In this installment of our Workplace Strategies Watercooler 2025 podcast series, Bill Grob (shareholder, Tampa) sits down with Jennifer Colvin (shareholder, Chicago) and Katie Terry (Assistant General Counsel—Vice President Legal, Mphasis) to discuss the impact of social influences on workforce motivations and communication styles across different generations in the workplace. The conversation focuses on how employers can maximize the strengths of their multigenerational workforce by promoting open communication, encouraging collaboration, providing employee training and individual development opportunities, and offering flexibility in work practices.
Transcript
Announcer: Welcome to the Ogletree Deakins Podcast, where we provide listeners with brief discussions about important workplace legal issues. Our podcasts are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. You can subscribe through your favorite podcast service. Please consider rating this podcast, so we can get your feedback and improve our programs. Please, enjoy the podcast.
Bill Grob: All right. Well, here we are at our Workplace
Strategies Seminar in beautiful Las Vegas, and we wanted to talk a
little bit about generational leadership, and what is happening and
what has happened on the front of how do we get people to work
together? And here's the interesting thing. The reason that I
thought this might be an interesting topic, The Breakfast Club, 41
years ago last month, five students went to a fake detention in a
fake high school in the northern suburbs of Chicago, and they spent
a day together and influenced an entire generation, Generation X,
the greatest generation.
I was watching this movie the other day, and I was thinking, could
it happen today? Could we have a Breakfast Club today? And my
resounding response, and I think the original cast members of the
Breakfast Club will agree with me, is absolutely not because
everyone would be so focused on their phone and their social media,
they would never ever condescend, as John Bender would say,
condescend to speak to each other, and not spend the day, like they
did, getting to know each other and understanding what each other
was about, what their backgrounds were, what their frights were,
what their triumphs were, and then being able to relate to each
other.
Whether or not that translated later, when they got back to school,
this is what we face in the work environment as to whether people
are really talking to each other. And really, the only way to get
generations to work together is to encourage them to do things to
talk to each other. So, we're going to talk about today the
different generations: the Baby Boomers, Gen X, the Millennials,
Gen Z, the Alphas, and how we manage the future.
My name is Bill Grob. I'm a shareholder in the Tampa office.
With me is my super cool colleague, Jen Colvin. Jen is a
shareholder in our Chicago office, and then my best friend forever,
Katie Terry, who is with Mphasis Company. Katie joined us to do our
panel in Workplace Strategies, and we had a great time.
And now, let's talk a little bit about what we talked about in
our panel, but really the focus is understanding the generations,
and then how do we get the generations to work together? Baby
Boomers, we all know, born between '46 and '64. About
10,000 Boomers retire every day. They're aging out of the
workforce. They're getting bored at home, and they're
coming back, and they're being greeters, or they may ask you if
you want fries with that, but that's perfectly fine. They
really were a saving generation.
They understood their influences were the rise of rock and roll,
The Beatles, Elvis Presley. And then on the other side, Bob Dylan
and songs that were kind of gritty and changing the world. They
faced Vietnam and Nixon and Watergate, and we had a very divided
country when the Boomers came up. And the Boomers were one of the
largest generations at the time, and they had a lot of influence.
So, as they were coming up through the ranks and then going to
work, we learned a lot about them and what their style was.
And what their style was, they really appreciated the idea of
hierarchy, chain of command. You were loyal to one employer. You
went to work for one employer. You spent that time with that
employer, and you worked hard, and you worked up the chain. You
didn't go outside the chain of command. You didn't go
straight to the top and the CEO, like Gen Zers do today,
"Well, if I'm not happy, I'm going to go to the
CEO." You didn't do that when you were a Boomer. You
worked hard; you worked your way up the ladder; you supported your
family; and you stayed with one employer.
And now, it's almost like the Alice Cooper song has come true.
"No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty
looks," because we don't have to see teachers anymore. We
don't have to use pencils anymore. People don't know how to
write in cursive. And books, I mean, well, now you just read it.
You have a smartphone, and you read your books on the
smartphone.
