Speaking of Psychology - Bridging the generation gap at work, with Megan Gerhardt, PhD

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

As Gen Z enters the workforce and older workers put off retirement, some workplaces may see five generations sharing an office -- from the Silent Generation all the way to Gen Z. Megan Gerhardt, PhD, of Miami University, talks about why it’s important to move past generational stereotypes, why age diversity is a strength, and what older and younger workers can learn from each other. For transcripts, links and more information, please visit the Speaking of Psychology Homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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See Store Online for details. How many articles have you read about the generation wars? From using phrases like OK Boomer to entitled millennials, how we talk about generations makes it sound like each group is pitted against the others. Now, as the oldest members of Gen Z enter the workforce, we are facing something we haven't seen before, the possibility of five generations in the same workplace. from the silent generation to baby boomers to gen X to millennials all the way to Gen Z. It's no surprise that mismatched generational habits and expectations can cause tension and

misunderstandings in the workplace. But researchers who study organizational behavior say that understanding the differences between and among generations and seeing them as strengths rather than as weaknesses can help organizations and individuals thrive. So how can we move past stereotypes about Gen X, slackers, entitled millennials, and change-resistant boomers to understand which generational differences are real and which aren't? How much do generations matter to people's identity? Are generations always a useful way to categorize people?

On a practical level, how can you learn to communicate well with much younger or much much older colleagues. And what should organizations be doing to help workers of all ages understand and learn from each other? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. Megan Gerhardt, a professor of management and leadership at the Farmer School of Business at Miami University, where she studies how organizations can benefit from generational diversity in the workplace. She's the author of many academic studies and of the book Gen Intelligence, a revolutionary approach to leading an intergenerational

workforce. Her work has been featured in media outlets including Harvard Business Review, the Washington Post, and CNN, among others. Dr. Gerhardt, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me, Kim. I called out a few stereotypes in my introduction, the Gen X Slacker, the entitled millennial, for example. So let's start there. Where do these stereotypes come from, and how accurate are they? I think in most cases, any stereotype is a shortcut we take to decision making. It is, I think, the lazy way of trying to understand things that are difficult and complicated. There's roots in every stereotype or label we hear that come from places that are actually really interesting and make a lot of sense. So for example, I'll start with my own generation,

the Slack or Gen Xers. The roots of that are actually quite interesting if you think about the fact that Gen X as a generation, not by the person I always like to say, but the norm of Gen X was that we grew up valuing free time and autonomy and actually were the least supervised generation ever. So I always like to say, you can look at statistics on this. We had the highest level dual career families, single parent families of all time before or since during Gen X's childhood, which meant a lot of freedom and autonomy growing up, something that we were hesitant as a generation to maybe give up when we started our careers, wanted more balance, wanted more flexibility, wanted to hold onto that independence through the lens of the baby boomer

generation, who as a norm, again, I don't ever want to characterize a whole generation as being a certain way. We're always wrong when we do that and my work pushes back against that pretty strongly. But the norm for baby boomers was success comes from nose to the grindstone, working very hard, harnessing that intense work ethic to get to the top and make the most of yourself and make the most opportunities you could for your family that maybe your parents weren't able to make for you. So through the lens of a baby boomer who was hiring JetEx, them saying they wanted to have balance or independence or time for themselves seems like you're being a slacker. That's not the norm that they embraced and therefore it didn't make sense. And we see that

came with every generation, that there's a different set of norms that have developed based on really rational, important reasons. But when we judge those through our own norms, we often view them as wrong. Why do you think we're so quick to stereotype people who are either older or younger than we are. It's rooted in the similarity effect. So we tend to feel more comfortable with people we perceive, quote, to be like us. There's lots of great research on that. And anything that is different is challenging. It requires, I think, really more thought. It requires more time. And we often don't have the opportunity, particularly in our workplaces, in our organizations, to really get to know someone who is substantially older or younger.

So we tend to enter into organizations with people in our similar age cohort who start their careers at a similar time. And so unless a company is really proactive in creating teams that go across different ages, generations, career stages, we may not know well people outside of our own family that are substantially older or younger. And when that's the case, we don't have a personal relationship or interaction to count on, we tend to lean into those shortcuts of broad brush, well, all baby boomers are this way, or all Gen Z is that way, which is never correct,

but it's easy. And that's where those really harmful stereotypes and biases and prejudice come in in both directions. It's not a one-directional issue. It's a multi-generational issue, unfortunately. Well, let's talk about the workplace. What are some of the best? benefits that come from having a multi-generational workplace. So what's fascinating and what really drives my work is that what we're talking about is a type of diversity of thought, perspective, and experience. So we know a lot about the power and benefit of all kinds of diversity in the workplace. But for some reason, best practices around that are very rarely applied to age or generation.

