Game Changers, Part 2: From Zoomers to Boomers, The Generations at Work

With multiple generations working side-by-side in today’s organizations, building collaborative, meaningful relationships with colleagues of all ages is as important—and seemingly mysterious—as ever. How do we better understand, communicate with, and bring out the best in one another? Our panelists will share strategies and insights for recruiting, developing, and retaining talent from all generations.

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Transcript

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 0:06

good evening and welcome to the Game Changers series brought to you by the University of Notre Dame's Alumni Association and our sponsor YoungND, which supports our young alumni. Thanks for joining us. My name's Adam Kronk. I'm going to serve as the moderator for our panel tonight. I'm the Director of Research and External Engagement for the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good here at Notre Dame. We're the administrative home for the campus wide ethics initiative identified in the new strategic framework for the university. And I can't miss an opportunity to mention our mission, which is to convene a multidisciplinary community of scholars, students, and leaders to advance moral understanding and develop compelling responses to the most pressing ethical issues of our era. Inspired by the Catholic intellectual and social tradition, we then promote broad ethical inquiry in service to human dignity. interdependent flourishing in the common good. And it's in that spirit that I was excited and interested in joining this conversation tonight. If we're going to talk about interdependent flourishing and the common good, then the topic of multiple generations in the same workforce, is certainly a bullseye. The program tonight is called From Zoomers to Boomers. The generations at work, and it focuses on the reality that there are, depending on who you ask, four, five, or even six generations currently working alongside one another. To set the table for the conversation tonight, I just want to make a few quick observations about this topic overall. One is that, talking about and studying generational differences is an imprecise science. we are going to focus less on the boundaries between where one label starts and the next one stops. And we're going to focus more about things like, what events have shaped large groups of people? How are they motivated? What are their preferred communication styles? And what worldview might they be bringing, to the workplace? We'd really like to keep this away from the old kind of kids these days, kvetching, which is not a new thing. This goes back to the beginning of time. what we really want to do is focus on the strengths that exist. in the various groups of people of all ages, in our workforce today. keeping a positive frame and hoping to walk away with practical steps to collaborate better. Let's dive in. I'll quickly introduce the panel. we've assembled, three incredible human beings who have a lot of insight from different angles on this topic. First from the corporate world, we've got Amanda Van Overbeck. She's the chief of staff for Accenture America's CEO. Accenture, is a Fortune 500 company with three quarters of a million employees. serving clients in over 120 different countries. They provide professional consulting and technology services. They were recognized by Newsweek, this past year as one of America's most admired workplaces, which means that the people who work there, respect the place. and it's a place that job seekers want to work for. Accenture is a company that has long and successfully recruited At Notre Dame and is one of the top professional service firms in the world. Amanda has a wealth of experience gained over her 28 years at Accenture. And, not a Notre Dame alum. her husband, was class of 96 and she's got two boys. One graduated this past year and another is a junior. we're very pleased to have you with us tonight, Amanda. We've also, got Alessandro DeSanto, who's the co founder and CFO of Halo. I would bet that most of the people joining tonight are pretty darn familiar with Halo. It's a global startup. It's the number one prayer and Catholic app in the world. It's got over 20 million downloads. And it's been used to pray over 600 million times so far. it's available in over 150 countries. Alessandro was on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2022. He was in the midst of a successful career on Wall Street and left to focus on helping people pray. we are really thrilled to have you with us tonight, Alessandro, Class of 2015 from Notre Dame. finally, we've got David Yeager, one of the world's most influential developmental psychologists. Who has written a New York Times bestseller on the science of motivating young people. It's titled 10 to 25. I've read it myself. I actually pre ordered it, David, because I was paying attention to it. And it is a page turner. he is a double domer. and has also earned a master's and PhD from Stanford. He's a thought leader who gets consulted by companies like Google, Microsoft, Disney. The link is in the description. Has worked with the World Bank, the White House, his research is focused in every major outlet you can think of, When this topic was mentioned, David, you came to mind because of the way that you frame working with young people a very proactive and constructive way. welcome to all three of you. Thank you so much for your presence tonight. with that, introduction aside, let's dive in. My first question is for Amanda, if we could start this discussion with you walking us through what as the strengths of having a multiple generational workforce.

