To put the troubled relationship between competition and collaboration into context, I’m currently studying how people use creativity in the workplace. One of the participants said, “I’m a writer, and I would never share my ideas with others until they’re finalized. I protect my intellectual property from idea conception to the final printing of the product.” As an academic, I see this person’s point, however, they are missing the fact that our ideas are always tied to others. We stand on the shoulders of giants even if we never look down to see where we’re standing. Writers do share their ideas with others…at the minimum with editors and trusted colleagues. To act as if books – or products and services for that matter – are created by isolated geniuses is to lie to ourselves. Inventing a new idea, product, or service usually involves creative borrowing more than it does individual epiphanies. We need to create more chances for group epiphanies that are the result of structured but challenging conversations.

Organizations need to assess their amount and type of collaboration and competition in the workplace.  Each of these perspectives is expressed through communication, workplace norms and rituals, and language. The key is to create effective communication systems that lead to a collaborative competition that uses the strengths of each approach and minimizes the weaknesses. When workers guard information for fear that others will steal it, they miss opportunities to improve their thinking, clarify their arguments, and invent better products.

To assess and understand your organization’s use of workplace collaboration and competition, contact the Chief Executive Officer of MCS, LLC: zach@commsolver.com

MCS, LLC has created an engaging, enthusiastic, and interactive way for organizations to improve their performance feedback process — and it centers on identifying and enhancing specific communication skills. The best part about this process is that it is supported by scholarly research and guarantees improvement in providing and receiving criticism in the workplace.

Constructive feedback and honest criticism are necessary components of becoming a more effective employee. All organizations use some type of performance feedback process to help employees develop their professional skills. This process shouldn’t be terrifying, useless, or simply an organizational formality.  When conducted effectively, feedback processes should lead to improved skill sets, enhanced morale, and more professional workplace relationships.

Communication RADAR™ is a multi-step program that teaches organizational members to remain calm, objective, and honest during the often tense feedback process. It helps people pay more attention to the communication behaviors going on around them and identifies how their behaviors are part of a larger interaction system.

Communication RADAR™ Objectives

1. Help participants understand and remember the interactive nature of feedback
2. Allow participants to identify their strengths and weaknesses in the feedback process
3. Apply skills during videotaped feedback session that is facilitated by the trainer
4. Evaluate their own communication skills during the feedback process, as well as evaluate the feedback skills of their peers
5. Create individual action plans to continue improving their feedback process communication skills

To learn how Communication RADAR™ can benefit your organization, contact the Chief Executive Officer of MCS, LLC, Dr. Zachary A. Schaefer zach@commsolver.com

What is the difference between a manager and a leader? Imagine that two organizational members are dropped into a pitch black room and both are asked to describe the type of room they are in. Leaders and managers would use different tools to accomplish this task. A leader would employ a Maglite flashlight to look around the room whereas a manager might use an LED pen light. Maglite flashlights allow the user to change focus and gain a greater perspective of what lies behind the darkness. An LED pen lite provides vivid focus but in small increments. The Maglite would allow the user to more quickly describe the type of room they are in.

One difference between a leader and a manager is the ability to use different communication tools to focus.  Leaders know how to achieve it, when to apply it, and where to direct it. This is not to say that managers cannot be leaders or that organizational “titles/positions” entail an effective leader. Leadership behaviors can come from any rung on the hierarchy ladder. The key is that leaders are always toggling between articulating and orchestrating a bigger picture (i.e., vision) and the day-to-day administrative duties necessary to keep an organization thriving (i.e., enacting strategy and policy).  Managers tend to focus only on the latter, and this is because they employ fewer communicative tools than leaders do. Let’s tease out the “Flashlight” metaphor to better explore what I mean. Flashlights provide focus and clarity, and so leaders carry around a few different flashlights whereas managers tend to use the same one in all situations.

