In this episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat, Crystal talks with Dr. Megan Gerhardt, Professor at Miami University and author of Gentelligence. They explore how generational norms impact the way we live, work, and lead in campus housing, and why curiosity is the key to unlocking stronger, more connected teams. From late-night crisis responses to everyday communication breakdowns, Dr. Gerhardt offers fresh insight and practical tools to turn generational tension into opportunity.
Guest: Dr Megan Gerhardt (she/her), Professor of Management and Leadership at Miami University’s Farmer School of Business
Host: Crystal Lay
Listen to the Podcast:
Watch the Video:
Show Notes:
- Gentelligence.org
- Gentelligence: The Revolutionary Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce
About ResEdChat
Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast is a platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. If you have a topic idea for an episode, let us know!
Transcript:
Crystal Lay:
Welcome back to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast, a platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. I’m your host, Crystal Lay, and I use the she/her series pronouns. So today we’re talking about a really cool topic, but I want to start by sharing that early on in my career, the early 2000s, I remember going to a training session or a conference session where the speaker was introducing this idea of Millennials, and I was really invested because at that time it said Millennials were born in 1980. And I thought, “Oh my gosh, I’m born in 1980.” And so, of course, I was right there. I wanted to hear all the information about this new identity I had gained.
Now, over the years, that date has changed. I know I’m now an Xillennial, but imagine my surprise. Fast-forward almost two decades later, I go to a session where the speaker, the researcher, is talking about the implications of the multitude, the many generations that are in the workplace, and how that can impact or shape workplace culture. So I immediately got in line, I had to buy the book, had to get it signed, and I’m very grateful that researcher, that speaker is here with us today to talk about generations in the workplace. And so with that, I’ll have our guest introduce themselves.
Megan Gerhardt:
Well, hello, I’m excited to be here. My name is Megan Gerhardt. I am a professor at Miami University. I teach management and leadership. And more relevant to our conversation today, I am the author of the book, Gentelligence: A Revolutionary Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce. I am a generational consultant, strategist, whatever term you want to use. I work across industries around the world, really to help organizations see their multi-generational workforce as an opportunity rather than a frustration. That is the focus of all the work that I do.
Crystal Lay:
And thank you so much for being here. And so I want to start off, Megan, by asking you what inspired you to start exploring generational dynamics and then how do you see those showing up specifically in campus housing settings as you think about the students and staff who occupy this space?
Megan Gerhardt:
My origin story for this really starts on campus. So like you, I started my career at the university in the early 2000s. I had just turned 26, so not an unexpected time for people starting out in their career, but as a professor that was relatively young. And I walked into sort of an interesting dynamic and that my colleagues, of course, were anywhere from maybe 10 to 40 years older than me, as you tend to find many places, but specifically on a college campus. We have a lot of older faculty, emeritus faculty even that are still with us.
And then I had on the other end students who were Millennials in my classroom that were only maybe four or five years younger than me. And so I think that could have really been awkward, I think to have such little space between myself and my students, but maybe by nature of my personality or just my researcher brain, I was really intrigued because I do teach all things in the workplace, organizational psychology, why people behave and think the way they do at work.
I was noticing even with that four to five year age difference, some differences that were pronounced to me between myself who’s an older Gen Xer and what would’ve been the older of the millennial generation. And I really thought, where are these differences coming from? And then when I compared that to how many of my colleagues who were substantially older than me were talking about career or work, work-life balance, motivation, any of those things, leadership, the differences were even more pronounced at times.
And so I thought, “Well, this is fascinating. This is a diversity topic,” which of course, we’re very invested in, so why aren’t we treating it that way? Because I went out and I started doing… I was digging into the academic research, I was looking at how this was being treated in companies. And as it is now, unfortunately, although we’ve made some inroads on it, it really was being viewed through a very negative frame that there was a lot of shaming and stereotyping and simplifying it down to the lowest common denominator.
All Millennials are, and I’m sure you remember the old mill, like entitlement, shame, blame that we put on the millennial generation, and that happens to all generations. But here I was really in the middle of it and having a very positive experience. Maybe because of that curiosity, I really found myself learning a lot. I was learning a lot, of course, from my older mentors and colleagues as most of us do. But also on the other end, just that curiosity, asking the students why they viewed things in a different way was really helping me be a better teacher. It helped me frame discussions and put decisions in context. And so if we connect that to this idea of residence life, we’re in a very interesting spot on a campus where, of course, we work multi-generational colleagues everywhere we look, but we have that other dimension of our students.
