think about how do I flex my leadership style with that person to give them much more flexibility within the workplace? How do I involve them in strategic decision making? And how do I acknowledge their independence and their efficacy, which is a big thing?

A Millennial on the other hand, totally different story. Signature style here is you Millenials want coaching support. So I'm going to have to think about how do I foster a much more collaborative space for those people? So you're beginning to see that this leadership thing is complicated, right? And the problem you've got is if the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail. And what we're saying is that's not right. 

If I'm going to be working now with, I don't know, let's say the Generation Z folks, that's much more about transparency. How much they value transparency and they value wanting to be the integration piece. So here I might have to think much more about being more open in my communication style. I might have to think much more about making sure everything's integrated technologically, probably for them.

And so I think the style has to, and that you just have to move the dial a little bit around those different ideas, but you go very much from thinking about someone who wants everything to be completely transparent and completely open at the Gen Z end of it versus someone at the Maturist end who wants everything to be authoritative and mentored. So can you imagine one is much more closed and wants, oh this is private, this is a management issue. And the other one is, what's the issue? To see between those two points, you're going to have to navigate something.  

And then you also have to remember, which is of course the point, is that whatever community, whatever age group that you belong to, so let's take me through as a Boomer, I have to realize that as a Boomer, again, I don't want to overplay this, but as a Boomer I come with my own generational bias and prejudice, right? 

So I come into the world with my own generational bias and prejudice. And there are things I look at today that it takes me a minute to get to grips with it. This is, I don't even know if why I want to say this on a podcast, so you may hate me, please don't hate me for what I'm about to say. But it took me a minute to make sense out of, forgive this, I do have to put a spoiler alert because it's so ridiculous what I'm about to say. It took me minutes to understand why girls were playing football. It just didn't make no sense to me. Why are they doing that? I just couldn't understand it. And it wasn't until the Euros a couple of years ago went, oh yeah, this makes sense. But I just couldn't get it in my mind because from what I've been patterned to see, girls don't play football. They play with dolls. They don't play with footballs. That's not what they do. 

Siân Harrington (30:40)

Because they didn't do it. That's the thing. We often are influenced by what we grew up with. 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (30:46)

And that's the point. So what happens then, if now, if I'm taking my bias, if you think about the whole transaction analysis, what I've been parented by, the tapes that have been running in my mind for, since I was a child, that have been literally embedded, all those deep grooved records that go around in my brain about the way things are and being careful and not spending money. All the stuff that was, that child of the sixties would know about versus somebody who was born in 2000. Maybe we are a different species. 

Siân Harrington (31:27)

What are your predictions for the next generation, for Generation Alpha? Do you think, because that's now they've grown up totally immersed in social media, even more on digital, even more than the previous Gen Z's. Do you think we're going to see another type of desire and expectation that adds yet another complexity into that leadership part. 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (31:50)

Yeah, I think we are. And I think it's a good thing to call out because I think the Generation Alpha group are potentially one of the most interesting of them all because when they are coming into the workspace, they're coming into a very different world. I think that, although they are going to be digital natives, they are going to have to be competing with AI in the way that you and I would have almost no sense of.

So I suspect what's going to happen with them is when they come and the studies are just beginning to play now, because they're what, 2010, aren't they, the Generation A, the Alpha people. I think what we're really being able to forecast on those folks is there's going to be a lot of concern about job security and about technological advancements, because with the advance of AI it's very difficult to know what that marketplace is going to look like. 

So what I would suspect that group are going to have to think about is I would think they're going to have to think much more about adaptation. They're going to have to think much more about the agility and pivot and they're going to think probably a lot more about what they do with spare time as well. So I think the world will look very different for the Alpha generation, very different indeed. 

And yeah, so it's interesting because I suppose what will happen by the time the Alphas come into the workplace, the Boomers would then be the Maturists within the organizations. And I think that is fascinating. I have grandchildren that are Alphas and I can tell you, they do not see the world the same way as I do. And when you think about what some of those, I don't know if you've ever seen some of those YouTube videos, Shift Happens. The technology is incredible. So when you think about the idea we're sending young people to college to train for jobs that don't even exist to solve problems we don't yet know about, you go, what? 

