176. From Stereotypes to Synergy: Communicating Across Generations

Age diversity and cross-generational synergy can transform an organization. Most of us know age diversity matters in the workplace. But according to UCLA’s Bob McCann, https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/bob-mccann/ we're thinking about it all wrong: it's not just about having different generations present — it's about creating meaningful connections between them. As director of UCLA's Leadership Communication Program and founder of the McCann Group, McCann has spent years researching intergenerational workplace dynamics. With four to six generations now working side by side, he says there’s never been a better time to create synergies between the old and the young. "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," he says. His research reveals that while many organizations focus on gender and ethnic diversity, age diversity often gets overlooked in DEI initiatives — despite its crucial role in workplace success. In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart https://www.fastersmarter.io/, McCann joins Matt Abrahams to discuss how organizations can move beyond superficial age diversity to create meaningful cross-generational connections. From reverse mentoring programs to shadow boards, they explore practical ways leaders can harness the power of generational difference to drive innovation and collaboration. Episode Reference Links: Bob McCann https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/bob-mccann/Ep.67 What Is Normal? How Culture Affects Communication Styles https://www.fastersmarter.io/67-what-is-normal-how-culture-affects-communication-styles/Ep.21 Words Matter: How to Make Your Communication Inclusive https://www.fastersmarter.io/21-words-matter-how-to-make-your-communication-inclusive/ Connect: Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart Premium https://www.fastersmarter.io/premium/Email Questions & Feedback >>> [email protected] Transcripts >>>Think Fast Talk Smart Website https://www.fastersmarter.io/176-from-stereotypes-to-synergy-communicating-across-generations/Newsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>>FasterSmarter.io http://fastersmarter.io/Think Fast Talk Smart >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/think-fast-talk-smart/,Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkfasttalksmart/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6caGRBUYZCmgDGM2RK6mxKB9jG_ccmm3Matt Abrahams >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maabrahams/ Chapters: (00:00) - Introduction (01:01) - Why Generational Interactions Matter (01:54) - What is a Generation? (03:03) - Combating Workplace Ageism (04:21) - Breaking Stereotypes (06:56) - Better Intergenerational Interactions (09:41) - Technology and Training Across Generations (11:26) - The Three Final Questions (17:14) - Conclusion ******** Thank you to our sponsors. These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost. Learn more about how Notion https://www.notion.com/?utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=thinkfast can support your business at notion.com/thinkfast. https://www.notion.com/?utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=thinkfast Join our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning Community and become the communicator you want to be. https://learning.fastersmarter.io/?redirect_from=podpage

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Abrahams?

  In the moment, conflict is difficult for everyone. In our October newsletter, out now, you will learn ways to help yourself handle these challenges better. Not only do you get specific advice, we're also providing an infographic to help you remember. Find our newsletter on the Think Fast, Talk Smart LinkedIn page or at fastersmarter.io under Resources. Communicating among the different generations in the workplace can be quite challenging. Some companies have between four and five generations working side by side. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

• 0:39Matt Abrahams?

  Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. 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 Samuel Lee School of Engineering and 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.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's really nice of you to invite me. I really appreciate it.

• 1:21Matt Abrahams?

  Thanks. Shall we get started?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 1:24Matt 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?

• 1:33Speaker 01

  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 97 years old and still works 50 hours a week. So I think all of us as researchers, as academics, we need to study something that we care about.

• 2:16Matt Abrahams?

  That's amazing, by the way, and certainly we are 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?

• 2:30Speaker 01

  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 20 to 30 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 II, whereas the baby boom generation, a very large one, is more of a demographically based generation.

• 3:00Matt Abrahams?

  Okay, so there are lots of ways of categorizing.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  There are.

• 3:03Matt 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.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:25Matt Abrahams?

  Yes, 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 in companies can do to help around these generational issues?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  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 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, let's just imagine an older worker was looking at the Stanford Business School website. Scan for images, maybe it would look like a more welcoming place for an older individual if they saw different images on the website.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Certainly would want to have anti-bias training. If 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 age's code words. 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.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  If we look, go back 20 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.

• 5:19Matt 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?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Generally speaking, the stereotypes about older people tend to be negative. Communicatively challenged, frail, slow. Then we have workplace stereotypes. Older workers are 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. Older workers as being more trustworthy. 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

• 6:25Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  You could literally bucket them into the out to pasture stereotype. So it's really fascinating how communication and stereotypes, everything here go together.

• 7:18Matt 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 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?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  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. 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 in the pharmaceutical industry. Where a younger person might mentor an older worker on technology.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  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 contact. So just getting together at the pub or the bar for a party. May not be quality content.

• 8:54Matt Abrahams?

  I like these examples because they're 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, the younger person talks less. So the language and 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.

• 9:36Matt Abrahams?

  The operationalization of the communication, not just the ways in which we're organizing, also are important.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  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?

• 9:51Matt Abrahams?

  Right. So the more junior, which tends to be related to age.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:03Matt 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?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Let's just talk, I think, the interaction between technology and training. Isn't it, if, can we go down that road?

• 10:36Matt Abrahams?

  Sure, absolutely.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  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. 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 in training. There's a preference towards self-paced training. There's a preference towards an interactive engagement in training.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 11:48Matt 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 of how people best receive new information and training. This has been a fascinating conversation and one that I think opens up my mind, and

• 12:30Matt Abrahams?

  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. We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. Their support covers the cost of production, so we can bring you this show for free. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. The best communicators don't just get their message across, they make it easy for people to know what to do next. Your website can do the same thing. With Squarespace, you can build a polished online presence that clearly shows people

• 13:13Matt Abrahams?

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• 13:58Matt Abrahams?

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• 14:39Matt Abrahams?

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• 14:51Matt Abrahams?

  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?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Go for it.

• 15:00Matt 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?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Who am I persuading? I always need to know who the audience is. Am I persuading machine or leadership?

• 15:20Matt Abrahams?

  Yeah, your leadership.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  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 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,

• 16:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 16:14Matt 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. Question number two. Who's a communicator that you admire and why?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Indra Nooyi.

• 16:36Matt Abrahams?

  Tell me more.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  In business school, we always hear rock star. This person's a rock star and that person's a rock star. 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

• 17:20Speaker 01

  body language, her ease, her articulation.

• 17:24Matt 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. Final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  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. So I'm very, I really am a systems person here. It's probably because 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, but the defense, I think, is less.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 19:11Matt 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 and the resistance, hesitation, concern, and we need to be prepared for that. And I agree, many people are under-prepared. 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. 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.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Thank you, Ben. It's a pleasure.

• 19:58Matt 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 Michelle Gelfen and episode 21 with Sarah Sewell. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Mike O'Reilly, and me, Matt Ibrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wunder. 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.

• 20:37Matt Abrahams?

  Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast, Talk Smart.