So we see the next generation in the workplace before anyone else. They are our students, one of our key stakeholders. And so we almost get a sneak preview, which I’ve used as a strength to fuel my work. I learn a lot about the youngest generation and can help companies understand a little bit about what’s coming. But we have sort of this, I choose to say opportunity, whether it’s in residence life or in our classrooms, to stop this pattern of blaming and shaming in both directions, not just us judging the students coming in our doors as different or wrong because they’re different, but also to help them understand, and we can get more into this during the interview, I’m sure. That the norms that they’re used to might not be the norms that their older colleagues are used to. And how do you navigate that really in a more successful way? So I think it’s a lot of reframing. It’s a lot of best practices and cross-cultural work or DE&I work, however you want to look at it, but applied to a topic that historically we just really haven’t applied it to before.
Crystal Lay:
So I think I want to go further and talk about our students that are with us right now, and then also some of my colleagues, because think Gen Z, those folks are probably between 13 and 28 right now, right?
Megan Gerhardt:
That’s correct.
Crystal Lay:
And so we have our college students on the younger end of that, typically. And then some of the folks we may be supervising may be in that early 20 stage. But I want to focus on our students living on campus. What should we be thinking about or aware of as housing professionals for those Gen Z College students who are living on our campus right now?
Megan Gerhardt:
I think there’s always a mix. As you know, because you’ve heard me speak, I’m very against stereotyping an entire generation. I think that’s a big limitation we’ve had and why we haven’t made more progress in this field. So I’ll never say all Gen Zs are because as soon as we all hear that, we’re like, “Not me.” But where we can sort of walk a line is to say generational norms are a real thing.
There are different norms we’re seeing from our Gen Z students now than existed. When you went to college, when I went to college, we had different norms. It doesn’t mean every person in our generation acted identically, of course, but the frequency of behaviors and attitudes does shift over time for really interesting reasons. That’s not stereotyping, that’s saying more people in my generation thought this than my kid’s generation. That’s a real thing. And so we can solve the issue of, well, of course, we don’t want to stereotype a whole generation, but also, hey, this generation is feeling different.
How can both of those things be true? Well, generational norms, right? We’re just saying these are trends. We can look at statistics. So that said, I think we are very aware, maybe more so than almost any industry except probably healthcare, about the impact the pandemic had on Gen Z. We think about formative experiences. We know not everybody in a generation experienced them the same way, but here we have the next set of students who I have to do the math. So we’re five years out from lockdown.
So the students that we have on campus right now were probably in high school or starting high school when the pandemic hit or getting to that point. And so what does that mean for them? It varies, but what I am seeing and what we’re seeing across the board is people who were in that formative phase of life, which would be pretty much all of our Gen Z’s. So 5 to 25 years old is your formative years. So that pretty much covers all of our Gen Z’s at this point when they experience something profound like the pandemic, which, of course, impacted all of us.
But when you experience it during that formative phase of life, we know that it has a disproportionate effect on your attitudes and behaviors. So how is that playing out for Gen Z’s on campus and also as our colleagues? Well, definitely we’re seeing different attitudes towards things like wellness. And not only are organizations playing catch up now that most of us want more emphasis on wellness, but as a formative event, they had a front seat to a time when people’s physical health was at risk. I never had that growing up that I was physically at risk of that level of danger, and also mental wellness. And so while we, of course, had our finger on mental health and things for quite a while on campus, I think the awareness and importance that Gen Z puts on that as a norm is substantially higher.
We’re seeing them… I had a student say this very beautifully earlier this semester. She said, “The boundaries because of technology, because of hybrid and remote, because of Zoom, there are now no existing boundaries around your work and your life.” So for our students, that would be their classwork, but also if they do work on campus. Our generation is trying to put some back. So I think we’re seeing some pushback around, I’m only going to work till this time, or I’m going to…
I’m even seeing, believe it or not, them trying to get a handle on their phone usage. The idea of I’m going to put my phone away or put my do not disturb on at this time. Not that it’s necessarily easy, but I think they’re trying to get some control back in a world where they can be on all the time, working all the time where those boundaries have gotten very blurry.
Maybe the last thing I’ll say is, well, two things. I think when I was thinking about how the expectations around mental health and wellness support have shifted, part of it is the pandemic, part of it is increased awareness about importance of mental health. But I think also Gen Z was three years old when No Child Left Behind was passed. And so one of our great librarians here on our campus pulled some data for me that the accommodations went up significantly as a result of that.
And so what that means is we have the first generation that is really had a lot of attention and energy by organizations, schools, adults, on how can we support you? And any challenge you have, which is a wonderful thing, but as they become adults… And I’m sure you’ve seen it, I’ve seen it in my classroom, there starts to be this tension between supporting and then, okay, but you still have to get your work done or you’re still accountable for your behavior or you’re an adult now, so you do have responsibilities.
