Managing the Generation Gulf

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Leadership   Talent Management   Teams   ProjectsAtWork  

Today’s workplace features more generational diversity than ever before, underscored by vastly different perspectives on technology. This adds another layer of complexity to managing teams. The leader’s duty is to highlight the similarities between colleagues and leverage the differences in background and experience to form a cohesive group.

I suppose that every generation talks about how different they are from the generations before. I have early memories of upset parents yelling at me to “turn down that racket” because they didn’t like the music I was playing, and now I look at contemporary music and wonder what all the fuss is about. However, I genuinely believe that leaders today have to deal with far more real differences between generations than ever before. Partly that’s because of the rapid development of technology — there are people who have spent much of their careers in a computer-free zone, and there are now people in the workforce who grew up thinking a full-sized PC is a quaint piece of history. As leaders we have to be able to work with both segments and build cohesive teams that combine them into a single effective and efficient entity. How do we do that?

A foundation of understanding

Much of a leader’s work in this area should be focused on creating an environment where the leader doesn’t have to act. The team …

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