That's a fascinating fact. In our book, we found that 8% of organizations include age and their diversity and inclusion strategies, which is a very low number. And a lot of those are just, well, we put it on the list with everything else we could think of rather than an actual proactive approach. So I think when it comes to age, we really feel more comfortable with people like ourselves. And I think when we're challenged to work across those different generations, we sometimes get stuck in the frustration. The benefit is if you think about a five-generation workplace, so as you said, silent through Gen Z potentially in some industries, we have all of that.

We've never had that before because people are living and working longer. We have this sitting in front of us. Who wouldn't want to be able to tap into five to six decades of experience, perspective, and different kinds of expertise. So you learn different things depending the time in which you start your life and your career. There are certain skills necessary now. My son's 18.

So he has to learn a different set of tools and skills than I had to learn at 18. And that's a very powerful kind of diversity of thought and expertise and perspective if we're willing to leverage it. So those are the benefits. We have access to greater information network. So where we look for information, how we find information varies across generations.

Complementary strengths. So there are, as we looked into this in our book as well, different kinds of knowledge. There's things like we didn't come up with this, but we found this very fascinating. Think about know-how versus know-what versus know whom or know when. Those are really interesting ways to acknowledge that I as a 22-year-old, I'm not 22. But if I was, perhaps I would know the new approach, the new tool, the new tech, but maybe I as a 47-year-old might know who we need to talk to to make sure we get buy-in for that. Or when's the right time to launch that initiative, probably not at year end when we're out of budget. So there's an opportunity for complementary knowledge and expertise if we step away from this sort of threat-based scarcity approach where if you're getting an opportunity or air-time,

or attention that somehow I'm losing. And that tug of war is unfortunately really common and really unproductive. We do a fair amount of public opinion polling at the American Psychological Association, and our pollsters have recommended that we not group people into generations anymore. Are there situations where it's not useful to categorize people as belonging to a particular generation? I love this question. I have a definite opinion on this. I read. I read. I read. I read these every couple months. There's a really well-written piece that comes out on this topic. You know, let's get rid of generations. So my position on this is I think when people say we shouldn't group people by generations, we shouldn't have generations, what they're really saying

is we need to stop using generational stereotypes, which I absolutely 100% agree with. You cannot tell who someone is by knowing the year they're born. That's a horoscope. That's not psychology. that's not science, that's not research, that's not what we're doing here. My concern when we say, let's get rid of generations. So generations are a social construction, which means we created them to help us understand some form of difference, just like a political party is an example I use a lot. We made that up to say, well, there's this category and this category. It's better to not have generational categories at all than to use stereotypes or bias. So to that degree, I'm on board. But I actually think getting rid of the generational lens altogether results in us losing something

really fascinating and important. Because it's similar to, and I always am careful of how I said this, but it's similar to saying we should be colorblind. Being colorblind is far better than being biased or prejudice, but then you're in some ways ignoring the reality that there's very valuable differences in perspectives by appreciating that layer of someone's identity. So where I like to sit on this is I like to say generational identity is one layer of who we are. And we can put with that age, so your age is different than your generation connected, but different. Your gender, your race, your ethnicity, where you sit in the world, your socioeconomic

status, we can add anything we want on there. And that creates this wonderful, complex understanding of someone's view and experience. And if we get rid of generation and say, well, generational differences aren't real, I don't know a single person who has a job who would agree with that statement. But when we look at research, we see a lot, this is interesting, Kim, because we see a lot of research that says, I'm an academic at heart. So we see a lot of generational research that says generational differences mean nothing. They're overblown. We're not finding anything.