And so that tension between the support that maybe they’ve gotten historically from schools or extended time or the things that I think are very, very important, but as they become adults, their workplaces are not necessarily going to be able to accommodate all the things reasonably that they had accommodated in school, what’s reasonable shifts. And so I’m doing some research on that right now, so it’s top of mind for me.
I think that’s really hard. Am I doing them a service? Am I supporting them to tell them they don’t have to turn in their work by a certain deadline, or is that emphasizing a behavior that’s not going to help them in the future? So I think that’s something for us to keep in mind that they are as adults navigating their safety net or their support scaffold, maybe slowly being removed or in the case of freshmen quickly being removed because they’re now without parents who probably had more oversight and supervision than earlier generations had had on their kids.
So I think we’re seeing all of those things come to play on our campuses, and it’s fascinating. And so maybe just remembering that rather than judging, being curious. Intelligence is all about curiosity instead of judgment. Like, okay, that’s interesting. Why are we seeing a different behavior here than we’ve seen in the past?
Crystal Lay:
I love the way you talked about that, Megan, because in my mind I think about theories. When we look at a theoretical framework, it’s, this is something to be aware of. It may not be applicable to every individual human. And so it sounds like there’s this balance between, as you said, curiosity and not just the curiosity piece, but also awareness, right? How can I be aware of what could be happening with this group of humans, but not use it as a checklist of aha, gotcha. That’s a Gen Z thing you’re doing.
Megan Gerhardt:
Exactly, because I think, they’re so… I love how you said that. Life Course Theory is one of the theories I talk about in my work, which just basically means there’s an interaction between when you grew up and what was happening in the world. So you could have grown up as someone with let’s say ADHD in 1985, and that would’ve been looked at very differently than someone growing up with it in 2005 or 2015 or whatever it is. And so how does that then result in the behaviors you have, right? Well, probably both positively and in ways that are challenging.
And so that’s just an example of experiencing the pandemic as a 44-year-old as I did, versus a 14-year-old. That’s a very different time in your life to have that happen. So yeah, I think it’s just about always going back and we know there’s gaps that this generation has as all generations did, maybe because the pandemic was going on when they were in high school. Maybe there’s just some things that maybe typically develop or get learned that we just skipped because we were all trying to make it through. So instead of shaming this generation for not knowing how to blank or not being as resilient, why aren’t we…
I hear a lot of organizations say or leaders say they’re not self-directed, they’re not resilient, they need to develop a thicker skin. And it’s like, okay, well, why might it be that you’re sensing they don’t have that? Well, we didn’t really let as a whole, this generation fail. I mean, they’re living unfortunately, much more public lives than we did during these years when they make a lot of mistakes. And cancel culture and putting something out there that’s going to have a permanent place online, we really got the bubble wrap and said, “We don’t want you to fail because it might really hurt you, so we’re going to protect you and pick up the pieces and make it okay,” whereas we got to maybe fail earlier in a more private way. Like, “Okay, you better figure it out.”
It seemed much more risky to let them do that. So now that they’re on their own on campus or they’re in that in-between space where they’re not quite on their own, but they’re not quite shielded, it might be the first time a lot of them are without that safety net of somebody fixing their mistakes for them. And so I think particularly in residence life, you are that proxy of like, okay, I’m not your mom, but I understand that you’re maybe figuring it out. So how do we help you become accountable but also understand that you’re learning?
And so I think just trying not to judge and instead… Not that they shouldn’t be accountable. Everyone needs to be accountable, but saying, “Okay, what’s your experience been with getting critical feedback about choices you’ve made and how are you going to learn from this?” And just trying to, if we need them to develop resilience, can we help them develop resilience if they haven’t really been given that opportunity yet?
Crystal Lay:
Yeah, I like that team approach or that partnership approach. Like, how can we do this? How can we be supportive? So I want to ask you right now, Residence Life has multi-generations, right? We have baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Xillenials, Gen X, we’re all working together. And if you could boil it down to one common generational misunderstanding, I don’t want you to stereotype, but a common misunderstanding. With all those different generations, what do you think is one thing you see in that environment?
Megan Gerhardt:
I think it’s probably that we are in some sort of a tug of war that it your way or my way. And I think in any industry, there’s the way we’ve always done it, the way I want to do it, the way they want to do it. And most tension comes from this us versus them almost feeling of threat or scarcity or protectiveness. So if I think, well, I helped build this process, or I helped build this way of doing things that definitely improved our field, our organization, our way of doing things, and then someone comes in and questions that or has a suggestion, as humans that feels threatening. You’re wanting to do it in a way that’s different than how I want to do it, so I’m not sure I like that.
