Episode 76 Transcript

Banoo Behboodi: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Professional Services Pursuit, a podcast featuring expert advice and insights on the professional services industry. As always, I’m excited to have you. I’m Banoo.

Today, I’m joined by Meagan Johnson. This is our second of a series that we’re doing focused on generational differences. The last episode, 72, which I invite all of you to go to, was with my guest, Tessa Misiaszek, and it was really focused on Generation Z.

Today I’m joined by Meagan, and we’re going to, yes, continue the conversation on Generation Z, but also look at the differences between the generations and what that means for all of us who are trying to recruit and retain and make sure we have an environment that actually accommodates the various generations that we have at work and makes them comfortable and productive.

With that, let’s dive in. Meagan, thank you for joining us. You are an author. You’re a generational expert. You do corporate events and speak and write about this whole generational difference and the friction between generations at work. With that, I wanted to welcome you first of all. Thank you for coming to our podcast.

Meagan Johnson: Hi Banoo. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Banoo Behboodi: Thank you.

Let’s get started, because I think I was very curious what it means to be a generational expert. I really would love to hear, where is this field and just the journey and the history of it would be great.

Meagan Johnson: You and my parents want to know what does that really mean? Is this a real job that we sent you to college for?

I became interested in the generational topic back in the ‘90s. I am a Gen Xer and I graduated college and got what at the time was considered a terrific job. I don’t know if you remember, back in the early ‘90s in the United States, we were in the middle of a big recession, and all my friends who were getting similar degrees as mine were all moving back home and couldn’t get a job. I know millennials have heard that. They heard the story also and it happened to millennials. But I was fortunate to get a job with Quaker Oats. If you eat oatmeal for breakfast in the morning, you probably are familiar with the man, the Quaker Oats man, and this was considered a terrific job. None of my friends were getting this job. I was very fortunate. My parents were over the moon. Oh, you got a job. I think they felt like, oh, our work is done, we’re done.

I just couldn’t stay on the job. I just hated the job. It was such a weird transition to having a part-time job that I loved, going to school, having that world, and then moving into the professional world. It was a real adjustment and I didn’t really like the job. Part of the problem I had was I had baby boomer bosses, and we just seemed to really have a disconnect on what I wanted out of the workforce. The way they communicated with me, I had a hard time understanding. Now, as a much older person now, I can look back and see there were a lot of mistakes I made as a young person, first job. But I thought to myself at that point, when I was in my 20s, everybody was complaining, everybody meaning the media, how hard the 20-something was. They called us the gold collar workers. Time magazine called us the gold collar workers. I love to tell my audiences when they laughed, believe me, that was not a compliment.

I thought to myself, this is not so hard. This is, at least for me, the arrogance of youth, my youth. This is not so hard. I can tell you how to do this. That’s what really began my career talking about the generations. I started talking about how to work with Generation X, and then I discovered that as you age, you’re no longer the youngest person in the room and had to move over for millennials, here come the millennials, and just really began to incorporate baby boomers, millennials, obviously Generation X, and now, so exciting, Generation Z. That’s how the generational topic began with me. I began learning about the different generations and investigating and just really trying to understand why each generation comes to the workplace with a little bit of a tweak on our expectations and what we want.

Banoo Behboodi: Meagan, you have your own website, meaganjohnson.com, so I invite our listeners to visit that because you do corporate events, and I’ve seen wonderful reviews of that.

As a matter of fact, a fun fact that I also found in my search was that you were a guest on Dr. Phil, our dear old Dr. Phil, so that’s awesome.

Meagan Johnson: Yes, I was a guest on Dr. Phil. What an interesting experience. It was a trip, that was just a trip. I am used to conversations like you and I are having, like the normal you talk, I talk.

But the way Dr. Phil works is he has his guests, the people he invites to be on the show, and it’s like kung fu fighting. You just go at each other, worldwide wrestling of Dr. Phil, and you just go at each other. It’s just a little bit different.