And so it would be very easy to then conclude it's much ado about nothing. We need to stop talking about it. It's not productive. What we're missing when we just look at that tiny piece is that people across generations have very similar intrinsic needs. So whether you're 20 or 60 or 40, or 40 or anywhere in between. We all need respect. We all need connection. We want to be seen as competent. We all need autonomy. So that's rooted deeply in a lot of psychology theories, things like

self-determination. And we can we could come up with 10 different theories that all agree, the research agrees. We have similar intrinsic needs as humans, no matter how old we are. If we stop there, then we can easily say, so let's just stop talking about generations. But then what we miss is while our needs are the same, the norms we learn as part of a common age group are quite different based on what's going on in the world, the parenting philosophies, what's being emphasized. So the norms you learn about how do you earn respect, for example, are quite different, or what does it mean to connect with someone? So my favorite example on this would be, my dad is 75. He's a very proud baby boomer. He's a retired attorney.

And when our book came out, he said, you know, I don't understand something. Maybe you could explain it to me. He said, when I was starting my career, the way you got respect is you put your head down, you closed your mouth, and you did your job, and you waited for somebody to come tell you, it was time for your promotion. You had earned that promotion. You had earned that race. And he said, by the time I retired, these young people, I always say that's capitalized.

Like, here comes a stereotype. These young people. were coming to me to tell me it was time for their promotion, and I don't get that. That doesn't make any sense to me at all. That's where entitlement comes from, that perspective. And I thought, this is really important. This is what my work is meant to help people understand, is that in both cases, that person was trying to earn respect.

They were trying to prove themselves. For my dad and for many people in his generation, the norm on how you did that was head down, mouth shut, work. They'll come find you when it's your turn. Fast forward to, this would have been the millennial generation probably that he was speaking about. The norm they learned was if you want a spot, you get up to the front of the line and raise your hand and tell everyone you wanted and you're ready because everybody else wants it too and you're not going to get picked if you don't get up there in front and fight for it. So the need is the same. The norm is different. And what we're

reacting to in the workplace are those norm differences that we then judge as entitled or slacker or snowflake or insert whatever generational derogatory term we want. And so that's why I think that's a long answer to say, I don't want to lose the fascinating element of what it means to grow up in a different period of time because we can't get over our urge to stereotype people and stick them in boxes. Those are not, you know, those don't have to be connected things. It's peak pollination season and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds. That's why I chose GoogleFi Wireless.

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about giving feedback to Gen Z employees. How has feedback changed in recent years with the arrival of younger workers? Yes, this is such a great topic. So I published that along with a few other things after hearing from a number of my clients who had just finished year-end performance reviews with some of their youngest employees. And that feedback was falling flat. There was a situation that was frequent was young employees feeling like that feedback was either overly critical, that that organization didn't care about them as a person, that they weren't understood there and the managers overall were saying, what do they mean? What do they mean? We don't care about their development. We just gave them this very extensive feedback. What's going on? And so that

was a great thing to explore. And there's always a context. Like, let's understand. Let's get curious. Curiosity over judgment is a big mantra of intelligence. So if you think about the fact, you can very easily say, oh, those fragile snowflakes can't take criticism. That would be the go to, and I said, let's walk that back and think about it. Here's a generation, couple things, very important, norm-wise. We did not emphasize for Gen Z or younger millennials even that they should receive a lot of tough love and criticism and, you know, tough feedback. We stayed away from that. The philosophy or the norm, parenting norm of the time recently has been, we don't want to damage the self-esteem of children. We've seen that be very detrimental. So we're going to try to correct

some of those mistakes by doing it better. We don't really let our kids fail at a young age. We try very hard to kind of catch and protect and hover and do those things for better for worse. That's a different podcast, I'm sure, where, you know, we get them to adulthood, hopefully, you know, sort of with our hands underneath them, hoping that they can then fly. So some of these young people were getting critical feedback, constructive, critical feedback for maybe the first time. And coming out of COVID, probably even more so because we loosened up on things like, you know, grading standards or attendance policies or things that were in place to set expectations,

everything sort of fell by the wayside as we navigated our way through that. So if you have that as your background, and then you go in and you have your very first performance review and your boss does it the way they've always done it, here's what you're doing well, here's what you need to approve on, here are your goals. You're not sure probably how to take that. That's maybe your first experience. And then you've got this misalignment where your boss says, well, of course we want to develop this person.