The identity of the Boomers was, really, Gordon Gekko. It was a
Gordon Gekko world. Greed is good; everything for the objective,
and we worked as hard as it took, even if that meant nights and
weekends and time away from our family, to make sure that we
achieved that work objective.
Communication style was easy. They valued social interaction with
each other, martini lunches, but talking to each other,
face-to-face communication. We're going to do whatever is most
efficient and gets us to our goal in that communication.
And then comes along Generation X. Now, the Boomers, by the time
Gen X comes along, they're the get-off-my-grass generation. And
Generation X is like, "We will get on your grass or off your
grass, whichever is the easiest, most effective, efficient way to
get there." And Generation X was really interesting. We were
the latchkey kids. I'm a member of Generation X.
I always say this. I'm every member of the Breakfast Club and
Ferris Bueller all rolled into one. We were the slacker generation,
the Jan Brady of generations. About 65 million between 1965 and
1980. It was really the first generation to question the question,
"This is the way we've always done it. Why do we need to
change?" And Gen X said, "Look, if it's the way
we've always done it, then it may not be the right way to do
things now."
And our hero was Ferris Bueller because Ferris Bueller went out. He
didn't have a smartphone. He didn't have video games. He
wasn't online. He wasn't on social media. He called his
friend and said, "Let's go out and do something and have
some fun," and had a day. And he made nothing into something,
and more than something. He really adapted and chose a style to
make sure that he was interacting with his friends and did
everything to give them the best time of their lives.
And the influences for these Gen Xers, really the fall of the
Berlin Wall, and home computers. I remember, for example, home
computers. I remember getting my first Commodore 64, and I thought,
"Wow, 64 kilobytes of memory." That was a lot. And then
memory went up to like 500 kilobytes, and I thought,
"We're never going to use 500 kilobytes of memory. Why
would we ever need that?" And now, that's nothing. I
can't even run any app on my phone with that kind of
memory.
And I remember I was an English major, and they came out with the
first portable word processors that ever existed. It was portable
because it had a handle. It weighed 167 pounds, but it had a
handle, and it was portable. And it had like a 192-digit memory on
that thing. That was my computer. And man, we are in the Digital
Age now.
So, really interesting influences, but we really were the Jan
Brady. We came home to an empty house. We came home with nothing to
do. We barely had Pong. Only richies had Pong. And that was super
exciting, boop, boop, boop. We had fun with that video game, but
that was our video game for the entire generation. So, we had to
learn to do more with less or nothing, and so we did. We went
outside, we played with our friends, we had a carpe diem attitude.
People called us slackers, but we learned to think outside the
box.
And when we got into the work world, we realized that the way it
has always been done is not the way that it's done anymore, and
we needed to find a different way to do things more efficiently and
more effectively. So, we hired people that knew what they were
doing, that were better than us, and that's why we got
better.
So, Jen, I mean, I know I talk a lot about Gen X are the greatest
generation. Jen, I know you're a Gen Xer. What do you think
about X and their leadership style and how they communicate in the
workplace?
Jen Colvin: Yeah, those are great questions. I really think that, as Gen Xers, we have the best of both worlds. Is that we didn't have the technology growing up, but we've become accustomed to the technology, and so we're really able to marry the idea of face-to-face communications, but also harnessing the power of technology to use things like in text and all of those things that are out there now that our younger generations are really reliant on in ways that we are not.
Bill Grob: Yeah, it really is interesting. Gen X now, as we
know, are really the leaders of our companies, for the most part,
in the world today. Gen X has aged into leadership, very
entrepreneurial spirit, very collaborative spirit.
But here comes the Millennials. The Millennials, a super large
generation, 80 million, one of the largest generations we've
ever had. Katie, I know you're Gen X, so I don't want to
lump you in with the Millennials, but I understand that by 2025,
they're going to be like 75% of the global workforce. So, tell
us a little bit, maybe, about their influences and what their
communication style is.
