Working across generations
A workforce can span four generations at once, and colleagues and clients of different generations can differ in what they value, how they prefer to communicate and how they use technology. Working well across those differences depends on understanding the cohorts without applying their descriptions to any one person, on respect from both sides, and on the qualities of a professional that do not depend on age.
Generational differences and stereotypes
Different generations can behave differently at work: an editor who entered the profession in an office of older, experienced editors accepted their advice and instructions as editing commandments, never questioning and always following, and found twelve to fifteen years later, as a manager, new hires questioning established processes two days into the job.
Generational differences can help to explain quite a bit, but stereotyping has to be avoided. Just as disease risk and prognosis are determined for groups of people and not for individuals, generational characteristics are defined for all people born within a span of years and should not be applied across the board. The insight can still help a writer better understand coworkers and colleagues.
The four generations in the workforce
In 2012 the workforce spanned four generations for the first time: Traditionalists, born about 1937–1945; Baby Boomers, born about 1946–1964; Generation X, born about 1965–1984; and Millennials, born about 1985–2005. The years that define the generations vary from one account to another, so these intervals are approximate. Working well together requires an understanding of the world and typical attributes of each generation.
The Traditionalists came of age in the Great Depression and the Second World War. Their generational personality is described as conforming, conservative spenders, driven, oriented to the past, marked by hard times in childhood and willing to go the extra mile; their core values as dedication and sacrifice, loyalty, honour, patriotism and family; their definition of work as obligation; and their workplace values as respectful of authority, avoiding conflict, age equals seniority, hard-working, dedicated, reserved and obedient. Their interactive style is individual, their leadership style directive, command and control, and their preferred communication style the memo. Their reward is satisfaction in a job well done, and the message that motivates them is "We respect your experience."
Baby Boomers prefer to communicate face to face, Generation X by email, and Millennials by instant messaging and texting. Baby Boomers are rewarded by money, recognition and title, Generation X by money and freedom, and Millennials by meaningful work. The message that motivates Baby Boomers is "You are valued and needed", Generation X "Forget the rules, do it your way", and Millennials "You will work with other bright, creative people".
The technology gap
Social media and technology seem to be where the generation gap is most obvious. One writer of 34, who always tries to convey that she understands both the younger tech-savvy side and the older relationship-oriented side, holds that technology can help writers communicate more quickly, more effectively or to more people, but that in the zeal to adopt it writers devalue their relationships, which are the foundation of everything they do. In her account, most people in their twenties and thirties like to do things quickly and rely heavily on email conversations, slide decks and social media, and she may get a message from the same person a different way every day of the week: a Facebook message, a wall post, a text message, a LinkedIn comment, a Pinterest comment or an instant message via Skype. She finds that more established, older people prefer a phone call, or meetings that include an introductory conversation and then a follow-up meeting with a pre-set agenda, which smooths the transition to working together.
That writer has found that, although different generations grew up with different models of doing business, just as many people defy the stereotypes of their generation: many older people are tech-savvy, and social media growth shows a sharp spike in adoption by older audiences. She expects an evolution that reveals personal preferences rather than generational groupings. Because technology is unlikely to slow down, she expects soon to be on the other side of the gap herself, dealing with whatever method of communication the future holds; everyone can adapt, and she thinks that as long as people communicate effectively they will make great partners to all styles of communicators.
The technology gap shows across one Baby Boomer senior editor's career. She left high school in 1966 with the typewriter as her ticket to success and used it as a reporter for her college newspaper and through graduate studies in journalism, when copy was double-spaced on sheets of yellow paper taped together and reporters typed the slug 30 at the end to signal that a story was complete. She first saw a computer keyboard in 1977 and became an early adopter by accident, because her newspaper used a rudimentary form of desktop computing years before it became routine, with newsroom keyboards connected to dumb terminals and a large box in the production room translating what she typed into finished type.
By 2012, far from being an early adopter, she struggled to keep up. Her Millennial colleagues, for whom technology is a way of life rather than a handy tool, were highly tech-savvy and preferred communicating quickly by text or instant message, while she stuttered over words like hypertext and could not fully grasp global search, search engine optimisation and taxonomy, let alone all the icons on the word processor's toolbar. She loved working with them, for their spirit, their intelligence and their superior technical know-how. They had grown up with a mouse in their hands and mobile phones in their pockets, and they sent text messages and instant messages, tracked work in shared online documents and moved documents across huge screens with multiple open windows, all simultaneously. That level of multitasking drove her mad, because editing complex clinical content requires her to concentrate.
Her younger colleagues still valued what she knew, and she relied on what they knew. A sign outside her cubicle showing an elderly woman, captioned "Let's eat Grandma!", then "Let's eat, Grandma!", then "Punctuation saves lives", puzzled her younger colleagues before they laughed, and despite their speed and agility they still valued working with someone who knew grammar rules that seem to have become extinct in a texting culture where smiley faces take the place of sentences. When she needed the latest phone app or access to a cleverly hidden shared document, she took her questions to a Millennial.