So to me, the misperception is that we’re on other sides of this tug of war rope and the cover of our book intentionally was a tug of war rope. It just like it is… In my classroom, I say to my students, “I’m on the same side of that rope as you. And the challenge, the learning, the goals we all have are on the other side, and every day I want you to feel like we’re pulling on it together. That doesn’t mean you get what you want or I’m not going to challenge you, but it should be in service of the same goal.”
So I think if we think about the multi-generational workforce, can we switch from then versus now or my way versus your way to additive? What would happen if it was my way and your way or we used to do it this way and now we have some other strategies, perspectives that could complement, supplement, strengthen, evolve the way that we used to do it. If we’re all headed for same goal, then that becomes less threatening. It becomes beneficial. So it’s sort of diversity and difference 101. If I think you’re going to get something, only if I lose something that’s hard, right?
That’s hard for me to be like… I mean, some people can say that and be like, “Well, that’s fine. I want you to have it.” Most people would sort of say, “But what about me?” And that’s a whole other podcast we could do. But when it comes to generation, my students knowing something I don’t know or seeing a strategy that I don’t see doesn’t make me less important or less respected if I’m open to it, interested in it, want to hear what they think, not because I don’t have ideas or good ways of doing it, but because I respect them. And what I want is the best outcome and solution.
And so I think this perception that it’s scarcity and that it has to be one or the other as opposed to that sort of fourth practice of our book is expanding the pie. What if giving you some input in responsibility or power or say would actually result in more pie for all of us, a better outcome, a win-win for everybody? So I think that’s a big shift we have to make, that we’re not in this sort of false war with other generations. No matter what the media would like us to think. We’re all in it together and in different ways of doing things different should actually be a good thing as long as we’re all pointed in the same general direction.
Crystal Lay:
And I hear a little bit of, I think everyone wants to feel relevant and needed in the workplace. And so that’s that that me, me, me, or the next big idea has to come from me versus I like what you said this, what is our goal? And if we know… We always say we love working with students. And then boiling that down to, okay, we need to provide a home away from home for the students who live with us. And let’s talk about together what creates this sense of home, the sense of community, what do we offer in our department? I think this we mentality moving from that I to we is really crucial. And so I appreciate this tug of war imagery that you created all the way to who doesn’t want more pie, Megan, right?
Megan Gerhardt:
Right. Bring on all the pie. And I think we have that opportunity on campus. So, particularly in residence life. So if you think about all the generations you’re working with plus your students, so take that challenge, the challenge of how do we create a home away from home? We all have ideas about that and even inviting the students in to ask that question. So one of the other sort of formative parts of Gentelligence was I was taking over a leadership development program here on campus early in my career, and I had all these great ideas like, this is how going to develop the students. And they really just fell flat. They were not interested. And I was like, “What is wrong with them? These are great ideas.” But I just finally said, “Well, what would you do? Maybe what am I missing?” And that was just the start of their ideas.
Some of them, that’s the fourth practice of intelligence, of expanding the pie. As we were talking about, I have these what I call power questions. So if what we want is… The goal of Gentelligence is to create smarter intergenerational conversations. So to do that, you just need better questions. And so one of the questions is, well, how would you approach this? So if you take your challenge of how do we create a home away from home? And even if the first week you say to your residents, how would you approach it? What would make this feel like home? It’s not that you can do all the things, right? Like, “No, I’m sorry. I’m not going to come tuck you in and bring you cookies every night,” but some of them you’ll be able to do, but you didn’t know that that was a thing they would be interested in.
And it’s actually the act of asking that creates what you said is, well, somebody bothered to ask. So whether you’re at work or you’re a student on campus, somebody cared enough to ask me. Our third practice is strengthening trust. So if somebody said to you, “What would you love to learn this year in your role? Or what barriers exist here for you in terms of contributing at the level you want?” I don’t have a magic wand. I can’t take away all the barriers or give you all the opportunities, but of all the things you say, maybe there’s a few where I was like, “Well, that’s easy. Yeah. Oh, I didn’t realize that was a problem. We don’t have to do it that way,” that kind of thing. It’s just that, oh, somebody saw me, whether you’re a student or a resident advisor or whatever you are, somebody saw me and took the time to ask me rather than assuming.