Katie Terry: Sure. The Millennials have a pretty difficult
influence list. It's the Great Recession. It's 9/11. Social
media, maybe not a difficult thing per se, but from the perspective
of maybe mental health and comparisons and those kinds of things,
it's perhaps definitely a major influence on them. School
violence, so this is the first generation of people who were scared
to go to school, or who were worried about getting shot at school,
which is a very different attitude or thought process, certainly,
than I had when I was in school.
And they have parents who are helicopter parents, so their parents
are kind of all over them, and helping them, and doing things for
them, and fixing things for them, and, dare I say, going to job
interviews with them, and those kinds. So, you're seeing that
in the workplace, where we're going to talk about this maybe in
a few minutes, but you're seeing these individuals, who are
grown adults, having a difficult time functioning like grown adults
in the workplace.
Bill Grob: So, what do you think, at least based on your experience... And I know you've been in a company for a long period of time, and you've seen a lot of stuff, we'll just go with that, a lot of stuff, during the time that you've been a manager in this company. What are you seeing with regard to the Millennials and their motivations?
Katie Terry: I think that Millennials are a me, me, me type generation. "What have you done for me lately? What are you going to do for me?" And in some respects, that's not a terrible thing because they are conscious of how the workplace affects them, how it affects their mental health. And as a result of being conscious of that, on their own part, that makes awareness for the rest of the workforce, as well. If you're just talking about it's a good workplace for some people, it's going to be you're working towards that same kind of thing. They definitely prefer a workplace culture with transparency and community and working together and collaborating, team meetings and teamwork, and those kinds of things are very important to Millennials in the workplace.
Bill Grob: And Katie, I know that you've had to deal with a lot of Millennials now, especially aging into leadership positions. How has that transition been? Can you think of any instances where the transition has been smooth or where you've had maybe some hiccups?
Katie Terry: I think that I've seen both, so I know that
it's certainly possible for there to be both. I think that,
maybe this is a sad commentary, but the ones that stand out are,
typically, the more difficult ones. And I think that the reason
that the difficulties occurred were primarily from things, like I
was saying, about them having helicopter parents and people doing
things for them.
So, there's kind of this expectation, but they are actually the
adults who should be doing the thinking now, and especially if
they're in a leadership position. Once you get to that level,
there's not somebody who's going to be doing that for you,
and so I have seen some individuals struggle. Generally, fixable
with some training and coaching and that kind of thing, but it can
be somewhat difficult.
Bill Grob: For example, I work with a lot of Millennials that are lawyers in my office. And even some of the older Millennials, they call themself elder Millennials because they don't want to be lumped in with the younger Millennials and the work ethic that has provided. But Jen, I work with a number of elder Millennials who, again, like to remind me of that. But Jen, what is your experience with working with Millennials, especially in the workplace, both with your clients and internally that you're working with the firm?
Jen Colvin: What I'd say about that is it really can be a
mixed bag. The elder Millennials have really come into their own.
They're coming along in their way. They've developed a
professional persona, and many of them are well on their way into
those leadership positions.
Younger Millennials are still finding their footing, and they need
a little bit more guidance. They may need a little bit more
handholding on explaining how things work and getting them to where
you want them to be. Their communication style is also very
different, and you have to recognize that, is that they prefer a
text message, an email, rather than you showing up in their doorway
to talk to them.
I recall a case I had where it was an HR person who called me and
said, "I have this Millennial who's in my office,
who's complaining that they're being harassed. And when I
asked her why she thought she was being harassed, her commentary
was that her supervisor kept coming to her cubicle and looking for
her, and she wasn't there." And it would be, "Okay,
well, let her know that I'd like to talk with her." And
this Millennial thought that that was harassment, that she was
being micromanaged.
And the Gen X, Baby Boomer-ish type of supervisor was saying to
them, "No, I'm not trying to micromanage her, and I'm
not harassing her. I just want to have a face-to-face conversation
with this person." So, it's a little bit of recognizing
the differences in communication styles between those generations
and maybe adapting yourself a little bit more to the Millennial
style, since there are so many more of them in the workforce
now.
Bill Grob: And Katie, I saw you nodding your head along while Jen was talking, maybe commiserating with her. Do you have something to add?