An older worker can keep adapting late in a career. Edie Schwager, who answered association members' grammar and usage questions for decades and died in October 2012 at 95, learned to use a computer in her seventies, and better than many people much younger than her, and wrote her first book at eighty. She remained active into her nineties while realistically accepting the limitations age and health placed on her, setting an example for those younger than her but headed in the same direction. A colleague for whom medical writing was a third or fourth career, and who intended to live, and possibly keep teaching workshops, into their nineties, took her as a role model for giving back to the professional community long after many people of her age had settled permanently into a rocking chair.
Resentment over positions and pay
In the account of one communications executive who gives workshops on generations in the workplace, the Baby Boomers are staying in the workplace much longer than they or their successors had anticipated at the turn of the century. In 2012 they were staying under duress, because the recession had reduced both their retirement plans and their savings, and they were taking positions that paid much less than their former jobs, which in that account made them cranky.
If the Boomers are cranky, in that account Generation X is furious: for nearly five decades this smaller generation has followed the Boomers through the marketplace and the workplace. In 2012 Generation X was smaller than the Boomers by an estimated 30 million members, and the Boomers represented nearly a quarter of the US population, with an estimated 65 million of the cohort still alive, so Generation X had been waiting to take over the corner office for more than thirty years and looked set to wait longer still. One Generation X author, who believes the Boomers have had their time and should be moving on, complained that all the mass-media oxygen seemed to be sucked up by Boomers and Millennials, and in that executive's view he speaks for many of his generation. At a workshop on generations for a manufacturing company that employed many more Boomers than other generations, the one thirty-something in the management group sat slumped, nodding grimly at talk of waiting for promotions and pay increases, and when asked, for comic effect, how many people in the company had to die before he got his promotion, he answered that he had a list.
The Millennial generation, born from the early-to-mid 1980s to the mid-2000s, will be about 100 million strong according to demographers, and it has its own issues with Boomers in the workplace. A young worker asking for advice about mentoring could not understand why the older women in the office were so cold and unhelpful, refusing to help her learn anything she needed to know, when she was really nice to them. It had not occurred to her that once she learned the job she would be able to do it competently for about half the salary of her more experienced peers. Twenty years of experience and well-honed survival instincts are sometimes the only thing standing between the Boomers and a redundancy notice.
Diplomacy between generations
That executive offers ideas for the generations to overcome their distrust and the generational and cultural gaps between them and thrive in the workplace, based on the Rules of Diplomacy of John T. Rourke and Mark A. Boyer of the University of Connecticut:
- Each side is entitled to an embassy, but must learn the language, laws and customs of the host country.
- When people say something that starts with "in my country", they are correct, however strange the idea seems. Respect their customs and learn how to be heard in their language.
- Learn a few key phrases, even if they seem foreign: "What I like about that idea is…" and then "Tell me more about that."
- Get to yes quickly and often, and agree on the many things that can be agreed. Save the tough negotiations until after agreement and trust have been built on the easier ones.
Getting to yes is easier than it seems, because people in the same business must share some common ground. One route is to focus on values, why the team does what it does, as in "The patients come first", "Good health should be accessible to everyone", "Our data will always be accurate and tested using the proper methods" and "We serve the entire community". Another is to focus on strategies and goals, what the team plans to do; the organisation's goals should be clear and negotiated in advance, as in reducing deaths by making sure every patient can understand the prescription information, or increasing the number of women signing up for health classes by 50%. The rest is negotiable: who, when, where and how are tactics, and they can and should be revisited, revised and revamped. The only right answer is what is actually working right now, and keeping that in mind can go a long way toward helping the team stay focused on the end goal.
Team-building across generations
Managers often conduct team-building activities to assimilate a team that is diverse in some way, and as a new generation enters the workforce and more workers remain employed beyond retirement age, they may also need to look for ways to assimilate team members who are generationally diverse and may span four generations, often with an age difference of up to fifty years. Team-building activities may provide motivation, boost morale and build trust between team members, all of which are beneficial regardless of age differences. Where the objective of a team-building activity is to strengthen relationships across generations, the teams should be organised in advance so that each has an appropriate range of ages.
Closing the age gap with a younger client
In one older freelance's view, the way to close the age gap is respect. To that freelance, differences due to age are no different from differences due to training, education, life experience or geography, and frustration comes from resisting differences instead of embracing them, as when an older person assumes a younger person's ideas or ways of doing things are half-baked or unproven, or a younger person assumes an older person's are boring or stale. That freelance believes freelances have a leg up on closing the gap compared with staff, because to succeed a freelance has to embrace new technology, new media, new assignments and new clients, who are often younger, whereas on staff it is easier for egos, seniority and territory to get in the way. To that freelance every member of the client's team is the client, and their first rule is that the client is always right, a rule with no reference to age in it. Faced with something new, the freelance looks for a way to become comfortable with it and asks how the new idea can benefit from their experience, so that the result is synergy rather than a roadblock, since great solutions come from combining experience with innovation.