I have at my house twice a year, I bring my students in the leadership center out here for a barbecue. And on a whim we set up a badminton thing in our yard, a badminton net just for fun. And I have a student who is from India, and her family lives in the US now, but she grew up in India. And maybe the second time she came to my house, she said, “This is the first time I’ve felt at home because I grew up playing badminton with my family.” And it became the highlight of her semester. And I said, “Well, I’ll just leave up the net and anytime you want to come out with a friend and do it, you don’t even have to tell me no problem.”
But I had no way of knowing that that was something that… I mean, that’s easy, but who knew? I wouldn’t have had that on my list of things that would make it feel like home. So I just think even the act of asking as an RA or as what would make this feel like home to you is such an interesting way to leverage that.
Crystal Lay:
Yes. And we all have our own sense of home. What does home mean? We could just go off on that question, but what I’m taking away is this idea of being asked and brought to the table who does not want to be a part of sharing input. And I think also being really clear on we can’t do everything, or maybe this isn’t, no, it might be a not right now. And your voice matters. I mean, we want to bring folks to the table when we can. Can I throw a scenario question at you, Megan?
Megan Gerhardt:
Of course.
Crystal Lay:
Okay. Okay. So it’s late at night and we have a Gen Z hall director, and they post and GroupMe during a student crisis. The AD is a millennial. They don’t reply because in their mind they’re like, “Oh, things are good.” And then that hall director, who again is Gen Z, they feel unsupported. So that’s the scenario. What are some expectations or assumptions that you think might be influencing that interaction?
Megan Gerhardt:
Yeah, so I think we see this all the time with communication. We all grow up with different communication channels that we prefer based on technology and norms. And now suddenly we’re working with people who probably don’t share those same norms. And what happens is we get wires crossed.
I’ve seen this show up so many different ways because you are interpreting their response through your lens. So in this case, a generational lens. So I sent a GroupMe, I had an expectation this was something that warranted a response. I didn’t get one. My judgment there is that you don’t care or you’re not supporting me, or you’re not awake or you’re not fulfilling your end of this contract we have about what your role is. And then if we switch gears and we look at it from the other perspective, you have somebody who, what do they interpret GroupMe as being for, right? So maybe they’re like, “Oh, this was just to keep everybody in the loop. If it was really an emergency, they would’ve texted me directly or they would’ve called me or they would’ve X, Y, and Z because that’s what I would’ve done.”
So boom, everybody has good intent, but now suddenly we’re upset about it. And so I’ve seen this, we interviewed for the book, this set of teams, it was senior citizens and college students, so a bigger gap. But it was texting that was the issue. And the younger people were texting after hours and not getting a response. And so on their end, they’re like, “Well, they’re checked out. They didn’t respect me enough even to give me an answer.” Whereas the older people were saying, “Well, it’s not really appropriate to send texts after work hours. That wasn’t an emergency. You’re not my family or my friend. Why are you texting me?” That felt very personal to them. You only text your friends and your family, not your colleagues. And so again, same scenario.
So I think there’s not a right or wrong, but there needs to be a conversation. So I get all the time, what communication channel should we use? So there’s a tool that I have developed, it’s called The Third Conversation. And so the first conversation uses one of the Gentelligence power questions that helps you kind of adjust your lens. So anytime you’re frustrated, you sense there might be something generational, we’re having tension. And you want to say, “Are you kidding me right now? That’s how you interpreted that or that’s what you thought?” That’s when it’s time for Gentelligence. We want to say, “Are you kidding me right now?” I always like to say, now we become Gentelligent, we pause, curious, not judgmental.
And so the power question that starts the third conversation. So the first conversation is, can you help me understand? Can you help me understand? So maybe it’s the Gen Z who’s recovering from this issue that they had. They don’t feel supported. Can you help me understand why you didn’t respond to my GroupMe text or my GroupMe message? They’ve got their own ideas, but you’re checking for correctness. And they can say, “I expected for a student issue or crisis that I would get a response really quickly. So when I didn’t, I felt like you weren’t available and I didn’t have support, and that made the whole situation 10 times worse because I’m not super confident,” and that’s their perspective. Help me understand, and here’s where I’m coming from.
The second conversation allows that Millennial AD to respond and say, “Okay, thanks for sharing. That wasn’t how I interpreted that.” On my side when I see a GroupMe come in, I’m just feeling like you’re keeping everybody in the loop. And I saw it. I was aware. I appreciated that you had let me know. It didn’t come across to me as something that warranted a response or an immediate response. I would assume if you had a real crisis, you needed me for, that you would’ve called or texted or whatever their lens is. So that’s the second conversation, like your perspective, my perspective.
And then the third conversation is, okay, where do we go from here? We don’t want this to happen again. We work together. We are both here for the students. Now, what? And this is where I don’t dictate, but it has to be a conversation. What is the goal that everybody feels supported, that the students get what they need balanced with being respectful of people’s time and what’s appropriate and whatever the processes are.
