Cross posted to ypcommons.org
Rebecca Thorman blogged today on Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist claiming that career-frustrated, cynical, loner GenXers are jealous of optimistic GenY and destined for conflict and marginalization. I don’t share that feeling, but I also don’t have the benefit of working with many Gen Y coworkers. I’ve never worked in a large company where these kinds of age cliques could form, and while I find the generational lens can provide insight into where people are coming from, I think it has to be validated in individual circumstances. When we make sweeping statements about entire generations, we gloss over so many other dimensions that can create either conflict or opportunity for shared vision and values:
Stage of Life: No matter what your generation, having children today changes your perspective in many ways that I think are shared across age groups. It is a cliché to say having kids changes everything, but in my case, I think it actually radicalized me. I think more about the future. When I see or read about the horrific abuse and poverty in the world today, I feel an even greater urgency to action than I felt as a youthful idealist. It’s more emotional now. I recently read an account of an atrocity from Cambodia during the Vietnam war era and it almost made me physically sick. I could not stop thinking about it all day.
Stage of Career: Gen X is done climbing the ladder. At 40 years old, I’ve done many jobs and had many roles. Today, I might be doing IT work that a 24-year old fresh out of Microsoft training could be doing. Tomorrow, I might manage a team of software developers. Or maybe I do something else. The point is that most of the Gen X people I know have reached a point where they are independently valuable and don’t need to be stratified into a strict hierarchy. We are a team of experienced equals. Now perhaps Gen Y is great at team work and collaboration—that’s awesome because they can skip the 10-year learning curve of trying to prove yourself, pay dues, and figure out how to work the system. But it doesn’t have to be a conflict at all. We can all be on the same team.
Perspective: When I was 20, I believed anything was possible. I did fear “selling out,” of not achieving enough, of being left behind—whatever. But perhaps I got my second wind as I got a bit older. I learned that the hard part is not achieving things but figuring out what it is you really want to achieve. So again, our generations meet in the spirit of optimism, not conflict.
There are undoubtedly many of my generation and baby boomers who are cynical and trapped in their own negative limitations. Of course they will be jealous of the youthful optimism of Generation Y. But what is the point of harping on those differences? As I said earlier, I do believe we can learn from the “lens” of generational analysis, but mostly what we learn is about ourselves. We can use that self-knowledge to resist such unproductive generalizations that lead us to conflict and instead focus on our common ground.
There is so much that needs to be done…do I really need to make a laundry list of the challenges that confront both our generations? We can’t afford to waste our time worrying about age. We need to live our lives and work together to make work and life what we want it to be.
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