Foley Best Self Program Challenges the Notions of Generational Differences at Work
Foley Best Self, our firmwide wellness initiative, is built on the four pillars of Healthy Body, Healthy Mind, Meaningful Connections, and Fulfilling Careers with the ambitious goal of making each person’s “humanity” a welcome part of our collective enterprise and topic of open conversation.
Best Self wants to be a big supporter of Foley & Lardner’s mission of “planning for careers” – and with a transparent acknowledgement that the kind of work we all do can be incredibly challenging – so we chose to center our 2023 wellness activities on the Fulfilling Careers pillar of our ongoing Best Self experiment.
We invited our people to each set a career goal, and are providing resources throughout the year to help them stick to it. This includes publishing a series addressing self-limiting thoughts published on our internal Best Self blog as well as bringing in outside voices to share their insights.
In the spirit of supporting Fulfilling Careers, Foley & Lardner hosted a firmwide virtual program on April 11 featuring Chris De Santis, an independent organizational behavior practitioner, speaker, podcast host of Cubicle Confidential, and author of Why I Find You Irritating: Navigating Generational Friction at Work.
De Santis began the program by sharing a quote, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are” (Anais Nin), and then providing some background on how humans’ tendency to generalize led to the creation of the four generational cohorts operating in today’s workplace: Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.
“Part of what can cause generational friction at work,” De Santis explained, is that “each cohort starts out as a disappointment to the cohort that came before it.” Traditionalists labeled the Boomers as ‘hippies’, Boomers called Gen X the ‘slackers’, and Millennials are still working to dispel the ‘entitled’ moniker.
The centerpiece of the presentation was a discussion of the normative aspects of each of these cohorts – their expectations, motivations, and behaviors – and how these are influenced by where a person is in their lifecycle, what major events have happened in their lifetime, and what’s important to their peer group. The differences in these generational lens influences, De Santis told attendees, can cause incongruence at work.
For example, Boomers tend not to question authority at work because growing up their parents unquestionably were in charge. Gen X-ers began to question authority: many were the latchkey kids, with more time on their own at home, and the teaching style at school had become more facilitative. Millennials had more of a ‘concerted cultivation’ upbringing in which the ‘tell-do’ model of earlier generations was replaced by one of dialogue. Gen Z also was raised with a dialogue model, but one that has evolved to build a higher level of autonomy and ownership.
In our daily interactions at work, a Boomer or Gen X-er may view the dialogue of a Millennial or Gen Z-er as a challenge to their authority. “In reality, it is the younger generations’ attempt to define the parameters of what they are doing and how they can participate more fully in doing it,” De Santis said. Millennials and Gen Z-ers were given a platform at the dinner table and have developed a collaborative nature and lovely poise because of that. At work, they want in-the-moment feedback from people who care about them, and they want a seat at the table earlier.
De Santis’s advice in any work relationship is to start a dialogue early on, setting forth your expectations and asking the other person what they need from you to do well. In this way, generational differences can be seen not as problems to fix, but rather as differences to understand, appreciate, and embrace.
“Ultimately, we know we have more in common than we have differences between us.”