So I had this happen on my team. I had sent an email asking for something. I didn’t get the response by the time I had asked it for, and I had to do that third conversation. And so in my case, I said, “Okay, my goal is blank to get the information I need by the time I need it.” The email didn’t make that happen because you all don’t check your email. How would you approach this? How could we do it different?
So there’s a couple ways with communication. I think setting standards that aren’t generational, they are organizational. So can we all agree that if a message comes across in any forum, GroupMe, text, a call, an email that we agree to respond within blank? And by industry, it would be different. If it’s an after hours message, we agree to respond. What is a reasonable amount of time? Or if this is a crisis and immediate help is required, let’s agree the language we’re going to use. It’s kind of like you get that action required email and you’re like, “Oh, I need to read this and do something.”
So for me, I said, “Well, if I want you to check your email because something has to come through email, I need you to attach a document. I’m going to send an action required email.” And then what we agreed is I would send a text letting them know, “Heads up, there’s a time-sensitive email that’s in your inbox,” and our standard is 24 hours you respond.
Now that’s probably too long for what you’re talking about, but it’s a conversation about how are we going to use different channels? Is there a particular channel you use? If it’s urgent versus just keeping… Maybe people say no response needed, I’m just updating you versus please give me a call or please respond. I need some support. So it’s almost this idea of with communication… With everything really, but with communication, you have to make what you think is implicit, explicit. I need you to respond within an hour. I need you to tell me whether you need support or you’re just updating me because I can’t read your mind. So those kinds of things, I think don’t assume that people in different generations are viewing that the same way you are.
Crystal Lay:
I love that. And something I’ve done before, I will do the little thumbs up or make some type of… If it’s a text, some type of acknowledgement that I have received this message or I will follow up and say, “Hey, do you need me to do anything with this?” And it took me a couple extra seconds, but I think it is a habit that has to form versus it may not be this top of mind, I always need to respond or ask if someone needs help. So I think that’s a really easy and simple way to do that.
Megan Gerhardt:
Well, and I do think… I was at a medical school a couple weeks ago and they were having an issue with residents and they’re like, “They don’t respond to emails from their supervisor,” and I don’t like it, but I’m really worried that when they have a job that suddenly they’re going to be perceived as unprofessional or rude. And so part of it is if the generational norm was, well, a lot of those emails or texts or whatever aren’t directly for you. No need to clog everybody’s box by, got it, thanks. Sometimes that’s not viewed. Maybe we need to make explicit. Like, can everybody just thumbs up the message so we know you got it? Or if there’s a response required, be very direct. “I could use some help. Or can someone reach out to me? Please, it’s urgent.” Or whatever it is. I think that just trying to make that explicit is super helpful.
Crystal Lay:
I like the communication piece that you’re talking about and how can we be clear? How can we just name together some shared expectations? Now, I’m wondering for someone who is leading a team and there’s obvious tension that’s taking place, and maybe the tension comes from communication or maybe it’s just tied to, there’s just a lack of understanding because we’re just different humans in this space, but as someone who’s a leader and the attention is generational, what advice would you give them? They reached out like, “Hey, Megan, I saw you speak. This is a thing that’s happening to me.” How would you coach them, maybe?
Megan Gerhardt:
I think it depends on the context of the tension, but I think a lot of it is, as we’ve talked about so far, is the tension coming from wires getting crossed where I thought you meant X and you assumed I meant Y. And now we need to unravel that situation. If that’s the case, I think it’s almost a matter of one of the exercises we included in our book, which is not ours, but comes from cross-cultural is that describe, interpret, evaluate, exercise, which anybody who’s gone abroad or done any work at culture is familiar with, but I used it once.
So there was a lot of tension. You can tell when people are locked and loaded with frustration or animosity towards another, like these young people or okay boomer. You can hear the judgment. And it comes from like, I’ve hit this over and over again, and even I do workshops when people are trying not to be judgy.
You can hear like, “Well, they expect to be spoon-fed,” or “I can’t hold their hand,” or whatever it is. And it’s like, oh, they’re really having some feelings about this whole thing. And so I think there’s a couple strategies to help us break down that tension. So the first two practices of Gentelligence are all about dialing down the tension.