However, Dr. Phil’s staff was amazing. They gave you a handler, someone that basically was contacting you every day leading up to the event. They are just an amazing group of people. Most of them are Gen Zers who are working their dream to be working in media or working in television, and I know many of them couldn’t afford to live near the studio and doing everything it took to have this job that they really wanted and just took such great care of me.

I can’t thank them enough.

Banoo Behboodi: That’s awesome. Well, we’ll have a more peaceful, conversational session today. But thanks for being on.

I think before we dive in, I wanted to make sure for the audience, since we’re going to go broader across generations with this conversation, just wanted to remind that we have baby boomers that are born between 1946 and 1964. We have generation X, which you referenced, 1965 to 1980, millennials, 1981 to 1996, and then generation Z, which is 1997 onwards.

I’ve shared with everyone that this is the podcast that I have three daughters that are in generation Z and myself, I’m a generation X, so I followed your conversation and completely understood where you were coming from.

But with that, let’s get started. The first question I want to ask you is what you think are the biggest challenges between these generations. What is it really that makes each of them unique? You said when you were generation X, everyone thought that there were obviously unique elements that made you special or difficult or I don’t know what the right label is.

Meagan Johnson: I probably called it special. My boss probably called it difficult.

My springboard when talking about generations is each generation is shaped by their generational signposts, and those are events that are very specific to a generation. I always point out to my audiences when we start talking about generations, I think people’s hackles get up a little bit because they say, well, what you’re trying to do is put people in boxes. You’re trying to stereotype when everybody knows, your audience, we all understand how vital diversity is and inclusion.

When we’re talking about generations, no way we’re trying to stereotype or put people in boxes. But what generational signposts try to do is they try to explain how events, the economy, technology, they shape each generation a little bit differently. Clusters of people born during a certain time frame similar to each other have had similar generational signposts and can be differentiated from other generations.

I like to point out that we use the same generational stereotypes for every younger generation. We called baby boomers lazy, and we called baby boomers that they wanted instant gratification when they were in their 20s. We said the same thing about Gen Xers. We said the same thing about millennials, and now we’re saying the same thing about generation Z. We use the same generational stereotypes for every generation as they enter the workforce, but what really changes are people’s generational signposts, and that just changes our expectations of how we view the relationship between us and our employer or us and the company we work for. It’s just a little bit different.

I always tell my audiences, we definitely have more in common than we do different. We have more similarities than differences, but what we want to do is how do we bring out the best in everybody so that we can have a multi-generational team that works successfully together.

Banoo Behboodi: When we talk about the signposts—and I know we will dive in further with Generation Z specifically—but as we look at these signposts, is it then the age and experience that creates some of the diversity?

What are all the factors that play into it, like economic situation? Obviously, Generation Z and all of us have had Covid to deal with and how it has evolved us collectively with each of these signposts. I’m just curious about your perspective on that.

Meagan Johnson: Let’s take Covid for example, because that is a good example of a generational signpost. However, where you are in your stage of life and career, you’re going to walk away from that generational signpost with a different experience.

As I mentioned, I’m a Gen Xer, well established in my career. I have a nice network of professional associates and peers and personal friends. I’m in my groove. I’m in that stage of my life where I’m in my groove, and I’m doing what I like to do. When Covid hit, take away the trauma and everything negative about Covid, but the experience of staying at home for a year with my husband, that was not a bad experience for me. That signpost was not a negative one because I’ve got my life in its groove.

However, you take, let’s say, Generation Z, who is, in many of the Gen Zers I interviewed, they began their first corporate professional job in the middle of Covid. I remember I did a lot of work with Merck Pharmaceuticals, and I was interviewing one of their recent hires, and he said for the first year, he never went on campus. He never went on site. He said I was interviewed remotely, and I did that first year working from home. So, they are experiencing Covid differently than someone like myself or someone like my father who’s a baby boomer. He experienced Covid differently.

So, we walk away from that generational signpost with different expectations of our employer and the way we move through life.

Banoo Behboodi: With that in mind, what do you think companies, because our listeners are mostly in professional services, so they will be interested in making sure they’re retaining all their talent regardless of the generation.