LED Pen Light: Provides bright, vivid, and clear focus of a very small area. Useful when communicating in an interpersonal situation (e.g., supervisor-subordinate).

Emergency Flare: Provides a brightly colored light that signifies assistance is needed. Useful when communicating during crises, periods of organizational change, or when complex problems emerge and lots of people need to be notified quickly. Can create panic and stress.

Search Light: Provides a very broad, blinding light that covers a large area. Useful when brainstorming ways to innovate, when problem solving, or when communicating from one to many. Can illuminate too many things at once and complicate what to focus on.

Maglite: Provides several focus options that allows the user to see things from a variety of vantage points. Useful in many different communication situations.

Focusing on one event entails overlooking other events, because when you focus on something you give it your full attention. Most humans are only able to focus on a few things at a time, and because of our perceptual limitations, what we choose to focus on becomes even more important (at least to us).  Focusing is usually an unconscious process that is the result of our past organizational experiences, assumptions, expectations, and intentions. An effective leader, however, turns the process of focusing into a more conscious act, something that they deliberately think through and can discuss the reasons behind their “objects” of focus.  Leaders more easily find their focus because they know it is a conscious process and they try out multiple flashlights that illuminate different parts of their organizational experience. This is what makes them seem like they have a clear, holistic understanding of the workplace. To become more conscious of your focus habits, ask yourself two questions, “What flashlight am I carrying” and “What am I choosing to focus on?”

The newspaper articles he gives out are on a variety of topics, from troubleshooting car engines to corporate takeovers, lawn care maintenance tips to personal health advice and scientific breakthroughs. The newspaper man has not had any blowback from his article audience, which signaled (to him) that people enjoy receiving and reading them.

The newspaper man’s son also works for the company. The son also happens to be dating a woman who works for the company—and the two have been dating for 2 months when his girlfriend receives a newspaper article on her desk.  The article’s headline reads, 20 Things to Think about before You Get Married. When the son learns of this action, he is not happy but chooses not to say anything to his dad. The young woman is a bit surprised and not quite sure what to think, but she also remains silent on the issue. It isn’t until the one son confides to his brother what their dad has done, and this brother nonchalantly brings up the topic to their father on the phone. Bad move. Their dad reacts very defensively and the conversation is extremely hostile and unproductive, as they both defend their positions and refuse to listen to the other’s points. Both parties end the phone call distressed and upset.

Food for Thought

1. Was the newspaper man wrong for giving the young woman the article?
2. Could he have done or said anything to better communicate his intentions?
3. Was the young woman and her boyfriend (the son who works with the dad) wrong for not communicating their feelings to the dad?
4. What could one or both of them have done to better deal with the situation?
5. What could the brother who spoke on the phone to the dad have done differently to alleviate any potential tensions?
6. What is the moral to the story?

My good friend Josh is a very successful banker working for one of the largest banks in the country. He worked his way up the corporate ladder and now mentors other bankers often twice his age. For his position in the company, he is one of their top earners in terms of gross loan sales. Josh makes his company and his clients a lot of money.

Josh recently received an “urgent” email from an indirect superior named Carl. Carl was several levels above Josh in the company hierarchy but was not one of Josh’s immediate supervisors; in fact, Josh only interacted with Carl at bi-annual company meetings. Carl’s email stated that all regional bankers at Josh’s level had to attend “a mandatory meeting” and that if they were not able to attend they must have a “really, really, really good excuse.” When Josh received the email, the meeting was 8 days away.

Unfortunately Josh already had a full day that conflicted with the mandatory meeting. He responded to Carl’s email that he was unable to make the mandatory meeting, asked what he needed to do to “make-up for it,” and added that he would prefer if Carl could “give more than 8 days notice for mandatory meetings, especially because he knows that the bankers are told to schedule meetings two weeks in advance.”