Siân Harrington (33:37)

What do you think then from your perspective dealing with these issues all the time, are the most significant benefits of having a multi -generational workforce and how can leaders tap into those benefits to really enhance performance, team performance, team innovation, etc? 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (33:53)

I think probably the biggest benefit is that you don't suffer from group think. I think you just get that breadth of perspective. So I think that when organizations do this I think what happens is they get massive bump on innovation and creativity, if only because of the proximity to the market. So if you're chasing, for example, customers in a market space. If I don't, I can't approach a Gen Z market with a Baby Boomer's mindset. That doesn't make any sense, right? So I think there's something about the enhanced innovation and creativity you get. 

There's a definite win, I think, in terms of employee engagement I think goes higher because I think you get better satisfaction. I think you get better market insights. I think the other thing you get, which is really worth thinking about, is the knowledge transfer. I think you get massive knowledge transfer there. And I think also from a branding perspective, you get an enhanced company reputation. So I feel like there's a lot to play for on this one. There's a lot out there.  

Siân Harrington (34:57)

Yeah, that knowledge transfer is really interesting as well, isn't it? Because there's some industries that have got a lot of people who will be retiring soon and aren't attracting in younger people. And so there's a really massive gap suddenly. 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (35:10)

Just on that point, one of the things I find fascinating about that is that you've got this institutional knowledge that older people have got as well, right, that more mature people have got. What we're seeing is we're seeing more mature people saying to us they feel as though they're being isolated and alienated within the workplace. And they're sitting with all this institutional knowledge. 

Then they've got Gen Z people in the workplace going, nobody's mentoring me, I want coaching, I need some support, I'm going to leave. And you go, why don't you just put the Maturists with the Gen Zers, let them mentor them, let them do a knowledge transfer, isn't everybody going to win on that basis? That's the most obvious thing in the world you would do? 

Siân Harrington (35:47)

As an early Gen Xer I always think that we're the generation that's ignored in these conversations. 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (35:54)

I think that's true. 

Siân Harrington (35:46)

I don't know, maybe we just keep our head down and as you said, our autonomy and just get on with it. 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (36:01)

I think the Gen Xers are very interesting though, because I think that the thing about the Gen Xers is that they're also the sandwich generation aren't they? The Gen Xers are the group that are potentially looking after both their children and their parents. And I think that is a very interesting space to be working, to be thinking about, because for me this particular group are very squeezed because I think that they're the Gen X people, I'm just outside of that group, I'm just before that group. But I think when I watch and talk and think about that group, I do see different pressures. I do see some stuff where you go, yeah, do you know, this is not, there were different issues, for example, around, I don't know, even things into, goodness me, let's think, things about their relationship with retirement, for example. Things about their relationship with work-life balance. 

There's no doubt for me that the thing that really is a problem for the Gen X is the risk of hitting that career plateau. The amount of Gen X people I know that have got to a certain point and then they go, there's nowhere else to go. They're boxed in and guess what? They all end up in consulting, in the consulting space. And I completely get that because what happens is they're just caught in that kind of liminal middle, that transitional space, and I think they get stuck. 

I think there is a real issue where Gen Z, Gen X people get stuck in that middle management. I think there's a real potential problem that we've not lent into and addressed, not least of which because we don't have a cultural norm for doing it, around the whole idea of the balanced life. So struggling between to maintain the difference between career aspirations and their personal responsibilities. I think Gen X people potentially feel a lot more conflicted about those things. 

I think a lot of Gen X people seem to be in a space where the classic Gen X working mother who never feels at home anywhere. When they're at home, they feel like they're not being a serious professional. When they're at work, they're not being a serious mother. Super complicated. And all that conflict that's set out for them, I think, is really very difficult. 