To do that, what do you think are some of the best methods to understand the different generations without, as you said, putting them in a box? We definitely don’t need more boxes.

Meagan Johnson: Right. I always say first off the bat, if you can always, no matter who you’re with, talking with, working with, employing, if you ask someone specifically how best to communicate with you, especially when we have so many people working remotely, how best to communicate with you? Do you like a phone call? Do you like text? Do you like to receive a text? Do you want to communicate via email?

Sometimes those conversations we forget about because we make those assumptions like I assume that Gen Zer doesn’t want to talk on the phone, or I assume that Baby Boomer does not want to use technology. We make these generational assumptions that are not always true. Just that conversation of how best to communicate with you when we have a crisis, an emergency, how should I get ahold of you?

I have a Gen Zer who works for me, and this is my own generational feeling is you leave people alone on the weekends. When I had that first job at Quaker Oats, my baby boomer boss saw no problem calling me at home on a Sunday, which I found so violating of my personal time. I always ask someone who’s joining my organization how best to communicate with you, because in my mind, I don’t want to ever call you on a weekend. But if I have an emergency, is that okay? What would be the best way to communicate with you?

I’ve often found that people are like, I don’t care if you call me on the weekend because typically, I’m working on the weekend, so I don’t care. It’s just having that conversation I think really opens the door and takes away that idea of that misunderstanding. I think back to that Quaker Oats example I’m giving you, if my boss had said to me is it okay if I call you on a Sunday when it’s not an emergency—because he would call me on Sundays when it was not an emergency—that would have opened the door.

Also, at that age and that stage of my career, first job out of college, I didn’t have the tools to say to him—and this is before cell phone, so it’s on the landline—you calling at my house on a Sunday, I find very intrusive. I found myself very resentful that he felt that he could intrude on my time like that. Now, he obviously just had a different mindset, like I’m calling you on a Sunday night to go over the next week. If we’d had that conversation prior to us working together, I think it would have had a little bit more of a smooth sailing.

Banoo Behboodi: I think that communication goes both ways. It’s about the manager having that conversation with their team and their colleague. But it’s also across colleagues, like colleagues having an open conversation and making sure that it’s clear how they’d like to work as a team.

I think part of the challenges we’re all working through is also working effectively as a team. When you have these cross-generational colleagues that are part of the same team, and not only do you have individual differences, regardless of what generation, just generally we all come from different backgrounds, etc. that drives that difference, but there is that generational angle to how you operate.

What’s your sense of teamwork and how you look at teams across this generation gap?

Meagan Johnson: You’ve got a cross-generational, multi-generational team, which I think is fabulous because you’re going to bring in different strengths.

I think sometimes we make the assumption about the older generation, and I include myself or as I like to call them, the more seasoned generation, Gen Xers and baby boomers. We sometimes make this assumption that they’re not interested in learning anything new. Because they’ve been in the workforce for as long as they have, they’re not interested in learning anything new.

Keep in mind that some of your older, more seasoned people, they may be really good because they’re in their groove and they’ve got their skill set and they’re good at what they do. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not open to learning new skills or learning new technologies.

Now, on the flip side, you have some of your younger people who are on the team and some of their frustrations are we’re doing this the same old way. This is the way we’ve always done it, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Keep in mind when you’ve got some of these younger people, part of their goal, their objectives are, can we do this a different, better way?

I always like to tell my audiences you’ve got somebody new that comes on board that wants to do something different, we often take it personally. Here I’ve been doing my job for 20 plus years. I’m good at what I do. I’ve been in this industry, this field, for a number of years. I know how this works. We hire somebody on, maybe they’re fresh out of school. Maybe they’ve had only one or two years in the professional world, and they come on board and they’re telling me how to do my job? They’re telling me what I’m doing wrong?

I always say to my audiences the best way to destroy teamwork is to tell the team members no when they challenge us to change. Rather than say no, ask yourself whatever that team member wants to try, whatever they want to do, does it negatively impact cost, quality, safety, or service? I say, does it negatively impact cost, quality, safety, or service? If the answer’s no to all those four questions, that’s your little red flag to say, all right, let’s give this idea a try. Worst case scenario, no change. Best case scenario, you find a better way to serve your customers. You find a more efficient way to get the job done.