Amanda VanOverbeke 5:30

I sure can. and first I want to say thank you for having me, Adam, and all my new friends at Irish Compass, it's always a pleasure to speak, with folks from Notre Dame including David and Alessandro. I love this question. at Accenture, diversity In the workplace is our superpower. we would not be the company we are without it. all of the different perspectives are required, for us to bring innovation to our clients. We are very intentional about hiring and also developing people who have different backgrounds, different perspectives, and different experiences in their life. having people from different generations is super important. But it goes beyond that. When we look at diversity in the workplace, we're looking at people who have college degrees and maybe people who have come through an apprentice program and don't have a college degree. We're looking to make sure we have equal, measures of gender in the workplace. We have people from different ethnicities and races. We have veterans and, more. different ages is one thing, but diversity is a little broader than that. We're very intentional about bringing people in from different backgrounds. when I think about, the generational aspect and I go back to Accenture is at its heart, a technology company. So when I started, my experience was with an Apple IIe and we used a modem and had dial up access to the internet it was a big deal to get on the internet. I didn't even have a laptop at Accenture until I had been promoted the first time. So two years at Accenture without a laptop. people coming into the workforce today are super fluent in technology more than I ever was, and they don't know a time where you weren't always connected, which is good, and it's bad. there's such a different perspective, my generation, other generations that have come in, and even the ones before. So when you have these different generations that come in, they bring this institutional knowledge, right? So maybe my generation brings a set of problem solving skills where you had to bring out your paper and your pen and kind of work through your algebra problem. We didn't have Google. So we did, we solve things on our own, but then you have people who are coming in now who have had the ability to, say, okay, I know how to do all that stuff. Maybe that stuff's a little bit easier, but they bring in. world knowledge and access to technology and applications that I've never seen before. And so we have this melding of ideas at a technology company from, problem solving to these new technologies that are coming in and changing faster than anyone had imagined. And that's what is our superpowers in being able to bring all those together. I would say we have a workforce at Accenture, three quarters of a million big, that spans truly five generations and we need people at all levels. in the organization we need people from all these different backgrounds and age is one of them.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 8:22

I love it. a follow up question on those comments Amanda, what are, if you can cover a little bit, there are, some challenges and opportunities. What does Accenture see as strategies when it comes to communicating and collaborating, effectively?

Amanda VanOverbeke 8:38

Yeah, that's interesting. And there's not a one answer, that suits all, there's no magic tool or process that we use, but I would say it always starts Understanding any of the challenges and understanding what our opportunities might be starts with listening. And the listening, we call it a listening framework, right? We're a consulting company, so we have a framework for everything. we have a listening framework that includes things like surveys, even in the Americas, we have 90, 000 people. there's some surveys that go out, so we understand trends and sentiment. there are focus groups so we can understand, okay, we're hearing and we're seeing this and what does that mean? And then we have conversations in smaller groups. all of those, things combined, come together to form our listening framework, it's not something that happens once a year with a conversation or a survey. it's like a living, breathing thing where we're getting feedback from our people. I spend the majority of my day talking to folks, and it's amazing what I learn, the relationships that I build, the problems that you solve, just by listening and being open to those conversations. it is our listening framework, that we use to, to understand the challenges and try and come up with these opportunities. And I would say that there's different ways that we try and approach different generations. we have a benefit site where we're trying to, understand what people need. And we're trying to address multiple generations on that site. So look at benefits site and the first event is becoming a parent and the next one is becoming Medicare eligible. right there, we're trying to address everybody's needs and meet them where they are. We have different programs that target child care, mental health, LGBT plus offerings. we have all of those because we've listened to our people. I would love to say that we have a framework, a process, and we've rolled something out, and it's perfect, and we never have to change it, but I feel like as soon as we roll it out, it's old news. The processes and the way that we used to listen to people and gather feedback and information pre COVID is very different post COVID. what we can use to get people into an office pre COVID and post COVID is very different. And it's motivated in some ways by, generational aspects, but also by, people's lived experiences. I think long story short, it is a constantly evolving framework, but it goes back to, we need to listen to our people. When I spend time with my own team, I don't look at how old people are. I don't even look at their race and ethnicity. What I really look at is what are people's strengths. Gallup has something called the StrengthsFinder. You can find out how you rank on the top 34 strengths. it's important to understand the strengths of your team and how to bring together a robust, diverse team. I personally like using, StrengthsFinder. it tells me that I am not very good at including people. Includer is my lowest strength. And so I want to make sure that I have somebody that has includer way high on their strengths list. So we're making sure to get that variety of thought in our discussion. So I would leave it as we really need to make sure we're listening to people. there's a variety of ways to do that, whether you're looking at the big groups, Or the small groups, and they're equally important, it is a constantly evolving framework.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 11:48

Thank you so much, Amanda. Alessandra, I'd love to turn to you. you and Alex have been in the midst of scaling this thing up that you've been building. And I'm sure scaling involves hiring, right? so out there on the cutting edge seeing, what you're looking for, what differences you're noticing. And I just love you to riff for a little bit. what are you seeing as you scale up this enterprise, in terms of trends in generational differences?