Another older freelance, who could not think of a situation in which the age gap had seriously affected their ability to communicate with a much younger client or to complete a project, still holds that the gap exists and in some circumstances can complicate the relationship. For an older freelance with many years of experience it can be difficult to take instructions, or worse, criticism, from a relatively inexperienced twenty-something client, and tempting to assume the client is too young and inexperienced to know what they are doing. Whether that is true is irrelevant, because the client has the upper hand in the relationship, and for that reason alone that freelance places the primary responsibility for closing the gap on themselves.
To that freelance, mutual respect is the key to any successful relationship, and respect should always be the starting point, whether or not there is an age difference. Beyond it, it is important for older freelances to recognise that there are very real generational differences in how people approach the whole work process, particularly in their use of technology, and to make an effort to learn about those differences in attitudes and practices and use the knowledge to build good working relationships with younger clients. There is much an older freelance can teach twenty-somethings, but also much to learn from them: that freelance, working in hospital public relations in the mid-1980s, was pulled kicking and screaming into computers by a much younger boss who made them give up the electric typewriter, and counts that knowledge as the first step toward a successful freelance career. Even as their career winds down, that freelance tries to stay abreast of the latest electronic technology and web-based communications, including social and professional networking.
What an older freelance and a younger client each bring
In the view of one freelance with more than thirty years' experience, each person, whatever their age or years of experience, has something to bring to the table and to the project. Younger clients often have stronger computer skills that make literature searches easier, and some have more recent real-world experience, having worked on a pharmaceutical sales force before moving inside as a product or project manager. Many of that freelance's clients recognise that the freelance's experience makes their job easier, because they do not have to keep in constant contact during the writing, and the freelance has at times saved clients less familiar with the requirements for continuing medical education or journal article submission; the relationship is often a good give-and-take. Young clients who micromanage every detail, make multiple changes whether or not they benefit the project, or set unrealistic goals and deadlines do exist, but in that freelance's experience they often do not last long in the post. Once each side recognises the other's area of expertise and a good working relationship is established, the projects benefit.
As that freelance grows older and the clients younger, they find more opportunities to act as a consultant, because many younger clients are not well versed in medical writing activities and processes.
The younger freelance's side of the gap
One younger freelance, who is often taken for someone much younger and asked at least once every few months what high school she attends, is keenly aware of how difficult it is to be taken seriously because of her age. A freelance of 31, at the tail end of the Millennial generation, thinks that her generation values flexibility over security, which may give the impression of impatience, and values formal and informal mentoring relationships, and she encourages experienced freelances to pitch themselves as team players who enjoy teaching as part of the process.
What does not depend on age
One freelance writing at 45 reports no shocking or incomprehensible interactions due to an age difference with a younger client. Younger clients can sometimes seem a bit more stressed, but that could be fewer years of experience on the job more than age: a writer who has been verbally abused by a few doctors, had recording equipment die mid-interview, spilled coffee on a new laptop and missed conferences because of plane delays tends not to sweat the small stuff. Most of that freelance's clients are around their own age, and an age difference they do tend to notice is with clients about fifteen to twenty years older, in their sixties. In that freelance's view, people of their age or younger, immersed in computers and the internet, have an advantage, and although people in their sixties can use computers, some older clients will try to email an 80 MB attachment and not understand why it did not arrive. The best quality to cultivate there is probably a little patience, and that freelance would say the same to twenty-year-olds.
At a "Projects from Hell" roundtable in 2011, the winning tale involved redoing 150 slides the night before, in the era of slide carousels, and everyone at the table, including writers who had begun their professional lives after PowerPoint, recognised the compounded agony of it. In the view of one writer at that table, the frustrations of the profession and the principles for success transcend age and time. One principle is "show, don't tell": asking intelligent questions is one of the best ways to show professionalism as a medical writer at any age, and pointed questions about client processes or specific project details, or noting potential pitfalls, instil the client's trust that the writer can swim in the medical writing pond. Another is "to thine own self be true". That writer learned after a couple of years to ask potential clients "What are your pet peeves or prior bad experiences?", which demonstrated professional maturity, acknowledged that projects sometimes go badly and that everyone carries some baggage into the client relationship, helped identify the client's hot buttons and weeded out clients: a typo-obsessed client was gently passed along to another professional. At multiple association panels the client speaker said they distrusted a medical writer who claimed to do everything; a writer gains more credibility by honestly answering what they cannot do as well as selling what they can. In that writer's view, asking the right questions and honesty about oneself are more a function of previous professional environments, supervisors, project exposure and personality than of the year someone was born, and the actual question is how any freelance medical writer emphasises their value in a constantly changing industry.