We just gave them a performance review. and you have a young person who defines development maybe in a very different way than that. So we're assuming that we all view feedback or development as the same thing, which is usually not the case, generationally speaking. So one of the things that I suggest is thinking about you can continue to give feedback any way you want. I always say you don't have to do anything. But one of the things I suggest is having a meeting before the meeting. So you sit down when someone starts, it's an on-

boarding conversation. This is our feedback process. This is why we do it. This is what you can expect. Do you have experience with feedback? What questions do you have for us? And you're pulling the curtain back. I've been actually working on a piece. I'm hot off the press. I'm sneak preview. It's sort of like what I call the Wizard of Oz. If you could pull the curtain back and say, this is why we do feedback this way. This is what it's going to look like. This is what it's for. five or ten minutes of having a conversation about that before anyone gets any feedback can go a long way with a younger generation. And the reason is this generation grew up getting every explanation and answer they could have possibly wanted in 30 seconds from their phone. So when you and I

started our career, I'm sure would have loved to know why we do feedback this way and what can I expect. But we didn't really feel like we had the ability to ask for that, that that information wasn't something we were allowed to know. That was above our pay grade. And we really had no way to find out. We just thought, well, I guess I'll wait. And when it's my turn to get fee back, I'll understand why we do it this way. That's not the norm this generation has.

If they want to know why something is a certain way, they have that answer right next to their fingertips. So going into an organization and having this veiled behind the curtain process that you know, we do it this way because we've always done it this way or because I'm your boss, that's why we do it. That's just not going to work. But my experience with Gen Z has been, if I take five minutes and say, let's talk about why we do it this way. Here's why it's this way. We've really thought about it. This is why we feel it's valuable. Here's why we really believe it works. A majority of the time, I've had no issue with pushback. Oh, got it. Thank you for that. That's very

helpful, let's go ahead and get it done. And I get a lot of managers saying, do we really have to do that? Like, I have to have a meeting about why we do it this way. And I said, you don't have to do anything. You called me. You know, keep doing it the way you're doing it, but how's that working? And so I think just remembering that you probably would have loved five minutes of explanation, but we weren't a generation that really had access to information or explanation. unless someone in power wanted to give it to us, that has not been the reality for Gen Z. And so we just need to think about being willing to share the why. And if you feel defensive and you can't tell them why, then that's a great sign that maybe we need to revisit that process.

And is it actually any good if we're not able to explain why we're doing it? I actually come from a tradition where the only feedback you got was negative feedback. And if you didn't get any feedback, you were doing your job well. That didn't work either. Well, and you know what's so interesting, right? It's sharing that with a younger employee, I guarantee they would be shocked. Because that's one of the things we also don't realize is younger generations tend to know their own norms. They grow up, right?

They go to school. These are the people I'm always around unless it's my family. There's a lot of culture shock with not realizing, you know, or realizing quickly that people don't all do it the way that makes sense to you. and that we haven't always done it the way you're doing it. So that often, you know, I see time and time again with my own students where they don't realize that, for example, people haven't always gone into, you know, push back on their boss, for example, or, you know, question a decision made by someone in authority. It's not that you're not allowed to do it or that it's wrong to do it, but how would it change your approach if you knew that your boss never. would have gone to their boss and questioned their decision, would you maybe decide to approach it a different way if you realize that your behavior was different than what maybe other people

were used to? So you see those differences everywhere, very interesting ones. What about the issue of working for someone who is younger than you are? How are the dynamics different when there's a younger boss managing an older employee? And is there any, you have any advice for people on either end of the generational spectrum when it comes to that. Yes. And I think the latest stat I've seen on this, Kim, is 41% of us are working for someone younger than ourselves. So that's a role reversal. There's very deep research on the discomfort we have. It just doesn't quite seem like the way things are supposed to be when someone younger than you is in a higher power position. So it's a little uncomfortable on both sides.

So we have a whole chapter on this in our book because it's uncomfortable in both directions. And so there's opportunities and challenges. I think if you're a younger person leading someone older, one of the best pieces of advice I have is to think about what will that older person on your team likely be concerned about? what's going to be making them nervous, uncomfortable, resentful, whatever the attitude is. And again, it's usually fear or threat. Like, I'm threatened that this person younger than me has more power, has bigger title. Even if they don't want it themselves, there's a little bit of either resentment or discomfort. And it goes back to the need that we talked about before, the need everybody wants to feel

respected and seen as competent. And so I think it all comes down to mutual respect. And this can happen both ways, older, younger, younger to older, but a younger leader going to an older teammate sitting down and saying, I'm really looking forward to working with you. It has to be authentic, obviously. We'll see through it if it's not. But I'm looking forward to working with you.