Now let’s say this person’s idea would increase costs. Then go back to your team member and say, this is a great idea. However, it’s going to increase costs 50%. If we can find out a way to try your idea without increasing the cost or increasing the cost only 10%, we can try it. But what’s really frustrating for a younger team member is to come on board, challenge the team to change, and then be hit with roadblocks.

On the flip side, some of your more seasoned people find it frustrating to be assumed that just because I’ve been around for a long time doesn’t mean I’m not interested in learning something new.

Banoo Behboodi: I love that. I love the fact that you’re saying just be open, have enough conversation or pursue the idea enough to know if it has any impact on the four components you talked about, and if it doesn’t, then maybe it’s just a new idea. Let’s pursue it. That’s great. As you said, it’s about signposts. It’s not about boxes. It’s about signposts. I just wanted to reiterate that.

Meagan Johnson: I had an audience member approach me after I was done speaking. He said to me, I like those four pieces, but I’m going to put my own spin on it. He said, I’m going to ask myself, does it positively impact cost, quality, safety, or service? I loved his spin on it. I thought it was a great spin.

Banoo Behboodi: Sure, I agree.

Just going back, I want to focus on Generation Z because I was looking at a Johns Hopkins study that basically is saying that we should anticipate having 30% of the workforce to be Generation Z by 2030.

That being said, I just wanted to focus on Generation Z for a second and see your thoughts about what makes this generation different. How should the workforce prepare considering, again, 30% of the workforce and recruitment and retention is going to be focused on Generation Z?

What are some of the specific suggestions, recommendations you have?

Meagan Johnson: I know your previous guest, Tessa, talked quite a bit about some of the specific, what I call generational signposts of Gen Z, which they were terrific. But one thing she mentioned was that this is truly the first digital generation, meaning there may be millennials in your workforce that might remember dial-up. I always ask my audiences, there’s always some millennials that remember dial-up. You may have some millennials that when they were in school, they held a physical textbook and millennials probably learned to write cursive.

With Generation Z, they never experienced dial-up; that wasn’t a thing. Many of them never held a textbook because they used a tablet or some other device. Many are not learning to write traditional cursive writing. This is truly the first digital generation and a ripple effect of that generational signpost is that greater than 90% of Gen Z job applicants will consider an organization’s tech sophistication before accepting the job. They want to know that the technology that you have in my place of employment is at least up to par to the technology I have in my personal life.

How does that reflect itself when you have a Gen Z job applicant or somebody that’s looking for a job? Greater than 60% of Gen Z job seekers rank the organization’s social media presence as the reason they accepted the job. They’ll look for job opportunities on your website, but they really want to see your organization’s personality. I always say we can list the negatives of social media, especially the impact on our younger children. However, this is the positive side of social media. It is an inexpensive, easy way to show your younger job applicants what it’s like to work at your organization. You can do things like introduce the team, you can show company outings, you can do things to help me out with life.

There is a podcast for an electrical co-op in Michigan that has episodes about how do you set up your electricity for the first time? What to do during a power outage? Even things like that help that job applicant with things. How do you help me out with life? I’m just beginning my professional life, my life maybe on my own. I’ve moved out of my parents’ house, first time getting a place of my own or with roommates, so help me out with life.

Then even that application process, and it’s incredible to me how many organizations don’t go online and review the application itself. Over 60% of job applicants stop filling out an application because the application has too many questions, asks the same thing over and over, and takes too long to fill out. They just leave your application. Is your application easy to fill out? Most importantly, is it mobile? Can they do it from their phone? If they do, can they save it and come back and finish it later?

I love to tell audiences, hey, if you haven’t done it recently, try this yourself or ask one of your younger employees. Go online, fill out the job application because also, many of you would be surprised at how many times those applications have errors, and after the applicant has filled it out, it crashes or does something and they’re unable to submit it. Very few people are going to go back and try this whole process over.