Alessandro DiSanto ’15 12:16

Yeah, absolutely. excited to be here. So maybe for a little context, we're about six years in, three co founders, founding team of seven, all Notre Dame, 2015. So it's a very strong, Notre Dame DNA. I would say then we had no idea what we're doing or making it up. in many cases we're still doing that. some lessons I've learned along the way, I agree with everything Amanda just said. so I don't want to repeat any of those things. maybe, some marginal additions, we really come to think about in a startup, everyone's wearing multiple hats, right? And the ability to operate in that level is important, but equally important because people wear so many hats, there isn't this ability to have, backups and layers for everything, the idea of hiring for complementarity is really important for us. I think how that shows up is both in skill sets and life experience, but also different, perspectives. a lot of those, include generational perspectives. a couple of ways that manifests, I'm a big believer in the Who hiring method. If anyone's in hiring or things, there's a famous book called Who, G. H. Smart, book. And one of the in the book is that Before you start hiring, the first thing you do is create a scorecard of what you want this person to do. And I think one of the important parts that you can, that accomplishes is that it undercuts some of the natural biases we may have, particularly in a young startup culture run primarily by, millennials. to go naturally towards, similarity instead of complimentary for hiring people like you, if you put on paper the things you actually need to accomplish and then compare the people, the candidates and what they've done, what they've demonstrated ability to do on objective standards. You can short circuit a lot of those natural biases against, going towards, complementarity. the second thing I would add is that, particularly in a startup world where things are moving fast, we tend to not have the time, skills or resources to invest in as many of the training programs that you might get at places like Accenture, one of the natural benefits of an age diverse workforce is that you have built in mentorship and perspective, without necessarily all of the structures and resourcing around training. And so having people that have lived different things can act as natural mentors and teachers. and that, that can be by, directional when it comes to age, but the more experience you've had, the more things you tend to have done, those are two things that come to mind, the natural complementarity piece and being intentional about how you allow that to, manifest to avoid biases and then some of the benefits, particularly in, smaller or fast moving organizations. picking up inherent mentoring and leadership benefits by being diverse on the age spectrum.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 14:47

It strikes me, Alessandro, that Amanda mentioned the younger generations being, more comfortable with technology you are, running an app and what's interesting about your app is that its use is. in some ways counter to the trends of technology trying to be uber connected You're trying to use an app to have people, do something different than most technology is doing. Does that play a role in the team you try to create and the strengths of different generations?

Alessandro DiSanto ’15 15:21

Yeah, I do think, for the record, I think we are being counter cultural in that we should be, maybe take a step back from constant connectivity and focus our lives not on our own will, but on discovering God's will for us so that we can, adhere to it. it's great to be at a place, like Notre Dame where we can talk about that. the thing that comes to mind is one of the, Natural strengths of building as a founder is you build for yourself in many ways, you identify a problem and build a product around that and you are the initial test cohort. And so you build, assuming that there are other people out there like you, that's good at the beginning, but one of the natural questions you have to answer as you scale is how do you build a product for the entire, market for us, we're trying to meet each person where they're at in their own spiritual journey, whether that's age, state of life, progression down a spiritual journey, whatever that means for you. And I have a very, as an individual, I have a very limited perspective. As a leadership team, we have a naturally limited perspective because we're only so many people. I think it's important, particularly in a consumer, focused company. To build a team that represents the users you're trying to serve. there are things that you can't, run big market studies. one day we'll hire Accenture and they'll tell us all the things we don't know about, our user base. one of the hacks to get around, market segmentation is to hire a diverse group of people that you want to serve. then in the team you have built in. different user perspectives we have built different things that have proven to be really successful by virtue of the fact that people coming from different life experiences have different needs and they can bring them and we build them as a team. depending on what your market is, your employees are some of your power users. And having them on board allow you to build a better product.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 16:55

Love it. David, let's pivot over to you. I know you're in the midst of talking about this book that you wrote, pretty much every day, I can't think of a more relevant perspective to bring to bear on this than someone who eats, sleeps, and dreams about how do you motivate and work with. Young people, can you give us one? I'd love to just know what's the thumbnail summary? What did people on this call need to know about your research the point behind this book as a backdrop for this conversation?