You've had so much experience in this area. I'm positive. There's a lot to learn from your experiences. you know, I'm looking forward to partnering with you can go a long way and someone's defensiveness going down. Oh, that person appreciates me. They understand I have experience. I don't constantly have to be proving that I know a lot or that I have a lot of things to

offer. But what that requires from a younger leader is enough confidence to go to that person and, you know, put the olive branch out and not feel. like they're saying, I don't know what I'm doing. Can you help me? Or, hey, who knows how I got this job over you? But here we are. You have to be confident enough to know, I earn this position. I deserve this position. I understand this might be uncomfortable for this person. So I want to go show that I do respect them. I value them. I'm hoping we can partner. It doesn't make me less respected. It doesn't make me less valuable or worthy of this job, it should hopefully be mutually beneficial,

where now they'll see, I'm not a threat to them. I'm here to learn from them. I hope they'll be interested in learning from me. So I think the opportunity there is to really create that psychological safety of, I want this person to feel like they're respected, they're trusted, that they can add value and that we see that. And also, the challenge. to not get defensive. I think anytime you're trying to justify why you're in charge, you tend to put up a wall yourself and people then question like, well, we weren't wondering if she was competent, but now we are because she seemed really defensive about her role. So I'm a big fan of just being straightforward about the fact that, you know, yes, you have

different expertise than I do and I have different expertise than you. And I think if we're open to learning and teaching each other, it should hopefully be mutually beneficial. I think that's really the case for all generations leading in any direction, but particularly the younger, leading the older. I think people universally, they want to feel respected, and that's the key challenge we have to solve in that dynamic. Let's talk for a minute about intergenerational communication at work. So the Washington Post recently published an interesting interactive quiz called How to Tell Your Real Work Age. And it was all about how different generations have different communication habits at work. These are things like, when is it appropriate to send

an email versus a Slack message versus a text or even how formal your text message should be? How can workers navigate those waters and make sure that they're avoiding misunderstandings with older or younger colleagues? Yes, I weighed in on that quiz, Kim. I was in an airport lounge. And I remember a lot of the conversation, the reporter was wonderful and a lot of the conversation I kept saying, but I don't think you should stereotype. All Gen Zs don't communicate the same way. I did a lot of that to the point where she's like, noted, yes, we're not saying all, you know, it's really like, it's very nuanced. So we need to make sure. But the tendency, right, we really do want a quiz. We want to know, like, what's my communication style? Is it a, is it a millennial

style or a Gen X style. We have that temptation. That's where that human urge to put people in those boxes is very, very strong. So I had mixed feelings about the quiz, to be honest, but they did a pretty good job with it. I think it comes back to this idea that it's not right or wrong. It's just different. So when we talk about intergenerational communication, for example, a story we found when we were doing our book, we were doing a lot of interviewing, was this great program out at Stanford where they do amazing things with longevity and the Fung Fellowship program is the name of the program out there that partners younger students, so undergraduate students, interested in tech with people who are retired, so older adults, and they partner for sort of a mutually beneficial

collaboration around things like the project they told us about was wearable technology. I'm sure they do different kinds of projects. But the idea was that the younger people would develop these ideas and the older people would test them out and give them feedback. But the other benefit was the older adults helping to mentor and teach the younger people about being professional and working on a team and things like that. So there are multiple benefits of this collaboration. But they told us the story about a roadblock they ran into with communication where the younger students were doing a lot of texting of their children. teammates. And the texting was informal. It was happening, you know, after regular business hours, whatever those are these days, but this was before COVID. And sometimes they wouldn't get a response

from their teammates from the text. And that was tricky because the question was like, well, why aren't they responding to me? Like, do they not respect me? Are they not interested in this project? And on the side of the older adults, there was this sort of awkwardness around like texting being too informal for the relationship that they had. And so they weren't necessarily feeling like texting was the way that communication should be done. Like maybe it's an email or a phone call or a face-to-face meeting. So when texts were coming in about work-related things after hours, that was judged as maybe not being appropriate because I text with my phone. friends. I text with my family. I don't want to text with this person. I don't know that well from work. And this seems very informal. And also different norms around whether you respond to a text,

or do you just read it? And that's a passive piece of information. And okay, I heard that, but we'll talk about it tomorrow. So it's just creating some issues on both sides that they had to sit down and talk about. So I like that example because the question isn't, well, should they text or shouldn't they text? The issue is, how do we have a smarter conversation about it? So I love this, I like to come up with questions, power questions to give people to have smarter intergenerational conversations is always my goal. So what's, instead of judging, oh, they shouldn't text, that's not appropriate, or what's wrong with them? Okay, boomer, why aren't you texting me back? That's not productive. Let's step back and say, can you help me understand when you text me in the evening?

is the goal of that just to send me information, are you looking for a response? And then you listen. You try to listen without judgment. Like get curious. This is odd to me. I don't get it. It's bothering me.

