More generations share the workplace now than ever before...are you what you should out of inter-generational sharing and dynamics?

Drawn from one of Claire Raines' books, Connecting Generations: The Sourcebook for a New Workplace, this highly interactive and informative workshop will help participants and their organizations understand what it takes to create more effective working relationships and improve business results by applying generational understanding to workplace challenges.

Diversity Concepts

The beginning of the workshop includes defining diversity and exploring different ways of sorting diversity. Participants will begin to recognize the benefits of generational awareness and adeptness by identifying the benefits for themselves and the organization. We will review the purpose and key outcomes for the workshop.

Connecting Generations™: The Game

We use the game early in the workshop as a hands-on activity that introduces the generations, their histories, characteristics, and preferences. Connecting Generations™ offers concentrated learning based on discussion that involves everyone with each role of the dice. It offers insights about work styles, behaviors, value systems, and career goals. Its interactive Q&A style prompts group discussion that creates understanding and builds skills. The debrief of the game covers five key concepts: definition of generation, shaped by our times, the titanium rule, generalizations vs. stereotypes, and ethnocentrism.

Applying Generational Concepts

After participants have a basic understanding of generational diversity from playing the game, we transition to, “How can this information be useful to me in everyday work situations?” In small groups, participants fill out a matrix that identifies each generation’s key formative events, characteristics, preferred work environment and communication style. A large group debrief allows patterns to emerge, and participants recognize the value of looking at work situations through a generational lens.

Individual Action Planning

Participants think of real-life work challenges that they now believe could be attributed to generational differences. Individual writing time is allotted for choosing relationships that could be improved upon and identifying new approaches. To synthesize the learning, participants debrief their action plans with a partner.

Personal Circumstances and Individual Profile

To incorporate other important dimensions of diversity, we examine how ethnicity, country of origin, and socioeconomic differences have caused participants to be similar to and different from their generational profiles. Participants learn about similarities and differences of others in the room, and how those relate to generalizations and stereotypes.

Generations in the Workplace Video and Coaching Activity

Generations in the Workplace is a newly released, interactive training video. It is set in a business meeting that includes members of four generations. The meeting dynamics depict typical interactions and conflicts between team members of different backgrounds—along with ways to overcome those differences. Participants are able to apply what they’ve learned in the previous modules by coaching members of each generation on how they could have been more effective in the meeting.

Titanium Communication Strategy

Participants have the opportunity to think about a real work situation where they need to “sell” or get buy-in/support from their colleagues for an idea or strategy. They examine what they would say if they were using their own natural styles. Then, with their colleagues back at work in mind, they adapt their presentations to make them more persuasive, thinking of how they might approach each colleague and what language they might use. Participants work on their own, then we debrief in the large group where they have an opportunity to present their ideas and receive feedback from the group.

Summary of Key Learnings

To summarize and integrate what they’ve learned, participants are asked to think about what they would say tomorrow to a colleague who hadn’t attended the session: What did you learn? What were some of the key points or concepts that you came away with? What will you do differently as a result of having attended this session? The facilitator will wrap-up by reviewing key learning points and providing a thoughtful, meaningful closure to the day.