And I think the real postscript for me on the Generation X people is there's a real danger of feeling incredibly undervalued if the flexibility and the need to work with some independence and autonomy and recognition isn't given to them. think it's a really big problem. I wouldn't mind betting that if you looked at engagement surveys, I wouldn't mind betting that the ones that are moving furthest out to the fringe are probably the Generation X people. They're a kind of neglected generation. 

Siân Harrington (38:35)

And of course, if they don't become a consultant, they start their own business like me! So in your work have you seen any companies or organizations you think have been very successful at adapting their approach to meet the different generational, diverse generational workforce? Or is there anyone you've just read about and the thought has been very impressive? 

Paul Anderson-Walsh  (38:55)

I think this is still quite an early conversation. I think organizations are starting to try and wrap their minds around this. The big thing that's awakened people is, and it's kind of a bit of an onion as well, they're peeling the onion, is this idea of cognitive diversity. I think the idea that people are working up to ‘you mean people think differently and there's value in that?’. Yeah, we do mean that. I think then they've started to go, okay, so that's true of women. yeah, okay. So that's true of people of colour. Yeah, okay. Is that true of age too? So we're getting there. 

But probably ahead of the curve I would look at someone like Deloitte. Deloitte have been very interesting on this because they've done some work from what I've read at really adapting their leadership to meet intergenerational needs of their workforce. And so they do things like they have customized development programs, for example. They were very early out of the gate with reciprocal mentoring. And I thought that was a really good call. 

There was a big movement some years ago around reverse mentoring. And it was something that we as a practice would say, this has got problems attached to it. This has got massive problems. And it was beautifully articulated to me by a young man in an investment bank who said, I've been on two reverse mentoring programs now and I end up feeling like a reference library book that some senior white person takes me off the shelf, has a read about what it's like to be a black person, then puts me back on the shelf again, then moves on. And I think there's a real problem with that.  

But reciprocal mentoring is very different because what happens is that you get this kind of knowledge transfer, this mutual learning that we talked about. And so we set up a reciprocal mentoring program, we've been calling it as a, basically learning peers and it works very nicely.

The other thing that they did at Deloitte, which I thought was a smart move and it's not peculiar to them but they certainly did it well, was setting up shadow boards. And this is the idea of allowing younger employees to contribute to strategic decision making. I think that's a smart move. So I think they would be a good example. 

I suspect if you went out to organizations like perhaps more, it'd actually be interesting to know what would happen if you looked at Netflix or one of the more funky companies. I suspect in those funky companies the problem is inverted. But Deloitte's I think is a good case in point. They're not the only one, but I think they're a good.

Siân Harrington (41:10)

So was there any one personal experience or something that happened that made you really interested in this area or shaped your views on it? 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (41:q8)

I have the amazing privilege of having four children but I have the even more amazing privilege of all four of them working our business in various different guises. Then two in particular strike me on this. Our son Paul is the head of brand and does all our digital and creative work. And our daughter Chantelle is the head of creative content. And what was interesting is that the IP, the kind of driving intellectual property of our business, is kind of stuff that people like me have generated and we know and we understand. 

But what was really intriguing to me was taking the core IP and giving it to the next gen, giving it to these Millennials and Millennial/Gen-Xers, and to say, okay, here you are. And what was fascinating was just what they did with it because what they did was they managed to do something that I thought was so profound, which was this – they were able to preserve the core idea and honour the actual integrity of what the work stood for but stimulate progress in a way that I couldn't possibly have imagined. 

And so what I found so interesting about, this could be to do with other talent, but I think it was also very generational. Their read of the world was so different. So when they came back the way it was imaged, the way it was storyboarded, the stories that they wrapped around the examples that we had, were completely fresh, completely different. And I really realized that day when I first saw that first piece of work they came back with this is actually what intergenerational work could look like. You could have some originating IP with someone who's got that kind of archaeological digging of the organization. So there's a notion of saying an organization doesn't live in the past but the past does live in the organization.  And so there's a piece about saying, how do we make sure that we can not to go back to living? And you get very traditional, very stuck sometimes, don't you? 