Whatever it is. Like, I want to gather information. Am I understanding? Like, oh, I don't want to interrupt you by calling you. So I sent a text. Because to younger generations, like a text is less intrusive. You can read it when you have time. You could have your phone off.

But that might not. be the way I see it if I'm an older person. And so hearing that and thinking, oh, they're trying not to bother me, but they had this information to give me. So they thought this was kind of a low-key way to send it is different than why are they interrupting me when I'm spending time with my family. And what happens then is I can then say, oh, interesting. Well, well, let me give you my perspective on that. Because I'm more used to this. And the reason I prefer that is for this reason. So we're both learning. And then the part we sometimes forget is to say, now let's talk about our mutual norm. Let's decide on a norm that's going to work for this project, this goal, this mission. What can we agree is going to be our shared communication for what we're trying to accomplish? And it's sort of like the feedback meeting. It's like five minutes discussing what's our preferred communication channel going to be. My students bless them. every year come to meet him with something like,

we did Slack, we did group me, we did this thing. And I'm always like, sure, show me how to use that. And then eventually we have to admit that like everybody's not using it. So what's the point and what are we going to do? So it's about shared negotiation of norms rather than are we going to do it the way we've always done it or do we all really have to do it this new way? It's what is best for the project or best for the goal, probably again, a little bit of both.

A couple of times in our conversation today, you've mentioned COVID, and I have to ask, do you think that remote work as a result of COVID has changed the way the generations interact at work? Yes. And I think there's so much there. I think starting with the fact that one of my favorite intelligence examples is we were, you know, we as a society, we're very sure when lockdown hit that Gen Zs were going to do great and the rest of us were going to struggle. because of it, we thought it was tech, right? Well, they're going to figure it. They're fine being online. The rest of us are in trouble. And we were 180 degrees off on that. So all the data that came out the months after, you know, lockdown started,

Gen Z was reporting the lowest levels of satisfaction, the highest levels of struggle with working from home, followed by millennials, then Gen X, then baby boomers. And it was a great, like, plot twist moment. It's like, what? That's not what we thought was going to happen, which is why I love Gen Intelligence, because if you took a few minutes, once we all did the learning curve on Zoom and all the other things we had to sort out, the things that matter most and are most important during the early stages of your career. So you can't separate generation and career stage.

Those are intermingled are things that are very hard to accomplish remotely. So we focused a lot on just working remotely hurting productivity. Well, no, most of us, depending on the job, can be productive at home. But if I'm 25 or 24 and I've just been on the job a short amount of time, what are my concerns? What are my needs? Well, I want to prove myself to my boss. I want to make a good impression. I have a lot of things I'm learning that are brand new.

I'm trying to establish my professional network. I want to meet my coworkers. I want to go have coffee or go have a drink after work. All the things that you do when you start a new job, you couldn't do any of that. All of the things that are about establishing yourself as a professional person were gone. The idea of putting on actual clothes and getting on a train or driving into the city or all the, you know, whatever you had in your head is I'm going to start my life and my career. You're in your parents' basement in your sweatpants. and suddenly you're also a professional.

So I'm seeing a lot of fallout from that a couple years out. And when we say, well, Gen Z doesn't want to work, or Gen Z is quiet quitting, or Gen Z is leaving after six months, well, of course they are. I have former students I stay in contact with who say, I love the flexibility of working remote or hybrid, but I've actually never met my boss in person. Or I go into the office and there's three people in there. none of them are on my team, and it's weird. Right. So I think we shouldn't be surprised that we're having challenges with things like organizational commitment, satisfaction, more trouble with things like, quote, loyalty than we

even had in our last generation, because we're not doing any of the things that build connection or belonging in organizations very well. And yet, in this new hybrid world. So I think generationally, I get the question a lot. Do gen Zs want to come into the office? And it's like, well, again, we're talking about millions of people. My belief anecdotally and also I've seen some trends on this is everybody wants flexibility. It goes back to that intrinsic need of autonomy.