Katie Terry: Yeah, I had the nearly identical experience when I was younger. There was a lawyer that if I emailed him in our law firm, if I emailed him, and we were both in the office, he would storm down the hallway and be very unhappy that I had not just walked down and spoken to him in person. He was a Boomer. That's what he liked. And once he told me that that's what he preferred, guess what I did? I did what he preferred. It was perfectly easy to do. It was an easy fix. It just required a little communication between us to resolve that issue. I did not think he was harassing me, though.
Bill Grob: And I found it really interesting because you used
the word "harassment," and, frankly, that strikes a chord
with me. Just last week, I had an email from a client that said,
"Look, I've got 25 emails from this employee who
disagrees," and it was a Millennial employee salesperson,
disagrees with the way his boss is telling him to do things.
And because she disagrees, he says he's now in a hostile work
environment, "This is a hostile work environment because you
won't let me do things my way, the way that I think they should
be done," throwing around words that they think have legal
meaning, hostile work environment. No, it doesn't qualify as a
hostile work environment, but they believe so much of what they see
on the internet and social media that everyone is a pocket lawyer
now, and "Oh, well, that's hostile work environment.
That's unlawful."
Or someone told me, "You have to give me this record because
there's a public records law in the State of Florida." And
I said, "Yeah, that's if you're a government employee,
but you're not. We don't have to give you the
record."
So, we have generations now, both the Millennials and certainly Gen
Z, who has entered the workforce, is strong in the workforce. And
Katie, as I understand it, I may be wrong, but I understand that
you have two adorable little cherubs that are part of this Gen Z
generation. What can you tell us about them?
Katie Terry: I can tell you that I'm concerned that my two are never going to leave my house, but Gen Z born between '97 and 2009, so they're 16 to 28. That's a pretty wide range as far as the workplace goes. I mean, the 16-year-olds, obviously, if they do have a job, they haven't been doing it very long and that kind of thing. 65 million Gen Zers, 98% of them own a smartphone. So, where Millennials are tech savvy, they understand their way around technology and stuff, these Gen Z, this is all they've ever known. It's what they do, it's how they do it. Electronics and technology is their jam, if you will. So, social media plays a huge factor in these folks and how they think and what they do, especially in the workplace.
Bill Grob: Well, it's interesting because I did this program
before, and the original title of the program was "Where Have
You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?" And then the subtext was, "Wait,
Who Is Joe DiMaggio?" And it really is the generations have
different reflections on who their heroes are. My hero might have
been a quarterback of a football team or Mary Lou Retton in 1984,
when she took the Olympics by storm.
Today, your heroes are Paris Hilton, or Nicole Richie, or Sabrina
Carpenter, or Jake Paul. I mean, the difference in how we viewed
the people that we look up to is really quite astounding now. And
there's so much on social media and so much social media that
may or may not be true. So, we're finding a lot of the
generations are believing things and certainly believing things
about the workforce, and how they can control the workforce, and
how they can make their employers better corporate citizens, and
how they can make their employers change the 9:00 to 5:00 work
week. Isn't that Gen Z now? "We want to change the 9:00 to
5:00 work week."
I mean, Jen, what do we do? What are the motivations? And how is
their communication style? And how can we get them to talk to each
other?
Jen Colvin: I think that if you can be flexible in your workplace, you should consider the flexibility. They are used to being behind a screen. Keep in mind that many of the Gen Zs, particularly in that kind of sweet spot middle, finished high school, finished college during COVID. They've always had that flexibility of learning from a desktop, a laptop, and they're used to being able to do what they want, where they want to do it. So, if you have the flexibility in your workforce to do that, but putting parameters around it to make sure that the work gets done, that's going to get buy-in and investment from that generation.
Bill Grob: And Jen, but how do we develop them? How do we develop Millennials and Gen Z to, frankly, take over the company? I remember this line from The Breakfast Club, "These are the kids that are going to be running our country, and it scares the hell out of me," that thought.