So I think one approach is that describe, interpret, evaluate. So describe the behavior that you’re experiencing. So in the case that I was thinking about, this woman was a nurse and she said, “These young people keep coming into my exam room and pulling out their phones and not paying attention, and it’s rude.” And you could tell it had happened to her like 50 times and she was over it, and the phone itself was just a triggering thing for her. And I thought, “Wow, there’s a lot wrapped up in that. And so let’s break it down.” So I said, let’s describe the phone’s coming out. That’s subjective. Can’t argue with that. What’s your interpretation? You interpreted that as they’re not paying attention and evaluation was that’s rude.
So let’s phones out. Is there another interpretation that’s possible? And I actually asked her colleagues. So these were nurses, doctors, they were emergency room staff, and immediately her colleagues, not patients, colleagues of people she respected and trusted across generations were saying, “Well, I have my questions for the doctor or the nurse in my Notes app. Or maybe I want to write down what you’re saying because I don’t want to forget it. I don’t feel good. Or maybe I’m Googling to see what time does the pharmacy close or what does that word mean that you just used? Or I’m texting my roommates, ‘I have COVID’ or whatever it is.”
And so yes, some portion of the people were not paying attention, but all of those other interpretations were not ones that she had thought about because that’s not really how she uses her phone. If she had questions, she probably brings them on a piece of paper because how she has always done it. And so her hearing other interpretations that were less triggering to her, like, oh, they actually have questions for me, or they want to make sure they get my instructions correct. You could see her lens, right? Adjusting the lens as one of our practices, like just nudge a little bit. And it’s like, well, if someone’s taking notes on what you’re saying, then suddenly that’s not rude, right? It’s different than you would do it.
So I think if they’re experiencing tension, I think let’s pick an issue that’s really charged and say, what’s really going on here? This is happening and we’re all interpreting it through our own lens, which we do, but that’s where we almost need to say, “Can you help me understand why the phone is out?” And so I was on a meeting yesterday with a woman who’s like, “I have forbidden my students from taking out laptops in the classroom.” I’m thinking, “Oh, that’s probably a fun class.” And I was like, “Okay, well can you help me understand why?” And a lot of it was like, “It’s distracting, it’s rude, it’s all of these things.” And so it’s not that she can’t forbid them from doing that, it’s her classroom. But I said, “There are people who aren’t being rude. They’re taking notes, and now they’re being called rude and they’re not being allowed to take notes.” So you got to probably provide some context for them as to where that decision came from and all those things.
So I think one way to dial our tension is to help people see that there’s other ways to view it. I think also one of my favorite power questions around wires getting crossed is we have this tendency to assume… Of course, we’re all aware of stereotypes, but the other kind of assumption is that you see it the way I see it. And so let’s say we’re trying to figure out how do we have greater transparency in residence life or whatever the buzzword is of the day.
Just asking something very direct around, when I say transparency, tell me what that means to you. And asking different generations. I’ve had this before because younger people, transparency usually means I want to know, why. Why Did you make that decision? Why can’t I have a laptop? Why do I have to sit through this training in person instead of doing it on Zoom? Or whatever the tension is.
Older people tend to think transparency means keys to the inner sanctum of how much money everyone’s making and confidential student information that will get us sued if we tell the wrong person. There’s a little bit different connotation. And so again, just asking to make sure I understand and you’re seeing what I’m seeing and we’re not talking past each other. I think a lot of that helps the tension, just like calling out the elephant in the room and saying, “We may not be as far apart as we think.”
And then the final thing I would say, and you might remember this from… I’m not sure if I mentioned it at the talk you were at, but we all have universal human needs regardless of age. So as you said before, everybody wants to be seen and valued, and they boil… you can call them different things, but everyone has a need to be respected, feel connected to other people and have some degree of agency or autonomy in their life.
The norms we learn generationally on how you pursue or fulfill that might look very different. Connection’s probably the easiest one, right? We say, “These young people, they don’t know how to have a conversation.” Well, they’re having 10 conversations, they’re just not having them on channels that you’re familiar with or that makes sense to you, but they’re connecting in a way that makes sense to them.
And so I think in areas of tension, I would tell a leader, can we pull back and find the common need? We all are trying to be respected here, or we all are trying to figure out a way to have some amount of autonomy in our life or feel connected to other people, but maybe a Gen Z pursues that with norms that I don’t understand because that’s not how I did it. So I’m judging their norm and I’m missing a common need.
I can understand somebody wanting to connect to other people, or I can understand them wanting to feel respected. Let’s start there. Your way of pursuing it maybe doesn’t work for me or confuses me, or is I view it as wrong, but I get… Starting from that common need. We’re not that different. We just might have different ways of pursuing it.
Crystal Lay:
Yes. What’s the common destination, the common goal, knowing that there might be different paths to get there. I really love how you talked about that. So I wonder if a residence life or housing department wanted to say, “Okay, we want to try Gentelligence,” what’s the magic? What’s the beauty of going down this journey?