David Yeager, PhD ’04, ’06 M.Ed. 17:27

Yeah. Thanks. I still can't get over that. Alessandra got Mark Wahlberg on a super bowl ad. that's pretty awesome. So I'm a professor. I studied developmental psychology and I, but I, I was a PLS grad at Notre Dame and then did ACE, the teaching program. I felt like I was a teacher mainly as a service. I did lots of Center for Social Concerns stuff at Notre Dame, and I learned very quickly that teaching is way more than just, motivating 13 year olds to, be good people. they actually have to learn how to analyze an essay and, be better writers. And I felt Despite how great of a program ACE was, a lot of the advice in the scientific literature wasn't that effective in helping me solve the problems that I needed to solve, which is how do I connect with young people and motivate them and cause them to be resilient? one interesting thing as I left teaching and went to Stanford to do my PhD in psychology, I learned that there's a lot of similarities between what works for a 10 to 12 year old as it relates to what works for a 22 year old. And specifically, this idea that young people are craving a sense of status and respect, a sense that you matter. That other people view you as a valuable person, like a contributor to your culture, to your group, that you have something about you that matters beyond yourself. And that's, true for junior employees showing up at law firms or tech companies, as it is for 13 year olds who just want to belong. what I've tried to articulate in my book is who are the great leaders? Who actually help young people find that sense of status and respect, like you help them be someone who's, prestigious but in a good way, not frivolously seeking likes on Instagram, you can do something that could keep your group alive, that could change society, that could improve the world, feeling that you are of consequence is really motivating for young people. The idea that you're a nothing, that you don't matter at all. That's like very demotivating. And so I tried to articulate in the book, what great leaders are doing that tap into that and do it well. and that's everything from, who's the best manager at Microsoft and how do they keep young tech employees? who's the best grocery store manager in Norway? His name is Oleg, by the way. I followed him for two years, and I interviewed all his employees. and his assistant managers, and his direct reports. who's the best high school physics teacher in Texas? His name is Sergio Estrada. I called him every Friday for three years. these people help young people have a sense of respect, they have a sense of status. But they do so by having extremely high standards and they're very supportive as people meet those standards. And that's what I call a mentor mindset. everyone on this call can think back on a time where they were a player in band a junior employee or had a professor or whatever it is. And the person who changed your life is rarely the person who had super low standards for you. Who was like, just do whatever. you'll be great. the person who changed your life usually expected more of you than you knew you could accomplish, but then walked the journey with you until you met that standard. that's what I call a mentor mindset. I don't mean you have to have coffee with everyone and tell them what their job should be. At any given moment, you're aligning the resources you have with someone's long term wellbeing, growth, and development. there's a lot, I write about this. It's very surprising and really interesting, but ultimately matches the intuition that many of us probably have which is that. if you take someone's dignity seriously care about someone enough to push them, then they will take themselves seriously and work really hard. And the punchline for the theme of this call is a lot of people are out there saying, young people don't want to work hard. They're just a bunch of lazy, woke, wimpy idiots who don't care about anything. And that's not my experience. My experience is that young people are just more discerning. And where they're going to deploy their attention and motivation. in the nineties and earlier, maybe we were okay. hating our jobs until our mid thirties. We were like, I got a paycheck at least. And I think young people today are just a little more, they're like, you can take me seriously and respect me while also compensating me. And I think that they're a little more selective and I don't think that's because they're entitled. the toothpaste is out of the tube. We know that life in the workplace can be better than it has been in the past. they're aware of that and they're asking for it. And I think if we want to attract and retain the best talent in whatever industry we're in, then we have to take that seriously. And so that's really what I write about in the book. That's all I have to say about it.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 21:54

What's that?

David Yeager, PhD ’04, ’06 M.Ed. 21:55

That's all I have to say about it for now.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 21:57

Will you? Okay. So I would love to hear from Amanda and Alessandro, how those thoughts Land with you, and what resonates, but I can't resist David asking you to comment One of the things I was nodding my head at when I read your book before you got to proposing the mentor mindset was this notion of the, neurobiological incompetence model, which is a pretty sticky. thing that I feel like a lot of people carry with them, Would you just explain what that is?