Within 24 hours of Josh’s response to Carl, he received three separate phone calls from different supervisors asking him about his “attitude problem.” It was like reporting to multiple bosses in the movie Office Space.  After the phone calls, at about 4:30 in the afternoon, Josh received a brief email from Carl. It said, “You need to check your attitude if you want to be successful with this company. You don’t dictate when mandatory meetings take place.”

Baffled, upset, and angry, Josh called me for advice on how to respond. Here is what I said:

1. Match the message to the medium with the goal of reducing the number of possible interpretations.

2. Whenever real or perceived disagreements exist, the best way to communicate is face-to-face because it reduces the amount of ambiguity. That way people can also rely on nonverbal behaviors.

3. When nonverbals contradict their accompanying verbal statements, we rely on the nonverbals.

4. Don’t aggravate the situation. Let time pass, reflect, and then craft a response to Carl.

A few months ago I was in need of some commercial real estate advice. I contacted an old friend and we communicated several times via email, text, and phone.  At one point her messages took on a bit of a sharp tone. I wasn’t sure what had changed,  but because I am a very vigilant communicator with a guilty conscience, I immediately started thinking what I could have said to upset her. It turns out that one of my questions had offended her, but the real issue was that she was mad at me for not keeping in close enough contact with her over the years. We used to be close friends, but as it always does, life happened and we both became busy professionals. This underlying issue came out during a phone conversation. She was embarrassed for thinking these things and I was embarrassed for having asked a question that, she felt, had called her expertise into question. By the end of the call we had solved my problem, we had both apologized, and we have communicated more frequently ever since.

Six Tips for Doing “Business with Friends”
1. Be VERY CLEAR in establishing the roles during specific conversations. Role confusion is the number one reason professional relationships with friends and family end poorly.

2. Use transparent phrases to establish and clarify the roles. These allow you to clearly communicate what you want or need from the other person. For example, “I want you to give me advice as a conflict consultant and not as my friend. Be honest with me.”

3. If there’s a chance you might not follow your friend’s professional advice, let them know this up front. This is totally acceptable in the business world. Say something like, “I am researching this topic and I want your opinion. I might not go with your advice, but I want to know what you think because you are an expert.”

4. If you plan to ask a lot of questions, let them know that is just “how you operate.” Let them know that you aren’t questioning their credibility, since you ask questions of any professional you work with. Organized people plan ahead and ask a lot of well-developed, sometimes difficult, questions.

5. Be sure you discuss one issue at a time if there are multiple things to talk about, especially if you disagree over any of the issues under discussion.

6. If things aren’t going well, be willing to forgive, forget, and move on. Ask them for a referral to another professional. If you are having trouble shifting out of the “friend” role and into the “professional” role, clearly state that you want to work with someone else to preserve the friendship.

I understand that many executives have their own level and bathrooms, but this individual went out of his way to isolate himself from his employees. This sort of logic is antiquated and oppositional to what many successful contemporary organizations are doing with their organizational and architectural structuring. Businesses are now thinking more critically about how space can contribute to the organization’s financial and interactional bottom line. The Texas banker came from a very traditional approach to management, one where the managers know everything and the workers are lazy fools that are easily replaceable. He didn’t think about creating organizational environments that lead to enlightened interactions between the employees. The good ideas can only come from top-down.

If you understand that the way organizations are physically structured can either increase or prohibit useful communication (which research clearly shows it does), then I suggest giving your workers more AMMO: Accidental Milestone Meeting Opportunities.  Many of our good ideas pop into our heads when we least expect it, when we are least stressed, and when we aren’t thinking about work. There is a ton of social and cognitive psychology scholarship explaining why our brains work this way, but all I am arguing is that managers should look for simple ways to let their employees interact in unique settings. People bring big ideas to meetings, they don’t come up with them in meetings. I am NOT talking about having more happy hours, company-sponsored events, and team brainstorming sessions. You should instead ask yourself who your employees talk to during the day. Where do they do this talking? What do they talk about? Could it be done more effectively somewhere else? Do employees from different departments interact? If not, why not?