So I think taking it away to different generations has been fascinating. And I think that if my son handed off to my oldest granddaughter, she would reimagine something completely different as well. And I think if I look at history and about the intergenerational storytelling, the stories that are passed down from generation to generation have to be culturally appropriate, have to be contextualized, have to be modernized. And I think for me, that's been the great learning that the things that I've seen come out of my story as a child growing up in the 60s as beginning to find and make my way in life as a super confused person in the 70s and putting it in the hands of these young people to reimagine the stories. 

Like sometimes you see with movies, right? You watch a movie and it gets reimagined and you go, I grew up watching, figure me I grew up watching Batman, right? It's all about ‘Kapow’ and ‘Holy Mackerel’. And then I watched Christian Bale do it and go, what? I'm sorry, let me do that again. And I watched Jack Nicholson played the Joker and I went, what? And suddenly you go, because the whole thing was reimagined. And I think that's what I found exciting is their ability to reimagine, but yet preserve the core. 

Siân Harrington (44:37)

Yeah, I really like that. I actually like it when they then people take a well-loved something and try and put a different, modern spin on it. I think they equally exist. They're both interesting. It’s not usurping the original that some people think it's actually just a new flavour on it. 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (44:55)

My word, I suppose to use that nice Gen Z word, is the great advantage is they upcycle for you. 

Siân Harrington (45:02)

Yeah. So unfortunately, we're coming right to the end and I know people will have loved hearing these insights and with all your experience it's great to hear your thoughts on this. Could we end with a bit of actionable advice for our listeners, mostly HR and executive leaders, who might be looking at their own leadership strategies? How they can better support and leverage this multi-generational workforce. What are three pieces of actionable advice you would give them to start that journey? 

Paul Anderson-Walsh (45:30)

I think number one would be to say resource, remember this point I made about resourcing humans, not humans as resources. So I would say resource each individual. So make the shift from viewing employees as merely resources and recognizing and leveraging their unique skills. And so therefore you might have to tailor your opportunities for them to grow uniquely. Because remember the one question that anybody's going to ask you, whether they ask it implicitly explicitly is this, can I grow here? That's what they want to know. 

Secondly, I think there could be a lot of value in building out the idea of reciprocal mentoring and shadow boards. I think that could be a very interesting idea for organizations. How they could then get much more purchase from particularly their younger generations. 

And then I think there's perhaps an overarching thought that says, don't over-index on management and control but think more about support and facilitation over control. So facilitation rather than exercising control. And I think also I'd say allow individual employees to develop at their own pace. And that for me would be a really important thing to say. 

So I guess my three things in summary would be everybody's an individual resource, each individual. Number two, think about the potential from reciprocation and things like shadow boards. And third go for support and facilitation over control. 

Siân Harrington (47:00)

That was Paul Anderson-Walsh on the need to adapt leadership to the diverse needs of today's multi-generational workforce. As we wrap up today's episode, here's a little something to ponder.

Paul recorded this episode from the home of his friends, BAFTA award -winning broadcasters and renowned vocal and leadership coaches, Carrie and David Grant. As a Gen Xer I was a bit starstruck and couldn't help but feel a twinge of nostalgia seeing the many gold discs adorning their wall. Those discs, testament to David's time with the band Lynx, brought back vivid memories of twirling around in a ra-ra skirt to his hit, Intuition.

It's a reminder that while the differences between generations can be stark some things have a way of transcending time. Case in point, I just read in fashion bible Vogue that the ra-ra skirt is making a comeback in the summer of 2024. It seems that no matter the generation, some classics are simply timeless. 

Anyway, thank you for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Follow me on LinkedIn at Sian Harrington, The People Space. And if you want more insights and resources on the future of work, check out www.thepeoplespace.com. This episode was produced by Nigel Pritchard and you've been listening to Work’s Not Working, Let's Fix It! See you next time.