David Yeager, PhD ’04, ’06 M.Ed. 22:30

Yeah, a lot of scientists have said, you can't expect anyone under the age of 27 to make a rational, logical choice because their prefrontal cortex has not developed. And so the idea is yeah, I know you started puberty at 11, but even though your hormones are raging and you're wanting to be an adult and you want to have responsibility and you want to be in charge of stuff, You don't matter until your early thirties is that's the societal view because your brain is too impulsive that your emotional regions of your brain are going nuts and your prefrontal cortex isn't powerful enough yet to constrain that impulse. as a PLS major for a second, if you read the Phaedrus, the Plutonian, dialogue, there's this metaphor of emotional winged horses circling the air, going up to the heavens, and they're out of control, luckily there's a charioteer that can lash and whip the passions into heavy discipline, that's a metaphor for the prefrontal cortex, managing the limbic system in the brain. the idea that's been around for thousands of years is that when you're growing up, your emotional regions are out of control and your prefrontal charioteer is not yet powerful enough. that's why you have all kinds of dumb stuff that teenagers do. that general view is what I call the neurobiological incompetence model. that there's a puberty induced frontal lobotomy that prevents teenagers from making wise choices. And look, I get it. I know teenagers do dumb stuff. Like they throw rocks off bridges and other things that we wouldn't do. most adults, when they look back on their younger years, they laugh, they're like, Oh wait, weren't, we hilarious. Look at the dumb stuff we did, but it wasn't that bad. But then when young people do the same stuff today, they're like, society's going to hell in a handbasket. these kids, there's something wrong with them. And what I argue is that it's not the case that our neurobiology causes young people to be incapable of rational, logical thought. it's impossible for them to delay gratification. An alternative view is that they just deploy their considerable cognitive resources for other stuff besides what adults want them to. take the case of a high schooler, what adults want them to do is to factor trinomials and balance stoichiometric equations, right? That's what most 15 year olds are supposed to be doing. and they're like, you're not doing that. Don't you care about what wage you're going to get in your mid thirties? And the kids are like, that's so long from now. I'm not really interested in that. But if you ask them to sneak out of the house and go to a party, they're very good at planning ahead. They're like, who do I have to lie to? Where's the map of the sewers? I'm going to sneak out of this place. and we just had the Olympics this summer and young people clearly showed amazing self control for a decade before they became the best, volleyball player or whatever the sport was. it takes incredible dedication, self control, discipline, et cetera. And so the real challenge for managers, how do I tap into the motivational prioritization of young people's brains? Instead of thinking of them as purely incompetent, they're instead directed at different kinds of stuff than maybe we think about in our 40s and 50s. And once we understand what those things are, not only can they be great workers, but we as mentors can change their lives. in our professional careers, with young people, who show up at our funerals or our retirement parties and are like, this person changed my life. they were tough, but supportive and mentored me when I was new in my career. I think a lot of us would get a great deal of gratification out of the idea that you leave behind a wake of young people that you've inspired to be their best. Not because you look down on them for their neurobiological incompetence, But because you found a way to tap into what most deeply motivated them.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 26:13

Thank you so much. Amanda, let's go to you. What resonates about David's framing here in your experience at Accenture?

Amanda VanOverbeke 26:21

I think You said several very interesting things, David, and I hope that one day we get to meet for a cup of coffee and toss some ideas back and forth, but the one that really stuck with me is, when you talked about how some of the younger generations are more discerning today. I wholeheartedly agree with that. I remember when I first started at Accenture and someone told me to do something and I said, sure, and I'm going to do it really well. I'm not sure that I ever asked why. it was a lot about, tell me what to go do and I will go do it. as I progress in my career, I want to know what, but really I want to know why, So I find myself asking why a lot. And I thought that maybe that just came with age. But what I have found is that it doesn't. I think it's just a total shift. And I think we short change, ourselves and we would shortchange people at Accenture if we only talk to the younger generation about the what now. I don't believe that's motivating. And so when I talk to my teams and when I talk to larger groups at Accenture, I talk a lot about the why first. Why are we doing this? What problem are we trying to solve with our client? So I get the why, you get people excited, they start to see how they can fit in, and then we talk about the what. Okay, now you need to go do this, and this is by when we need to have it done. And people are like, gung ho. And the best part about giving them the why first, and then the what, is that oftentimes the people on my team have better ideas on how to get it done than I do. until I started telling people about the what and the why, they did what I asked because I was their boss. But when I started talking about both sides I got a much better answer from the group what I've seen, which is exciting, is some of the people who used to work for me are now leading other teams They say, I did it your way. we talk about why we're going to do something and everyone's excited to do it. people need to understand the what and the why sometimes is even more important.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 28:13

and that I think is a good example, Amanda, of maybe it's true a younger generation has a higher desire for that wasn't being expressed the nineties. Right. But it's certainly good for everyone in the workforce, regardless of their age, to be managed like that and led like that. it's certainly not exclusive to young people that would be an effective approach. Yeah. Alessandra, how about you? What about David's ideas there? Do you find bearing out in your work at Hello?

