Nonprofit managers and consultants who advise charities on handling their multigenerational staffs offer the following advice for taming tensions between coworkers of different age groups:
Give promising workers chances to shine. Robby Rodriguez, the 35-year-old executive director of the SouthWest Organizing Project, an advocacy group in Albuquerque, and co-author of Working Across Generations, recommends flattening an organization’s hierarchy to give younger employees greater responsibility. “Even without a title, there’s a lot that managers could do to provide young people opportunities,” he says.
Encourage employees to share responsibility. This strategy may be especially effective for Millennials, people now in their 20s. “One thing that we’ve learned is that younger people tend to work better in group settings,” says Mr. Rodriguez. “When we ask, for example, in a staff meeting, ‘Who would like to head up this particular project?’ you’re not likely to see younger people raise their hand. If the question was rephrased, ‘Do a couple of people want to take the lead on this?’ that might be a way to flush out whether young people are interested in that.”
Rethink the executive director role. This strategy may help ease the bottleneck at the top of organizations, as many baby boomers postpone retirement, says Helen Kim, a co-author of Working Across Generations and a member of the Building Movement Project, a group in New York that seeks to help social-change organizations function more effectively.
For example, she says, perhaps the duties can be distributed among more workers. Eventually, perhaps the top job can be redesigned as one meant to be filled by one person for five years, as opposed to 20 years.
Experiment with two-way mentor relationships. Such arrangements, says Ms. Kim, allow for “equal openness and curiosity to learn” between older and younger employees. Such relationships could be time-limited and focused on specific topics, she says, to encourage greater involvement by time-strapped workers.
Don’t worry excessively about employees’ absences from the office. Younger workers in particular are used to working from remote locations and on the go. Focus on results, rather than the process for achieving them, to help improve communication, says Jamie Notter, a management consultant in Rockville, Md., who has a specialty in multigenerational issues. He also recommends anxious managers exploit technology such as instant messaging and text messaging.
Spell it out. Many younger workers don’t understand what role their duties play in an organization’s bigger mission. “Sometimes just taking the time to explain, ‘By you doing this task, our team is able to do this, our company is able to do this, and therefore we’re able to help our clients,’ will really help connect the dots for Millennials,” says Debra Fiterman, an associate at BridgeWorks, a management consulting firm in Minneapolis that focuses on managing diverse age groups.
Listen. Mr. Rodriguez cautions older managers not to shoot down younger workers’ ideas too quickly. “By and large,” he says, “we learn by making mistakes.”
