This past week I spoke at two HR conferences. It’s always a lot of fun to meet new people and often we get some business from it. After all, what organization do you know that has all perfect managers?
A trend I’ve seen quite a bit over the past few years is one that irritates me. Actually it started out by irritating me, then it annoyed me. Today, it actually infuriates me. That topic is anything related to managing different generations in the workplace. Two conferences are advertising keynote speakers that talk about generations. These topics generally do two things:
- Entertain. These topics can be fun to listen to. Sort of like the guilty pleasure of going to Walmart to look at all the weird people.
- Stereotype. The thought here is that if we can find characteristics of a particular group, we then can short-cut any sort of management techniques by painting the group with a broad-brush approach.
And herein lies the problem. Stereotyping is wrong. Period. After all, if we used any other generalization to categorize a group of people (gender, color, sexual orientation, country of origin), we would find our organization getting sued and ostracized in public.
If only there was a shortcut to better manage people.
There isn’t. If there was, I would have already figured it out and sold it to you. The only way to properly manage people is to get to know them where they are and hold them accountable to your standards. No need to stereotype them by generation. Building rapport, taking an interest in their career development, setting goals, and monitoring performance. That process is timeless. No need for fancy terms and surface-level assumptions.
This week, let’s all go back to basics. The best bosses on the planet can manage and motivate based on standards and people rapport.
Timeless is always relevant. Relevant is where we all need to be.