Alessandro DiSanto ’15 28:42

Yeah, in the middle of it, I've, officially, purchased on Amazon. I look forward to, digging in deeper. I think there is a, and I'm gonna forget the exact language of the model you used. that is not the right one, David. I agree what I would call, the pessimistic view of Gen Z or just young workers in general. I think it starts, with a fundamental, misunderstanding of, what it is to manage people. I heard, that the ideas were, triggered in listening to David. And it's if you think a junior person, Is like a commodity, I'm trying to think of the right physics terminology, but like work production engine where you like put in money and you get out X lines of code a week or the sales quota a week and their purpose, during the time where they are on the clock is to. Successfully repeat a prescribed set of behaviors to, maximize output. maybe that is the right perspective in a, Hershey Kiss manufacturing facility where you're just trying to do things over and over again. But evolving into a more knowledge work ecosystem, particularly in a remote environment, and in a world where technology is being used to automate a lot of those, commoditized input output parts of labor, is the team that should apply creative force to bring about a desired goal. one of my reactions was exactly what, Amanda said, where the prescription of how to do things is usually not a consistent determinant of what ends up working. One of the things we focused Our one on ones about our performance feedback structure is around clear articulation of goals and expectations and putting the manager in a position where it's their job to bring context or remove roadblocks to enable whatever the individual contributor is supposed to be doing, to, complete their job. the manager says, here's the goal. We agree on the goal. How can I help you do that? I think that type of framing, which basically what I heard Amanda say, is really empowering, but also gives the required support for someone that can say, okay, great, I want to do that. I don't know how. Or that isn't a legitimate reaction that many people might have, but in that case, the right job of a manager is to teach them. In other cases, it says, got it. I think this would be a good way to do it, Okay, great. go do it. What the manager should be doing in a given situation starts with identifying a goal and then listening to Amanda's point on, what is required to get there. and I think all of that is very much in line with, the zoomer generation. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about why young people are leaving the church, right? And so there's a lot of research on that and one of the interesting things that comes to mind is we're thinking about this relationship is that there's been a overall decline in just trust in institutions generally and Authority used to come with credentials. And so that could be your priest That could be your CEO. That could be your bank teller. And whether you look at big politics, big business, big church, people's willingness to just do what they're told and trust the system is out there to do the right things is down across the board. what has replaced that, at least the research I've looked at, is this concept of relational authority. And kind of building trust with an individual person that you are on the same team, you're achieving the same goals, and that you have a valid perspective and role to play. And so I think if we think about how we grow our organization as managers and as leaders, about building trust and relational authority by setting the right goals and working hand in hand to do them, each with their own roles and responsibilities, I think that really empowers the fullest actualization of both Zoomers and Boomers and everybody in between. We're reframing the conversation of what is labor.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 32:26

as piggybacking on that and seeing that this was a question that folks asked as well, I certainly want to be cognizant that this is not a one way street, older generations managing younger generations. We certainly have a phenomenon. of young people. We've got a lot of young people on this call as well. So there are young people on this call who are tasked with managing folks from older generations, and that's its own, ball of wax. And also what does it take to be. Managed well be the recipient of that mentor mindset. I'd love to have all three of you cover both of those topics. Let's start with this concept of Advice or things you've seen work out or ways of thinking about a younger person at work who's managing a team that might have folks who are from an older generation, say they're 10, 20, even 30 years, they're senior. What have you seen work?

Amanda VanOverbeke 33:20

I'm happy to start with that one. if that's okay with the group, and I will start with saying, I have done this, when I was younger. young and managed people who were older than I was. And the first time I did it terribly. So part of it is you have to give yourself a little grace, figure out what worked and figure out what didn't work. if I reflect back on the first time where it really didn't go well, there was a couple of things that I, ways, in which I went wrong and that I tried to. correct the next time. the first thing is I came into it feeling like I needed to know everything. I was managing this team. I needed to have command of all the facts. I needed to know more than everybody on my team. And of course that's not possible, but I tried and I wasn't approachable. so I think the first thing is to acknowledge that people are on your team. And they're bringing that diversity of thought. They're bringing that diversity of experience and it's welcome. You welcome people who know more about a technology or have done this five times before. it's good to invite those ideas and thoughts The second thing is, I think you have to be open with people about what you're bringing to the table. I'm the lead of this team and here's what I want to accomplish as your leader. There's other things that I don't know. So I think being humble and being approachable and listening is so important. again, don't think that, you have all the answers. You don't need to try and act that way and then really, help people understand what you bring to the table and how you can help the team. And then listen, like as you're going, you got to listen. when you are leading a team, sometimes it will go incredibly well. And then sometimes things go off the rails. And that's when I mentioned that listening framework at the beginning. Part of that is just constantly talking to your team, picking up the phone, talking to them, how's it going? how are you feeling about this? And make that space to really listen. And like really listen, which means not responding right away to people just saying, okay. My favorite phrase is, tell me more. Tell me more. I want to understand. Tell me more. Give me an example. Help me understand. And I think if you are not coming in as the know it all, if you're really listening and you're helping people understand what you bring to the table, you're going to be successful at leading all generations.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 35:34