These simple questions can help a forward-thinking manager begin to arm her employees with AMMO. The most creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial organizations literally give their employees time to de-stress, play around, and think about something other than work. If you’ve heard of Apple, 3M, and Google, then you know who I’m talking about. Now they don’t simply let their employees “play” without expecting results, as these are some of the most results-based companies on the planet. But they understand the productive potential of unstructured employee interactions and have learned to harness that potential. So instead of providing employees with ammo to defend themselves against an outdated management style, give them the type of ammo that leads to great ideas and rich interactions. These spaces for spontaneous creativity will take your company in surprisingly fresh directions.

Some people are more genuine and knowledgeable than others and many ideas that look good on the surface are simply opinions expressed in an aggressive, repetitive, loud, and in-your-face manner. These tactics try to invoke emotional reactions and are usually a sign of underdeveloped arguments. There is an important difference between opinions and arguments. Arguments have a claim (what you want your audience to believe) and evidence (supporting examples, statistics, stories, testimony) to logically bolster the claim. Opinions are merely a series of claims presented one after the other; they lack evidence. So when I read Facebook posts, listen to professional conversations when consulting, or accidentally watch what passes for news and see people describing themselves as “realists,” what they are actually doing is using a rhetorical strategy to get others to accept their understanding of a particular situation. Instead of focusing on labels and categories, why don’t realists and relativists alike focus more on finding other curious people to exchange ideas with?

Although self-labeling your ideas as “more real” than others is a thinly veiled strategy to gain support, realists do seek out interesting conversations and try to stay informed of events that effect their communities and countries. Realists also apply a healthy amount of skepticism when authorities offer explanations for events. They usually don’t accept reality, or explanations of it, at face value. Practicing a healthy amount of skepticism, without falling into the philosophical trap of questioning everything all the time (we don’t have time to do this…we all end up dead), allows for a more thorough, rigorous, and systematic understanding of the world. In other words, practical skepticism can lead to knowledge…realists know this and use it to their advantage.

Another positive trait of “self-described realists” is that they are willing to analyze facts. What they often fail to do, however, is point out other facts and ideas that undermine the ‘real’ in their reality. This is a form of confirmation bias, and although we all exhibit this tendency when defending ideas and arguments, the most deliberative and reflective thinkers admit when their arguments are inadequate and incomplete because they are focused on learning and accumulating knowledge, not maintaining a reputation. Realists do not exhibit this quality because it destroys the essence of their argument, the fact that it is not “real” or correct.

It also bothers me when I hear people say, “I am not a pessimist, I am just a realist.” The problem is that people oversimplify pessimism and optimism and miss out on why these terms are actually problematic mentalities. Each of these terms operates on two distinct levels, so let’s try to understand where self-described optimists and pessimists go wrong.

Level One: Assumptions
When people call themselves a pessimist or an optimist, this means that the individual either assumes that in any given situation either the worst solution will always occur or that the most pleasant/effective solution will occur. Adopting either of these polar opposite attitudes will effect someone’s relationships, beliefs, and psyche. If you are a true pessimist, you operate under the assumption that if things can go wrong they will. You love Murphy’s Law. Whereas if you are an optimist you assume that things will always work themselves out for the best. You own rose-colored Ray Bans.

Level Two: Confirmation Bias
Once people assume that either the best or worst option will always emerge in a given situation, they begin to exhibit another trait that leads to inaccurate thinking. These people then constantly search for examples to fulfill their optimistic or pessimistic worldviews. Each time they discover evidence that “fits” their preconceived attitude, they share this information in an attempt to paint a “realistic” version of facts, behaviors, events, and interactions in order to convince others of the soundness of their arguments. This is a vicious, iterative cycle that reinforces itself each time new “evidence” is found to support the initial assumptions. It goes like this:

• Assume things will go right/wrong
• Seek out examples to affirm the assumption
• Communicate the “evidence” to others
• Reinforce your initial beliefs

This slippery slope is not solid ground for logical and persuasive arguments. But if I had to advise people to adopt one attitude over the other, I would say think optimistically. Pessimists are really good at pointing out problems, but they don’t usually discuss ways to solve the problems. They come off as complainers and nay-sayers, and they aren’t always pleasant to be around. Optimists, on the other hand, may romanticize world events and interactions, but they are the ones who change the world. Technological, organizational, medical, and engineering innovations come from optimists, people who look at the world and see that more is possible. Optimists know that we aren’t running out of resources, because the greatest resource of all is the human brain. We just need to figure out how to do more with less in this world, and optimists know that it is possible.

Now this is easy advice to give but harder to follow. I am fairly pessimistic in my personal life and I struggle to think more positively. When I am in professional settings, however, I am always optimistic that individuals, organizations, and institutions can improve their communication and conflict management patterns.  I want to be a productive agent of organizational change and that can only occur if I am Professionally Optimistic. So at this point in my life, I have accepted that I am a Professional Optimist and a Personal Pessimist. Because we can never escape the beautiful simplicity of Maslow’s description of human motives and needs, I will constantly be striving to overcome my personal pessimism and replace it with an optimistic attitude infused with a healthy dose of skepticism.

So the next time you want to call yourself a realist, an optimist, or a pessimist, think about what you are trying to accomplish by using that self-label and seek out an interesting conversation, debate, or dialogue instead. Practice a balanced amount of Practical Skepticism to explore and explain your ideas instead of using worn out persuasive strategies to convince others of the merits of your ideas, like calling yourself a realist.

One of the participants seated in the front row, slouching against the wall — looking like he’d rather be shoveling garbage than listening to me speak — muttered something under his breath. Since I was already losing my “flow” from his apathetic nonverbals, I decided to engage this individual rather than let it affect my entire training session.

I said, “Did you have a comment about mediation sir?” And he replied, “Well, yes I do. As you are describing it and the slide summarizes behind you, that kind of process won’t work in this organization.”

I said, “Can you tell me why not?” He went on to explain how a pure form of mediation, one in which the neutral third party listens to the disputants and helps them come up with solutions to their issues, could never work at their agency because the supervisors who listen to disputes always know the disputants. He also said that 9 times out of 10 the supervisor will be friends with one of them and not like the other one. So much for neutrality.

While listening to his complaints, which came off in an accusatory tone of voice, the blood was rushing to my face and I began to feel hot all over. Sweat started pouring out of unusual spots under my suit. Although on the surface I remained calm, my mind was frantically searching for a proper response. And then it hit me. Practice what you preach. Successful mediators ask useful questions to engage the disputants…so that is what I did.

After he finished his 3-minute diatribe about how mediation wouldn’t work for this particular police department, I asked him a few questions:

• Are there problems that could be better managed?
• Are most people on the force excellent communicators?
• Is there a process that creates a clear structure for effective, 1-on-1 communication when people are in disagreement with one another?

He went right along with my line of questioning and we ended up having an excellent 10 minute conversation with the entire group about how mediation skills could be useful in the department even if you couldn’t set up an “authentic mediation system.”

Moral of the Story
When you feel attacked by an audience member during a presentation, a really effective way to respond is to invite that person to explain their point, ask them questions,  encourage their interaction, validate (parts) of what they are saying, and then transform that isolated conversation with the heckler into an entire audience discussion.

When I first began my law career, I lost a lot of cases that I should have won. Now that I’ve been practicing for 20 years, I’ve won a lot of cases that I should have lost.

His quote hints at an issue that most professionals have contemplated: At what age does someone pass the (imaginary and invisible) threshold of credibility? At what point does someone’s life and work experience suddenly become trustworthy, professionally acceptable, and worthy of admiration and discussion? Although there are no straightforward answers to these questions, they resonate with a wide audience because these issues invoke important human emotions such as trust, knowledge, experience, credibility, and fear. To harness the creative potential of an entire work force, we need to first unharness the rigid hierarchies, structures, and mental categories that limit organizational and personal development.