But flexibility means something different depending on your life stage and you know, I love working from home because I can let my dogs out and I can. check on my parents and I can, you know, go pick up my kid and I already know how to do my job and I have a network and I just get a lot more done here until I need to go into my office for certain things, which I know what those things are. Not worried about impressing anybody, at least, you know, for the time being. So my needs are different than, you know, a 23 year old who's starting to establish herself. And so what I need in terms of flexibility is different. And I think the last thing I'll say about it is also if I started my career going into the office five days a week, 10 hours a day, then when my employer says, we're going to embrace flexible work, Megan, you only have to come in three days a week. I'm going to think that sounds amazing. I only have to come in three days a week. That is so flexible. If I started my career during COVID and never had to come in at all, and now suddenly I'm supposed to come in three days a week. So now there's a

commute and I got to live closer to my office and I got to find somebody to watch my dog. Like now suddenly that doesn't seem flexible at all. There's a contrast effect, I think, that we're forgetting as well. So my last question, I'm going to ask you to do a little prognostication. How do you think Gen Z is going to change the office culture going forward? I love Gen Z. I should say that. I love all generations, but I'm fascinated. I think we keep talking about them like they're coming. And I had someone at one of my last keynotes say, could you tell people we're already here, which I thought was great, because the oldest Gen Zs, I think, are going to be 27 this year. So we have like almost 10 years of Gen Zs in the workplace.

I think Gen Zs are people who as a whole, their norm has been that they have gotten to do a lot of choose your own adventure. And what I mean by that is they've gotten to grow up curating their media, their news, their playlists, that they've been able to customize and individualize things in a way that's really fantastic. I'm seeing them do that with higher ed. So we're watching really carefully that it might not be a four-year degree because not everybody wants or needs a four-year degree. We told people in my generation, in the millennial generation that you absolutely at minimum had to get a four-year degree. And now we've got a lot of people with a lot of loan debt and not a good job.

And so Gen Zs are looking and saying, well, I don't know that that's necessarily true. Meeting with, now there's certification programs. Now there's, you know, upskilling, there's trade schools. There's all of these paths. And like my son being 18, we're seeing skilled trades, for example, have a very high. I mean age because we didn't encourage the last two generations to go into the skilled trades. So there's a huge pipeline gap. We have a huge need.

My husband's a contractor and a carpenter, and he's often the youngest person on a job site. So there's so many opportunities there that we're now seeing younger people go to trade school again, apprentice again, taking on less debt, but going directly to get practical experience in places where there's a lot of demand. So the thing I love about Gen Z, it's frightening for higher ed, which is important because, you know, I work there. But I also love that they don't necessarily have the exact same pressure to do it the way everybody else was told they had to do it. And I think COVID has really, for better, for worse, created a blank slate. The idea of taking a gap year, which is very European, but very brilliant. Do we really think 18-year-olds or 17-year-olds know what they want to do for the rest of their life and we should force them to pick right now? Probably not. Like a year or two to

figure out who you are and what you want before you start paying college tuition is not a ridiculous idea. So I think they're going to do it on their own terms. I'm seeing really great parallels between Gen X and Gen Z. So the pushback against hustle culture, the pushback. The pushback. against, you know, workaholic tendencies and trying to really take what we learned out of COVID, all of us, that maybe we need more balance. Maybe career shouldn't be everything. That there's a cost to that. I think that's what they're going to do. A couple other short things. I'm loving their ability to speak up for things like wellness and mental health support at work, the first generation that's really broken down the stigma of mental health discussions at work,

I think they're going to cause us all, are they all right now to figure out how do we respond to that? I get a lot of those questions. I don't know what to say when my Gen Z employee tells me that they're having mental health struggles. It's like, well, that's probably something we need to figure out because they're going to keep talking about it and good for them. And if you're from a generation that was told you can't talk about it at work, there's a learning curve there. We've got to, to figure out what to do. So I think they're going to continue to ask for things that we all would have loved but didn't think we were allowed to want. And that is going to cause challenges and ripples, but I think it's really important progress. Dr. Gerhardt, I want to thank you for talking

to me today. It's been really fascinating. I think I learned a lot. Well, thank you for the invitation, Kim. I enjoyed the conversation. You can find previous episodes. of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www.w.w. speakingof psychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speaking of psychology at APA.org. Speaking of psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condyenne. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.