David or Alessandro,

Alessandro DiSanto ’15 35:35

Yeah, happy to jump in. I agree with everything Amanda said, so I won't reiterate listening. I think one super tactical thing that I found helpful, we're up to about 100 full time now and 185 including part time and contractors. I've hired, probably mid 30s or 40s people. about half of them are older than me, half of them are younger than me and, manage most of those people. one of the things that I instituted that, I think everyone found helpful was this idea of a management scouting report. I discovered this thing, through, I think a private equity fund that is, use it in their portfolio companies called Parker Gale. it's a two by two grid where you fill this out about yourself, when a new person joins, you share your scouting report with the team. if you're on a sports team, your professional team, or, Division 1 team, someone on your team's job is to be a scout. You watch the other people play, pick up their tendencies so you can come into the game playing to those tendencies or against those tendencies. Instead of having to spend the first half of the game trying to figure things out the hard way, getting beat, having tough outcomes, and trying to adapt mid game. So the idea is, I think it's particularly relevant in the cross generational, either up or down, because just the way people's expectations of how they work, what they expect from others, is very different. And so addressing those up front and talking about them explicitly help us to make those tweaks that avoid some friction filled experiences that can often happen at the beginning of our interpersonal experiences. the four titles of things, which I'll read, because I think they're helpful. One is the natural strengths that I lean on, So giving people space to tell the other people, I am really good at this type of stuff. So if you're a manager, it gives your report, confidence. I can trust them to, really own that. Or if you're a manager of the IC, I can find things that can emphasize these traits skills, because I know they're really good at those. The second is I love it when people who work with or for me do X, Y, Z. Those tend to be communicational norms or how they receive praise most of the time we're just flying dark on that. we assume other people like the things we like and we do them and upset people without knowing it. being able to praise people in a way they like to be praised, communicate in a way that they like can go a long way. The third is a tendency of mine that I may overuse, or some people may find annoying, it demonstrates self knowledge. It demonstrates that you're not perfect, and that when you experience it, it gives the permission who is observing that to, Think about it as more of a you problem than a me problem. obviously you're working on it and you try not to not work on your, weaknesses. But I think that diffuses a lot of tension because people at least own that and can replay that language back to them and say, Hey, we talked about this, feels like this is one of those situations where you're leaning a little bit too much on X or whatever. And then the last one is at work, my triggers are whatever. this one, I found to be pretty different across the generational cohorts. I'm thinking of one particular person who was older than me who really hates when people join Zooms late. And has, and understands that he has a irrationally emotive, emotional, negative reaction to, being one minute late. I tend to be one or two or three minutes late to a Zoom, because I tend to be back to back and running to the restroom or grabbing water. But for him, I know that I'm going to join on the dot every time, and that allows things to go more smoothly. that's one super tactful thing that I have found at the beginning of a relationship, especially when people are joining teams, or you're working with someone for the first time. it's very important to read those off and you have a running start on how to work with them.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 38:53

Thank you so much. I love a good practical, tactical takeaway from a conversation like this. So I really appreciate you taking the time to share that. David, anything, to add to that topic? I've got one other thing I'd love to ask you guys about, anything that was missed?

David Yeager, PhD ’04, ’06 M.Ed. 39:07

I try to never join a zoom on time. no, Amanda's right. for a while I was working on a piece on all the tech layoffs, that happened a year and a half ago or whenever that was. And I banned it because highly qualified MIT engineers who were forced to move from meta to Google, wasn't a sympathetic story. So no, I didn't care about those people. And I abandoned the piece. But one thing I learned was that, Managers who came from fancy MBA programs and thought of their relationship with their direct reports as a checklist, like they were reciting things they learned at their Stanford or Harvard MBA, everybody hated that, basically. I think this idea that if you could imagine a young MBA coming from a top program and then managing a relationship, like it's a checklist with an older direct report, that's going very badly. And I heard a lot of stuff actually. I guess the only thing I would add to what Amanda said, which is listening sounds obvious. You're like, oh yeah, of course he listened, but listening's hard. And the reason listening is hard is because you think you know everything. especially, the better institution you went to, the more confident you are that you know everything. I would actually be, extra concerned that you're, super bad at humility. The more, impressive your credentials are. what people really don't like is when they have a legitimate problem, and then they're managed in a way that makes them feel Like they don't matter, like they're just another widget on an assembly line. it gets back to respect, the more that you're managed like you're a cookie cutter on an assembly line, the more you feel dehumanized. the number one way to make people feel disrespected is to dehumanize them. this is another way of echoing what Amanda says, and I think it's super important.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 40:40