As a quick caveat, I am not suggesting a fresh college graduate could run a law firm or that a new hire could lead a multinational engineering project. I am arguing that too many experienced professionals dismiss the ideas of younger colleagues simply based on their age and perceived inexperience. The following article critiques this problematic pattern which has slowed the professional development of young workers.  Before we discuss solutions for overcoming why novice professionals are treated condescendingly in the workplace, we need to first address the problem and its causes.

The Problem: Limited Paths
There are many reasons why grizzled professionals discount the knowledge, experiences, and ideas of younger people. This isn’t a new problem. If an organization wants to improve intergenerational communication at work, increase its productivity, and enhance collective creativity, they need to understand why people consistently disregard the first 30 years of a person’s life. We need to look at the paths that guide organizational decisions and actions in addition to individual fears.

Irrational Disbelief. Younger employee’s ideas are often overlooked because more experienced colleagues just don’t believe that young people can discuss anything worth thinking about. How can we know anything about another person’s experiences unless we give them time to explain their way of doing something? We should be more concerned with the thought process behind an idea rather than the age of the individual providing it.

Hazing Mentality. We love to force others to go through the same trials and tribulations that we experienced. This is a morbid form of reverse-empathy. It is morbid because we consciously reproduce the feelings of inadequacy in our younger coworkers that we experienced when first entering our professions. When we dismiss young people’s ideas simply because they are young, we are doing ourselves and our professions a disservice. This process is based on the belief that useful outcomes will emerge if others experience the same misfortunes that we did. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Path Dependence. Most people prefer to take the well-worn path because creating new paths and mapping new territories is dangerous work, especially for professional identities.  Established organizations and cultural norms don’t embrace trailblazers, so instead of thinking about the best way to do something, experienced professionals turn to the way things worked previously for them. This is not an innovative mindset. Of course we must rely on our past experiences as a resource, but if we only apply previous solutions to future problems, organizations become stagnant.  Young professionals often suggest new paths that organizational leaders didn’t know exist, but it’s up to the leaders to allow the young people to break ground on those new paths.

Ingrained Deference and a Lack of Confidence. We are born into a system of human interaction that is already set in motion. People worked very hard to set up those systems and processes, and they go to great lengths to preserve them. We grow up surrounded by “omniscient organizational authorities” and have normalized the idea of our dependence on them. This has become so deeply ingrained that young people inherently know to ask permission rather than forgiveness. That is, we have been taught to ask permission to act rather than take action and responsibility for the positive and negative consequences. In addition, when young professionals are condescended and ignored in the workplace, they lose confidence in their ideas until they have no ideas left to offer.

We have limited paths for solving our work problems, so instead of looking for innovative ideas we prefer to rely on past solutions, even if they are outdated and don’t fit the problem.

Why so Few Paths?
Managers choose well-worn paths because of how it makes them feel (i.e., credible) and the probable outcomes associated with them.  Organizations need to rethink their internal decision making structures, however, if they want to get the most out of their work force. There are too many outdated human systems, too many rigid hierarchies, and too few processes for identifying and disseminating the knowledge of novice professionals. Instead of relying on systems that reward job tenure and experience, why not champion systems that focus on discussing, evaluating, and selecting the best ideas, regardless of who they come from? Focus on the ideas and not the identity of who they come from.

Another reason that experienced professionals pay little attention to what inexperienced colleagues have to say is the rapidly changing technology environment. I often hear veterans tell war stories of “how things used to be” in an organization – those stories are important because they form part of the organizational culture. But things aren’t that way anymore, which is always an unspoken theme in organizational war stories. As Bob Dylan said, the times, they are a-changing. Many veteran employees and decision makers are fearful when they hear younger colleagues talking about new software systems, mobile applications, and the cloud. People are scared of change because it entails uncertainty.

