It's generational differences in practice, and what you'll see is that a lot of our topics overlap or build up on some common themes, and this is really one aspect of diversity that we felt was important in the current workforce to discuss. I have no disclosures other than I'm a Gen X, and my financial conflicts or drains are two millennials and a Gen Z, so we'll see how that goes. But what I want to do today is really talk about a little bit of the framing, the discussion as an introduction, talk about some of the perceived generational differences, recognizing that these are stereotypes and there is no true evidence base here, but it's basically large studies and observations, and then really get to more of an actionable point of what we can do as leaders to help our teams through different generations. One of the comments I made in one of my conversations earlier with one of our audience members is that leadership really requires only one thing, and that's somebody to follow you. You can lead from any chair, and I think that's why you're here today, and a lot of people sometimes confuse leadership with positions, and what we're talking about today is leadership, and we can all lead from any chair regardless of what is our title. As an introduction, I'm going to talk about generations. Generational tension is not new. This is actually a quotation from a clay tablet that was discovered from Babylon over 3,000 years ago, and as you can see, they are talking about the younger generation and the way we have heard people talk about ourselves and the way we have talked about younger generations in turn as well, so really a lot of the theme today is that either the generations change, the essence of people doesn't, and we've always had this generational tension. What defines a generation? There are a lot of people who believe that really it's a definition of a time period, and if you look at the literature, that usually is a period of 15 to 20 years, but ultimately what really defines a generation are the major events that shape their growing, and especially when they are in their formative years in high school, college, and when they enter the workforce. What is very interesting is that if you look at generations throughout history, at least the last 100 years, there might be some geographical differences that seem to be much less pronounced with younger generations like the Gen Zs, perhaps because more of the things that we're talking about as major events are more global in their impact, so that's just something that when we think about, we're talking about a time period, 15 to 20 years, and major events that have shaped their worldview during that time period. Today we really interact with five generations within the workplace, and these are the generations, Vishal mentioned this a little bit earlier, but the traditionalists that are 78 years and older, baby boomers, 57 to 77 years old, Generation X, 42 to 56 years old, millennials, which is the major workforce right now in the workforce, and from what I spoke, I think is also very, very well-represented today in our audience, and Generation Z, which is a generation that is just now entering the workforce, but we might encounter in hospitals as maybe nurses on the floor or some of our students, but they are coming into the healthcare workforce as well. So it's important, I think, to recognize that all of these might be part of our patients, part of volunteers in the hospital, or part of the actual healthcare team. So recognizing these generations and how we can communicate with them and understand them, I think is a worthwhile pursuit. This gives you a snapshot of where we'll be in a couple of years, and as you can see in blue, the millennials will dominate the workforce. That is already true. They are the largest generation represented in the workforce right now, but that will continue to continue, I mean, at least for the next couple of years, and you can see that the silent, the traditionalists, I mean, slowly, I mean, most of them retired from clinical work, but there will still be our patients, and Generation Z will start growing as they enter the workforce as well. Vishal talked about the benefits of diversity in general, but there's also tremendous benefits for age diversity, and this has been well-studied, and skill diversity, right? Somebody who, you see that even at the bedside, right? Somebody who trained many years ago might be very adept with PA catheters. Somebody who just finished fellowship may have never placed a PA catheter, and all of a sudden, you need a PA catheter, right? So not only in terms of general skills, like with technology and other skills, but also within medicine, there are skills that are lost sometimes, and that diversity at the bedside can be very helpful. I think diversity, if we're curious, always opens our mind to learn more, right, and to question our own assumptions, and that is true for every team. Mutual mentorship. I have mentored young clinicians in their career, and when I started the podcast, I had no idea what to do. I called a millennial ex-fellow and said, hey, I need to do this. Can you help me out? And lo and behold, they mentored me through that process. So reverse mentorship also works very, very well. There's plenty of studies that creativity and decision-making, either from closing a deal to making a business decision, and I'm sure also clinical decisions, are improved when we have diverse points of views represented, and that's what's important about diversity. If everybody thinks like you, right, there's going to be very little chance for discussion or for thinking of solutions that are a little bit broader than the ones that you have in front of you. And then I think that I should also mention, from the perspective of future colleagues, employees, it gives you a competitive advantage also from a perspective of your customers, our patients. The more diverse we are as a team, the more representative we might be, or the more patients might feel identified with their team. So clearly, plenty of reasons why we would want to foster diversity in generations. So the second part of this talk will just give you some differences among these generations that I think are worth keeping in the back of our mind. And it starts really with some of the formative experiences. You can look throughout the years, but like the traditionalists went through World War II and rationing, baby boomers, the Cold War, Apollo 11, Woodstock, Gen X, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first PCs, mobile tech, millennials, 9-11, the invasion of Iraq, social media explosion, Gen Zs, right? Think about it. I mean, my Gen Z kid finished high school and went to college the first year during COVID. That's a tremendous impact. That's very different from other generations in how they perceive things. Also, they've seen the 2008 crisis. A lot of their