I love that point self awareness and how you're showing up. I. I'll answer one question that I think can just be a quick, factual answer to a question that was asked, which is Amanda had referenced, a resource from Gallup earlier, and that is, is a tool called StrengthsFinders, which I believe is all one word. but if that's not what you were asking about, Paul, go ahead and type in a different survey, but I'm relatively confident that's the resource Amanda referenced. The hour certainly goes quickly. we did have a question about motivating more experienced folks who may potentially be dug in or relatively committed to a viewpoint? we're all familiar with the, this is how it's always been done here, answer for why we're doing something that's never the best reason, but a pretty common one, any wisdom to share, on behalf of Erica here.

Amanda VanOverbeke 41:29

I feel bad for always going first, but I'll do it again. I've also had experience with this. I bet all of us have, who've been in the workforce for a period of time. I find that when people dig in, it's because they aren't feeling heard, and they probably feel like whatever they're doing is really right for whatever reason, or maybe they're really super pissed off and it really doesn't matter what they're digging in. about, they're just gonna dig in. And so that's where you have to go back. And I know I keep saying the same thing, but you have to go back and you have to listen and you have to ask questions. Tell me more. Tell me why. Help me understand. if this is our objective, tell me how this is going to help us get there. And so I, I often think of there's two ways to lead teams. there was a question about a leader versus a manager. my answer is, managers manage from the front. They tell people what to do You should go do this, you should go do that. And my visual image of a leader is someone who leads from behind, or who leads from beside to get their team all moving forward in the same direction. if you have a case where there's someone from a different generation or background and they are dug in, you have to understand why. standing in front of them and pulling them with you isn't going to work. They're just going to dig their heels in further. you need to get beside them understand what is happening and why and then help chart a path forward together. I think that's the way to get everyone moving forward together.

David Yeager, PhD ’04, ’06 M.Ed. 42:53

Yeah. And I agree. For my book, found a bunch of great managers. one of the people I had followed for a long time, her name is Steph Okamoto, and she was Microsoft's best manager, she eventually became the head of manager training and onboarding. she defined manager success for Microsoft. Now she's at ServiceNow and owns manager development for that company. and one of the, and so I just, I interviewed a lot of her director reports to tell stories about how she did her job and what was successful. I was amazed by was that she was never like solving problems for her director. It was their work, their projects. she was often removing barriers for their work. she had a young employee in charge of global manager and employee onboarding. Microsoft hired 30, 000 employees during the pandemic. this one person was tracking the training and onboarding of all 30, 000 new employees. they did not have a dashboard to do this. This is amazing. It's Microsoft. so she was like, we need a tech dashboard to track the progress for all 30, 000 new hires. But she was an education person. She had done Teach for America before she came to HR. She didn't know how to manage a team of engineers. And so she made this plan with her manager, Steph, to create the data dashboard to track the onboarding progress of all the 30, 000 new employees. That meant she had to interface with the engineers who at tech companies are super protective of their time. And in fact, they look down on everybody else at most tech companies. They're like, look, I make 500, 000 a year and you're a nobody. So I'm not giving you any of my time. And so Steph's main responsibility as the manager. What's to talk to the other manager and say, can you guys just be a little generous with your time here? Steph didn't manage the team. She just created, it was blocking and tackling stuff, Like creating space so that somebody else could thrive and flourish. And I think a lot of great management across generations is figuring out how to help someone else. Look amazing at their job. What is their stretch goal? how can they overperform? and then how do I get other stuff out of the way? that's, in my book, I write a lot about this idea of a mentor mindset, my job isn't to do stuff for you and my job isn't to blame, shame, and condemn you. My job is to push you to be as great as you can be, but to remove logistical barriers within our large bureaucracy of an organization. And I think that although my lens was young people, anyone who wants to make a name for themselves in an organization wants that kind of experience. these ideas of feeling like you have a chance to earn status and respect, generalize across age groups.

Adam Kronk ’02, ’09 MNA 45:27

Thank you so much. please join me in thanking Amanda, Alessandro and David their time tonight. We appreciate you tuning in, grateful for the sponsorship of YoungND, who serves our young alumni. This series, Game Changers, is brought to you by the Notre Dame Alumni Association. It's powered by Irish Compass, the university's official professional online community for alumni and students to network. Access Mentors, by the way, there's like a pool of a thousand mentors who are Notre Dame alums who are happy to serve as mentors, by the way. Uh, and, and help find jobs and more. we invite you to be active participants on irishcompass. nd. edu. we're really grateful, for your time tonight. Thanks for joining us and go Irish.