Fear may be the most basic human emotion and can actually be a useful tool when controlled, but it can also prevent us from making valuable connections, from seeing new and better ways of doing things, and from learning. People shy away from potentially useful discussions by invoking their “experience” as a trump card.  At the very least, an honest conversation would allow a veteran professional (a) to explain why they are disregarding what the younger person is saying and (b) address their internal fears at the same time.

A Path with Two Trails: Overcoming the Double Bind of Experience
Although much of this article has focused on how and why experienced professionals disregard the ideas of younger professionals, to have an effective solution we need to discuss what both groups can do to bridge their knowledge gap and see the utility of each other’s experiences.

The double bind of experience means that you can’t get a job unless you have experience but you only get relevant experience by having a job. This scenario circumvents the useful friction that is created when inexperience bumps into established ways of doing things. If organizations ever want to tap into the knowledge base of their younger employees, they need to come up with creative processes for creating useful human friction. One system that is doing just this is called Reverse Mentoring. This is where organizations pair up experienced employees with new hires and allow the new hire to mentor the veteran. This phenomenon is producing extraordinary results because it allows for novel solutions to old problems, it encourages employees from different generations to get to know each other, and it sends a positive message to new employees: you are valued. Reverse Mentoring also expands people’s comfort zones, because the only way to become more comfortable with change and uncertainty is to experience and discuss them. If these mentoring programs are to be more than a fleeting fad, business leaders must rethink the relationship between knowledge, skills, abilities (KSAs), and age. Credibility should be the result of KSAs and not someone’s age.

Instead of worrying about a person’s age and identity – which is a self-conscious defense mechanism for people who are conscious about their own age and experience – ask yourself if the ideas are useful.  Don’t condescend young professionals by treating their suggestions as ‘cute,’ especially if they continuously provide suggestions.  There is no quicker way to kill creativity than to condescend it.

Early in their careers, how many experienced professional do you think told Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Albert Einstein to scale back their dreams to keep them more in line with current organizational thinking and norms? I bet they often heard some form of this paternalistic criticism throughout the early phase of their careers but not once they “achieved success.” For these trailblazers, success means not allowing your inabilities to interfere with your abilities. Successful young professionals have confidence in themselves, create a vision, and don’t let anyone deter them from it.  Unfortunately, there are too many people who feel uncomfortable dealing with confident young people, and consequently the young professionals allow these insecurities to affect their confidence.

To summarize, experienced professionals have often gotten too comfortable with their work habits and environment, they may experience complacency, might not be effectively challenged, and they often treat learning like a virus: something to be avoided.  On the other hand, ambitious young professionals are hungry for advancement, ready to learn, and eager to positively transform their work environment. Instead of focusing on the differences between younger and older employees, organizations should look for multiple ways to accomplish their goals that involve interactions between the young go-getters and the experienced veterans.

Organizations should not be asking, “Do they have enough experience,” but instead, “What do they know that can help solve this task?” Since there is no specific age or organizational rite of passage that represents when someone gains credibility in the workplace, it is up to multiple generations to bridge their knowledge gap and tap into each other’s life experiences. This can only occur through serious, honest, and well guided communication. If organizations want to professionally develop all of their employees, they should find ways to jumpstart the path to effective knowledge management and look for ways that young professionals can best contribute to the work environment.

Strategies for Reframing Accusations of Inexperience (You’re Too Young…)

• I understand that my inexperience could be perceived as an issue, but give me a chance to explain my idea and I think you might better understand where I’m coming from.
• We obviously see this issue from different perspectives, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I listened to your explanation and I would hope that you would do the same for me.
• I do have less experience than you. But can’t good ideas come from inexperienced people?
• I understand that my age is an issue, but can we talk for a second about my track record? Look at the things I have accomplished…