Megan Gerhardt:
Yeah, I think it allows for smarter intergenerational conversations, right? I’m not an expert in residence lives. They’re experts in residence life, so I can’t give them a script. I can’t give them the magic answer, but I can give them some questions and some different ways to frame things and some practices. So when they hit that tension at 2:00 in the morning or in a staff meeting or whatever it is, the idea is giving us a new way to think about this so that…
One of the things someone told me once, which I loved, is like, “Well, you’re giving us the tools to do our work in a different way. I don’t know how to do your work, but I can give you these tools. So whether you’re dealing with a student that you think feels very entitled to you, and it’s like, okay, what’s the common need? Oh, they feel disconnected or they feel isolated or they feel like they don’t have control or, okay, let’s start there.”
I think the magic and beauty is it’s a set of practices that we know work on all kinds of differences, and now we’re going to apply them to age and generation. I think it stems from trying to understand versus judgment, because when someone feels judged, they’re going to get defensive and we’re all going to go in our corners and put our walls up and we’re not going to get anywhere. But if I think you’re trying to understand me, then immediately my human tendency is to try to understand you. And I think one of the things I love, that question that we talked about of well, how would you approach this?
Again, you hear really great creative new ideas and perspectives that you wouldn’t have thought of, but really the magic is, well, when you ask someone that. Imagine that I ask a younger colleague, like, “How would you approach this?” The respect I’m showing them, that I know they may see it differently than me, and I’m interested in that, that I’m not threatened by that, that I believe they have something they can teach me immediately changes the energy and the mood in that exchange. And now they’re going to share. And I’m not going to say, “No, that would never work. Or We tried that five years ago.”
I’m going to listen. I’m going to hopefully get all kinds of great new ideas and things. But then what it also does, and this is especially important for students, is hopefully it creates an opening for me to mentor and teach in a way that is going to be better received. Because younger people will say, “I don’t need a lecture, Boomer. The world’s different for me now than it was when you were in college,” and that’s true. So I’m not going to lecture. I’m going to listen to you first. And then maybe I’ll say, “Oh, well, you said something really interesting there. Could we think about X, Y, and Z?”
So I’m going to give you some mentorship or some insights in service of this thing that’s important to you. And now suddenly they’re going to be more willing to listen to me because I listen to them. And it works the other way too. If you’re a younger person and you have older people you’re leading or managing, it works the same way. You’re showing them respect. They’re more willing to listen to you because you asked for their input. And again, I think the magic is in distilling this down to, it doesn’t need to be tension-ridden. It could be a situation where we’re building mutual respect that’s going to end up benefiting all of us.
So I think it’s really about just having a more constructive conversation. And once it works, once you learn something from a 19-year-old that you didn’t expect, it’s a little bit addictive, and it’s like, “Oh, I’m going to go ask this person. Like, Hey, come here for a second? I got a question.” When you actually benefit from it, then it’s like, wow, I have a whole new source of learning and input for myself. Bring it on. And it didn’t cost me anything. It actually gained me respect and trust of this person.
Crystal Lay:
I love all that. I love all of that. Well, Megan, I could talk to you all day, but we are coming to the end of our time. So if folks wanted to learn more about Gentelligence or the multi-generational work that you’ve been doing, where should they start? Do you have any resources that you would recommend?
Megan Gerhardt:
Well, of course, the book. So Gentelligence is available lots of places online. So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, lots of independent bookstores online. If you go to gentilligence.org Is our website. And I would recommend a little box will pop up. You can sign up for our newsletter, which it doesn’t come out as often as I wish because I am not that structured of a person. But it will auto-send you. I think we have 20-some power questions now. So if you like the idea of the power questions, it auto-sends you that. And then maybe every six weeks or so, I’ll send out the newest version of my blog or an article that I think is really interesting. Just opens up a lot of resources. And the website also has lots of resources to all of our workshops and things like that. Our online academy. So that’s where I would say the door opens for more resources.
Crystal Lay:
Okay, awesome. I will make sure that we get that added to the show notes so folks can access those wonderful resources. So as I said, this was a wonderful conversation. I learned a lot. I have two Gen Z humans at home, and I was like, “Oh, I can take this back with my kiddos at home, but then also the work I do every day with our students and staff.” And so thank you so much, Megan, for joining me today.
Megan Gerhardt:
Well, thank you for having me. It was my pleasure.
Crystal Lay:
And thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode of ResEdChat. If you have an idea of a topic or a person that you would like us to have on the show, please let us know by reaching out to Roompact. Take care.