Banoo Behboodi: No, I love it. Just make it easier, intuitive, technology-rich and your presence—that’s precisely it. How do we know about a company and what they’re really about? It’s not about the paragraph that’s in the job description. You actually go out there and there’s so much out now in the space to actually research. It’s about making that initial experience rich enough for the person to be interested to apply.

Meagan Johnson: Yes, and really, it’s what I love about social media because one of my clients, Dunkin Donuts franchise owners, one of the owners I spoke to, he had this great video of him and his Dunkin Donuts team doing a charity event where they involved dumping buckets of cold water on themselves.

But they were able to list the charity that they were doing the event for. They were able to list other groups that were sponsoring them. The video was less than 30s, and someone took it with their phone, costs nothing, but not only is it a reflection of the team that works there at Dunkin Donuts, but also a reflection of what they believe in, which, again, if you listen to that first episode of the series of podcasts, you know that the Gen Z believing in the organization that they work for, meaning, believing in the values and the mission statement of the organization, is very important to Gen Z.

Banoo Behboodi: Before we wrap up, I know we talked about focus areas for recruiting Gen Z. Once the Gen Z is part of your talent pool, anything specific in terms of recommendations that you would have for retaining the Gen Z, keeping them engaged and interested?

Meagan Johnson: One, keep in mind, especially since we have so many remote workers now, we’re not going back to the traditional five days a week in the office, it’s so important you make sure your Gen Z feels connected.

Working from home can be a lonely experience, especially if you’re single. You’re just starting out. You don’t have your professional network necessarily set up. That can be a lonely experience.

I always recommend to people have a monthly 15-minute conversation with your Gen Z employees where you ask them, what’s something you’re better at now than you were last month? The importance of that question is, hey, my company has invested in me. My company knows that I want to learn. What’s something you’re better at now than you were last month?

What’s something you want to get better at this month? What that does is help you, the employer, understand, hey, I might have this employee that’s working in accounting but is really interested in maybe learning about the marketing side.

Ask that Gen Zer, what’s your plan for developing these skills? I have often found that people’s path getting from point A to point B could be different than my perception, so it’s good to know what their plan is.

Then, that really important follow-up question, what resources can I help you with? Gen Zs value these conversations because not only are they collaborative, but it also gives them an anchor, someone that they feel they are connected to, but also someone that cares as much as that Gen Zer does about being at that place of employment. That person cares that I’m here too.

Banoo Behboodi: You're giving them a personal experience. You care about who they are, their development, and their path. I like that as generation X. I don't know about generation Z personally.

Meagan Johnson: The difference though with Gen Xers is that many of us have our network set up. With a Gen Zer, they might not necessarily have that professional network and they’re in that first job experience. That’s why these conversations are so important.

Banoo Behboodi: I have my kids and my family, and everything’s so busy. Whereas if you’re just starting, you may not have all of that. You may have more of a reliance on your network at work than you normally would.

We always wrap up with either a book recommendation or a mentor. I think we’re going to go with a book recommendation. What would you recommend to the listeners?

Meagan Johnson: Well, I did listen to Tessa’s podcast and of course, checked out her book. She had a terrific book, which she recommended.

But also, there’s another generational book, besides my book, called Clash of the Generations by Val Grubb. It’s another terrific generational resource. She breaks out the generations a little bit differently than I do, but also gives some really good nitty gritty info on how to build a multi-generational team.

Banoo Behboodi: Meagan, can you also share your book? What is the title of your book as well?

Meagan Johnson: It's called Generations, Inc.—Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work.

Banoo Behboodi: Fantastic. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your experience, and I hope we'll have an opportunity at some point, maybe at a corporate event or maybe when I'm watching Dr. Phil, to see you again. But thank you for jumping on.

Meagan Johnson: I might be a patient that next time, though. I don't know.

Banoo Behboodi: Thanks very much, Meagan. We appreciate you being on.

Meagan Johnson: Thank you.

Banoo Behboodi: As always, thanks for tuning in. If you have any follow-up questions for myself or Meagan, please feel free to reach out to us at podcast@kantata.com.

Have a fantastic day.

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