Bridging Generation Gaps At Work With Barbara Randell

Ok, Boomer. These are the things millennials would say to make fun of how old boomers are. While boomers would make fun of how spoiled and reliant millennials are on technology. The cycle keeps on going, and it will continue to go until someone puts an end to it. Instead of vilifying each other, we can come together and learn a whole bunch of new things. Barbara Randell, the Founder of Future Image Group, is joining your host, Stephen Jaye, to talk about bridging this generational gap at work. Join Stephen and Barbara as they talk about adopting the correct mindset that will bridge this divide. Learn how taking that first step can fix many of the other divides prevalent in our world and culture today. --- Listen to the podcast here Bridging Generation Gaps At Work With Barbara Randell One thing that's been on my mind quite a bit lately is relationships. This pandemic has been hard on a lot of people, but one of the things I hope that we're coming to the realization to over the course of the past year of being restricted and hold up at home is the importance of relationships in our lives. Sometimes, especially in work environments, we don't get to sit and necessarily choose who we want to interact with. It's not always this like attracts like, this mirroring phenomenon. We have to find an effective way to interact with the people around us regardless of who they are. Without further ado, I bring you Barbara Randell, the Founder and Leader of the Future Image Group, which helps a lot with work relationships. Welcome, Barbara. "You can boil every single human emotion down to two things: love and fear. And if you're coming from a place of fear, which means if you're feeling insecure, you're not going to ask. We all assume that we're supposed to know everything. We're all a work in progress." Thank you. It's good to be with you. Let's begin by getting the readers oriented to Future Image Group. Tell us about what you do, what your mission is, and how you do it. In my former life, I was a legal recruiter for many years. The reason that I was successful in that endeavor was because of relationships and the personal interactions I had with my clients. Towards the end of that phase of my career, I started noticing this alarming trend of the senior folks in the workplace complaining about the Millennials and Millennials complaining about the awful dinosaurs of Boomers, and how nobody was talking to each other. You have uniquely five generations all working together at the same time for the first time in history. Each generation looks at work and life through a completely different lens. Nobody was taking the time to get to know or get to understand which lens people are looking through. They were just vilifying each other. Bridging Generation Gaps: Each generation brings a unique set of skills that each generation can learn from. Nobody is taking advantage of any of that because of factors such as social media and technology. You've got all of these generations all working together and all speaking different languages. Essentially, I started researching it. I found out that this is in fact, a thing. The generations are not communicating amongst themselves, they are tending to gravitate only towards people that are like them. When in fact, each generation brings an extraordinary, unique set of skills, tools, and brilliant gifts that each generation can learn from and grow from. Nobody was taking advantage of any of that because of a huge number of factors, social media, and technology. We're losing the tools and the skills to communicate with one another and relationships rely on communication, curiosity and interest. How are we doing this? Who are you? Why are you doing what you're doing? Asking people the questions that you asked me. I wrote a curriculum that teases apart the actual components of what it takes to develop, build, maintain and nurture relationships. When was it when you first started noticing this generational divide, whether it's Boomers saying those Millennials or the younger people complaining about the older people, whatever the predecessor to, “Okay Boomer,” was? I have a good friend who's a senior partner at one of the big national law firms. We were out to lunch and he was going on about this young guy who works for him who came in slightly torn cool jeans and a blazer. This guy was going on. He was saying, “This guy doesn't know how to dress. He doesn't know how he needs to present himself as a professional.” I said to him, “Mike, who's your firm's biggest client?” He said, “Amazon. Do you know that?” I said, “I do. You don't think that young lawyer, if he walked into Amazon wearing a three-piece suit, he wouldn't be paint bald?” That was a story that illustrates what I was seeing as a headhunter. We've all heard about how these generational divides aren't new and most of the Baby Boomers can even look back at their younger days when they were the younger ones being complained about by older generations. I've seen presentations where they say people talking about the younger generation on favorably dates as far back as the 18th century BC in ancient Greece. What I'm wondering is, if you've looked into these past ones and if you feel like what's going on now, is it just a repeat of what's happened in the past, or is there something new about it that's unique and more dangerous? Today, you have five generations all working together at the same time for the first time in history. The difference now is technology. The fundamental difference is the fact that we have the ability to communicate in so many varying forms. When I was coming up and I had a question, I had to talk to somebody. I had to talk to a librarian, teacher, or parent. As a result of that, I got different perspectives, attitudes, and ideas. That broadened my perspective. Nowadays, if you have a question, you can Google it. When I'm talking about the skills that are involved in communicating, they're not being practiced. We don't have to get out of our comfort zone and talk to somebody that may be scary or somebody that I wouldn't ordinarily talk with. We can Google it. What we're missing when we Google a question, is those perspectives. We're missing those different approaches and ways of answering those questions. Things take practice, as do communications. We're also becoming fearful of putting ourselves out there and maybe making mistakes, asking a question that may elicit some disdain from somebody. When I was coming up, I had to be vulnerable. I had to put myself out there and I learned. That's how you learn, by practicing and making mistakes. The younger group tends to defer to communicating via technology. Therefore, they're losing the communication skills and the practice opportunities that they have. Technology has changed quite a bit about the way we work and the way we communicate with one another. It's easy to say that this whole idea that like attracts like and people feel more comfortable around people who are similar to them, whether it be similar interests or similar ideologies. That seems fine when you're looking for the people you want to sit around and drink beer and watch the Super Bowl. When it comes to the people to work with, whether it's the organization to join as an employee and you're assigned to work with the other people that they hired or even people who you choose to do business with, say you're starting your own business, it becomes not sufficient? Part of growing up and evolving as a professional is learning to navigate some of those situations. That goes back to practicing and being able to work with people that you might not like and figuring out, “We're all here. We're all aligned for a common goal. How are we going to get there?” That creates another neural pathway to being able to navigate those tricky situations. When I was headhunting, I ended up opening up my shop. One of the happiest days of my life was calling clients that I didn't like working with and telling them, “I'm not going to be a good resource for you, but let me give you some people that would be.” I was in an advanced stage in my career. The backstory to that is for the first ten years of it, I needed to work with some people that I didn't necessarily like. I needed to figure out how we were going to align ourselves with that common goal. Sometimes, I did have to suck it up and deal with people that I didn't like much, but that's part of the learning process. You started your own headhunting firm and then transitioned that to Future Image Group. Tell me a little bit about that process. What inspired and what made you want to do what you're doing? Bridging Generation Gaps: Technology is one of the reasons for the generational gap. The fundamental difference is the fact that you have the ability to communicate in so many varying forms. In 2015, I had a very bad year. I got divorced, we ended up on trial, and then my back broke. I was 50 at the time. I look at that opportunity as my universe saying, “Let's sit down and assess what do you want to be when you grow up?” What I always used to tell my candidates and my clients was do what you love and do what you care about. Looking back on my work as headhunting, it was great, profitable, awesome, but I didn't like dealing with people when they were so miserable and didn't want to find a solution. One of my core beliefs is you don't get to complain if you're not willing to do something about it. We did nationwide market research and couldn't find anybody that was addressing this particular issue. That's how it happened. I had time because I was recovering from my back surgery. I had the inclination and I was able to cobble together all of these elements of my career personally and professionally and do what I am most passionate about, which is people. We're human beings. We don't stop being human beings when we become employees. ...