There’s never been a time in history like today where four generations have worked together alongside each other. As a team leader, that can present you with many challenges since your team could be comprised of older Traditional and Baby Boomer generation members right alongside Generation X and Y team members. If you don’t manage the relationships properly, the generation gap between your team members could seem as large as the Grand Canyon.

Here’s the problem. Younger team members often think the older ones are way too stodgy, rigid and stuck in their way of doing things. Older team members think the “new kids on the block” should pay their dues, hunker down and work hard, and quit expecting to be thanked just for showing up at work.

How do you find a happy medium and use the strengths of your team members to accomplish your team goals? Understanding what they want will go a long way in helping you make everyone a star.

For Traditionalist and Baby Boomers that means:

* Feeling important — they are the “stars” of the organization
* Being treated fairly
* Seeing that their knowledge is valued
* Allowing them to talk about and show you what they know

Gen X and Gen Y are looking for:

* Constant learning and growth
* Flexibility to try new things
* Access to information and people
* Ways to link what they do to the bigger goals of the company

So here are some suggestions for you.

* Pair up older team members who can be mentors to the younger crowd. The generations can learn a lot from each other. Carefully connect team members together — allowing older workers to share and younger members to learn.
* Listen with an open mind. Provide the young people on your team with a method for sharing their ideas. Give them the freedom — with loose boundaries — to try out their ideas in a safe environment.
* Help them understand the value. Have regular group discussions about how the team, and individual contributions have helped the organization achieve its goals. Make sure and celebrate small and large successes along the way.

What tips would you add for ensuring that the convergence of four generations in the workplace taps the strengths of all team members? Let’s talk about it.

One of the really cool things about the technology available today is that your team can be located around the world and still accomplish its objectives. It’s really not necessary anymore for the team leader and team members to be sitting together in cubes to get the job done.

But having a virtual team that is located in several different places can be a challenge. Adding a new team member to the team – and helping them be a successful team member – can be particularly problematic. Here are a few things you can do to make the change successful for your new team member and your existing team.

• Prepare for the hire. Before the first interview, define the goals of the position. Outline what characteristics are important for the team member to demonstrate to be a successful member of the team.
• Get your team ready. Involve current team members in the interview process. Allowing team members to “get to know each other” before the hire will make the integration process smoother.
• Make the first day special. On day one, have the new team member start their employment at an office where other employees work if at all possible. It will help them begin to make connections within the company that will be invaluable.
• Pair up for success. Assign a “buddy” to the new team member to help them become a part of the team. This will be their “go to” person while they are learning about the ins and outs of your organization.
• Create an integration plan. Map out the first six weeks of the new team member’s employment including who they will meet, what aspects of the business they will be exposed to, and how they will report back to you. You’ll want to include daily check ins with you during the first week and at least weekly check ins the following weeks.

Taking these steps to lay the ground work for a successful team member integration will pay off for you in the long term.

What do you think? Do you have some special steps you’ve taken when bringing a new virtual team member into your team? Please leave a comment below and we’ll talk about it.

As an experienced manager, how do I respond to a know it all supervisor who thinks she is a leader but is more a dictator. She has many other issues and will take off sick for two days or more. I am really here to help and do not want to be contradicted when providing information. Example would be “the clinic always has the medication in their facility”, when I definitely know that they do not have the medication in their facility. I just tend to walk away because she is the BOSS!

The Team Doc Says…

I’m going to ask the obvious question. Have you had a conversation with her one on one? Perhaps she really believes the things she says. Or, as is often the case for people at the top, she is getting filtered information from the staff.

If none of the above are the case, then you’ll either need to keep doing what you’ve been doing or start looking for another job where your expertise and opinion is valued.

What do you think reader? Can you offer additional advice? Please leave a comment.

I am the a program manager of a 14 bed girls facility and I am having a hard time having the staff become a team. Working as a team is important so that the girls do not split staff and triangulate… Any suggestions?

The Team Doc Says…

You must have a good foundation for your team to ensure they work well together. My favorite way to look at the basics that are needed for a team, is to use the definition coined by Katzenbach and Smith in their book The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. They say:

“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”

Every component in this definition must be in place within your team to function at its most productive. You can read the full definition of a team here.

The key points for helping your team work better together to provide a united front is to have a team based on trust and open communication. There is nothing that can separate a team with these components in place.