parents lost jobs during that crisis. So very, very different in COVID-19. And you can see also that there are signature products that have marked those generations. For traditionalists, it's the car. For Gen X, it's the PC, the personal computer. And for millennials, it's really the handheld, the smartphone. The same way their attitude to technology is very different. And finally, what these generations have aspired has been very different. From owning a home for the traditionalist to job security for baby boomers, work-life balance for Gen Zs who had a lot of times both parents working, they're also known as the latchkey generation, freedom of flexibility for millennials, the idea of being a digital nomad emerges. And then Gen Z now has gone through COVID, through 2008 economic crisis, and all of a sudden, they want security and stability again, which is very interesting. So there are differences in how people learn. So if you have patients or colleagues who are baby boomers, they might want to read stuff. They want to read actual paper, right? Gen X might be very active and engaged in trying to investigate for themselves and doing their own searches, generation, why are millennials like websites and interactive apps? And if you talk with Gen Z, they want really short, short snippets, maybe TikTok, maybe Quick, but that's how people are learning. And that also has an influence of how we have to communicate with them. So just recognize that one size does not fit all, right? And when you try to teach, we're going to have to adapt to each individual learner. And that might be influenced by generation, but also might be just influenced by the way an individual is wired. In terms of some of these perceived differences towards work, for traditionalists, the jobs are for life, were for life. So they started in an organization and they retired, got a gold watch in the old days and they left, right? And they had the same job for a long, long time. For baby boomers, there is still a lot of loyalty, but they feel that their jobs were basically defined by their leaders and their careers. Gen X are very loyal to the profession, but not to the employer necessarily. Millennials are the digital entrepreneurs. They work with organizations not for them. And now you have the Gen Zs, which are what they call career multitaskers, and very likely to have a side hustle. So it's very interesting how these things are evolving, and that might be based on some specific values. So loyalty was very important for traditionalists, being very goal-oriented was very important for baby boomers. Gen X is about efficiency, productivity, and finding that work-life balance. Millennials now are thriving or wanting meaning again. They want to change the world and use their skills for that. And Gen Z really wants authenticity and they expect like diversity, for example, for a Gen Z is not an aspiration, it's an expectation, right? They are kind of like, what are you talking about, right? When you're trying, I mean, you should be diverse, period. And that also impacts the preferred work environment and their focus, right? Traditionalists are very task-oriented. Baby boomers were very great with building relationships and result-oriented. Millennials want to be more global in their impact and networked. And Gen Z is really a generation that's thinking about social justice and how do we make things better for everybody. So we shouldn't always be dismissive of the younger generations. There's also a lot that we can learn from them, right? In terms of communication preferences, very important to what Todd talked about with conflict. People recognize that you can't communicate the same with every person. And not every situation, right, it requires the same communication. So when you look at communication media, traditionalists wrote letters, right? Who has wrote a letter here lately, right? But they wrote letters and they use a fountain pen like I do. Baby boomers pick up the phone and dial, right? Gen X is all about email. Millennials just text me. And Gen Z is all about these apps that I don't even can't keep track anymore, right? And what's fascinating is a recent study showed that even Gen Zs prefer face-to-face conversations. But in their mind, that's FaceTime. It's not in person, right? So these things change over time. And we have to be aware of this, how we communicate with our team about certain things. Now I do believe that in-person face-to-face for certain things, especially like Todd talked about real conflict, is universal and unreplaceable. But as we communicate other things, we have to recognize that people do it in different ways and that's their expectation. So finally, in closing, what's actionable? What can we really do? And I believe that at the end of the day, like was said earlier, the goal is engagement. The bad news is that our trends are going in the wrong direction. This is some recent Prescady data that shows that we had a little bump for physicians and overall employees in 2021, but it keeps going down. But what I would say is that what engages all generations is universal. And it boils down to purpose, autonomy, and mastery. What we need to recognize is how do we talk about these things with each generation might have a little bit of a different angle. And that's where these differences become important. But everybody wants their work to be meaningful. Everybody wants to have the autonomy to use their skills to make a difference in the life of other human beings. And everybody is engaged when they're learning. That's why we're here today, right? And we can all learn from each other regardless of the generations. And the other thing I would say is that you manage individuals, not generations. We lead individuals and not generations. This for me is very, very interesting data from Gallup that looked at engage and disengage workers. And basically, if nobody talks to them, they're 20 times more likely to be disengaged. If somebody talks to them, but only tells them what they need to improve, they're twice as likely to be engaged. But if somebody takes the time to talk to them about what they're doing well and what they can continue to develop, they're 60 more times to be engaged. So as leaders, at the end of the day, what we need to figure out is how do I connect with the individual and how do I potentiate their strengths towards that purpose, that autonomy, and that mastery? The bottom line is when we're dealing with across generations, there's only three things that we need to bring to the table. And all of these three things were addressed earlier, empathy, true curiosity, and humility. And if we bring that to every encounter, we all will win. So I'll stop there. And I think we have another speaker, and then we have the discussion panel. Thank you.

generational differences

workplace diversity

communication strategies

engagement

leadership