Jen Colvin: Keep in mind that for us, as Gen Xers, we feel like
we're not getting older, and we are. And we might still think
that Millennials are youngsters, and they're not. The oldest of
the Millennials are middle-aged, and we need to treat them that
way. They need to have that respect. They need to be able to have
that opportunity to take ownership and take charge of projects and
responsibilities.
But if we want them to lead companies in the future, we also need
to be able to give them constructive feedback. I mean,
stereotypically, they don't like feedback. What that is may be
critical, but you have to be able to find a way to give them that
constructive criticism in a positive way so that they have those
skills to move forward.
And for your Zs, they're really like the toddler that is
getting off the tricycle and onto the bike with training wheels.
They need a little bit more guidance in what they're doing, why
they're doing it, why it's important, how their role fits
into the company and where they're going for the future, in
order to get them to have some buy-in.
Bill Grob: And Katie, you're in a workforce that is multi-generational, multicultural, as a matter of fact. And what have you found to be effective in trying to get the generations to work together?
Katie Terry: I think that one of the main things, and it seems
so obvious, but it's one of the main things that helps and that
we focus on or try to focus on, is really understanding your team.
You can talk about how a strategy will work for a whole generation
or whatever, but for leaders, they need to understand their team
and understand the people who are in their team.
And once they learn that and figure out the things that are
important to their team, the ways to provide feedback...
Millennials maybe don't like feedback, but you have to give it.
But you can figure out the way that will work best for whoever is
on your team. So, that's been the most effective thing for us,
which seems so obvious and simple, but it's just observing your
team, understanding them, and then communicating, just
communicating with each other what your expectations are and how
it's best to move forward.
Bill Grob: I mean, this is really fascinating stuff. So,
let's go to final thoughts, and I'll give my final thought
on this about how to get folks to work together. To me, you make
them work together. You have to make the different generations work
together. There's so much that each generation can learn from
one another, but they have to talk to each other. It has to be
face-to-face.
I say send them to an escape room. They've got to work together
or else they're going to be stuck in that room forever. So,
send them that escape room. Let each person, who has their own
unique skill set, contribute to the team as a whole. Put them in
project work. Put them in work where they have to work together,
learn from each other and have a common objective and
outcome.
Jen, final thoughts on, if someone said to you, "What is the
best practice that you can have to maximize the effectiveness and
efficiency of your multigenerational workforce?" what would
your advice be?
Jen Colvin: I would say do some training on the generations so that you understand each other and you know where you're coming from. Because that's going to help people understand your communication styles, how you like to be spoken to, what type of training you want, what type of development you want. And those are all things that are going to be able to help companies be more successful in their day-to-day functioning.
Bill Grob: I find this fascinating because that's exactly
what The Breakfast Club did. They talked to each other, and they
found out what are their motivators for each one of them? Why
didn't they like each other? Because at the end of the day,
they found out, "We really do like each other. I just never
took the time to bother to see what kind of a person you were and
what was meaningful to you."
Katie, what do you tell your two little angels that are Gen Zers,
and they want to get in the workforce, and they want to be
successful? What do you tell them that it takes to be
successful?
Katie Terry: I think that what it takes to be successful,
obviously working hard, being committed, being available, being
flexible to whether it's having the different kind of work
flexibility or communicating with different people. But one of the
things that I was thinking about, when both of you were just
talking about The Breakfast Club and about the training, it's
breaking the assumptions. You can get people to work together if
you break the assumptions.
So, The Breakfast Club, exactly what you said. They didn't want
to be together, they were forced to be together, and then they
learned that they weren't so bad after all. If I have to say, I
do think that Gen Z is fairly good about that, at least. They are
pretty good about being, I think, at least my little darlings,
about being willing to just see people for where they are. So, if
you can take that across the workforce, I think that would get a
lot of people pretty far.
Bill Grob: Well, really thought-provoking things to consider as we continue to evolve in the workplace and work on training our leaders for tomorrow. So, thank you, my good friend, Jen Colvin, my great friend, Katie Terry, for joining us today in this podcast. And I am Judd Nelson, John Bender, fist in the air, walking across the football field to Simple Minds.
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