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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
So once again, it's more complicated because we're all so different. We're all individuals and we all have different personalities. And I I look at the, generational descriptors, if you wanna call them that, or categories. Is just one part of the whole, but a part that can be important when we're looking for ways to connect with people.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow rate and review good morning HR wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at goodmorninghr.com.
Mike Coffey:Every fifteen to twenty years, we get a new generation entering the workforce. And very quickly, the older generations begin to roll their eyes at them. And maybe that's simply because the young folks think they know it all or maybe us old farts feel threatened by the kids or maybe there's something else to it. Joining me today is Sean Johnson, author of this handy little guide strategies for a generational inclusion at work, 68 proven solutions to increase productivity, innovation, and productivity or profitability even more. Sean is a speaker, author, and consultant who's worked with leaders from small privately owned companies to Fortune 1,000 firms.
Mike Coffey:She's passionate about working with leaders and their teams to foster generational inclusion using her own experience growing up in a four generation family business. Welcome to Good Morning HR, Sean.
Shawn Johnson:Thank you, Mike. It's I'm so happy to be here. I love that, discussion about the, older generations rolling their eyes at the younger generations. It's timeless. I mean, Aristotle referred to this, you know, over two thousand years ago that this was a problem.
Shawn Johnson:Continues to be an issue today. And me being from an older generation, I find myself doing that occasionally. I have to check myself because we were all young once and if you know, if things go well, we all are going to be older at some point in time. So it's that building of respect and understanding and things like that that that that's really my goal when I'm going to organizations or give keynotes is to see the you know, put ourselves in the other generations shoes. Let's say it that way.
Shawn Johnson:That empathy because we're all going through these life stages. It's just the way it goes.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. And you know, I'm Gen X and I'm on the leading edge of Gen X and, know, there were a lot of things said about us in the late eighties and, you know, predictions about what the world was gonna look like under genetics and, you know, according to a lot of those theories from way back then, I should still be sitting on the couch eating pizza, watching MTV all day. So, I get and, you know, as a career HR guy, I'm always nervous whenever we make broad generalizations about groups of people based on their demographics. I mean, everybody's genetics, family background, their experiences are all different. And we wouldn't make generalizations about people because of their race, their sex, their national origin.
Mike Coffey:So make the argument for me that there's value in in looking into and understanding generational differences.
Shawn Johnson:Well, I think there's absolutely value. And and I'll start so let me start with my growing up experience. That seems like a good place. My grandma that I grew up with on the same farm and my grandpa, they were children of the Great Depression. And they had some crazy habits that just made me roll my eyes.
Shawn Johnson:Like, my grandma had a walk in closet full of toilet paper. I kid you not. And, you know, during COVID, I wished I had that. I was like, where where is that closet? Let's get to it.
Mike Coffey:Future generations may have those, right?
Shawn Johnson:Yeah. But you know it was so hard for me to understand the way she thought about things because I grew up in the sixties where you know things are pretty easily available. I would have never thought twice about are we gonna run out of something like she did. And then you can fast forward that. Well you mentioned Gen X, I'm kind of a tail end baby boomer and baby boomers see things differently often times than Gen Xers because we tended to have more stay at home moms.
Shawn Johnson:We didn't have as much cable television like MTV. We didn't tend to go to school computers even in college. So we learned all those skills like computers and emails and things like that during our working career instead of during our education. So we see things a little bit differently. We might be a little more hesitant sometimes with technology because of that.
Shawn Johnson:And then you get to like the millennials and you can almost divide that generation in half because the ones that grew up with eye technology, think about work in different ways than those that grew up without it. So the older millennials grew up with like AOL online
Mike Coffey:Right.
Shawn Johnson:And the younger millennials grew up with iPhones. And so they think about work and technology different even though all of those generations from the baby boomers down to Gen Z can be tech savvy, we can use technology. My husband is very proficient proficient using his iPhone to do anything, but we tend to see it a little bit different. We tend to value technology in different ways.
Mike Coffey:So those are differences and there may be listeners who are people leaders out there who say, I really don't care about what those differences are. I just want to set the expectations. This is how we're gonna operate. You've got to operate at this level. You figure it out.
Mike Coffey:What would you say to that leader that just says, look, I'm not keeping up with all these generational things. I'm just gonna set expectations and expect people to to meet them.
Shawn Johnson:Yeah. Well, setting expectations is definitely the number one thing. And oftentimes leaders forget to do that because especially if we're a little older, we assume that people know what we think. You know, we we say work starts at 08:00, we think they're gonna show up at 08:00 and we don't set those expectations. But then to take it a step further and answer your question, once you set expectations, younger generations because the parenting styles are gonna expect you to give more of a why.
Shawn Johnson:And that might be really annoying especially for baby boomers like myself that grew up with the you do it because I said so Mhmm. Attitude not only parenting, but leadership you know as we came into the workplace. But it's just not gonna work with Millennials and Gen Z because they grew up in an atmosphere where both teachers and parents said, oh let me explain why to you. Let me let me tell you why. Are you gonna buy into this with me?
Shawn Johnson:I mean I remember having conversations with our millennial children where I was like trying to sell them on the idea that they should do something. That my parents would have just said you do it. Right. You do it or else. But the smaller families, you know, that millennials and Gen Z grew up in and the helicopter parenting styles, myself included, have led them to say, you you have to explain to us why we need to do this.
Shawn Johnson:And it's also led to a situation where expectations need to be set more often through the years. You can't just set them once.
Mike Coffey:And so because, I mean, and we still have this workforce, it still has boomers in it and all the way down to gen z. I guess the argument would be that if we want people to know how to work alongside each other, we want leaders to know how to motivate, incentivize, you know, and even direct and give the the right kind of information to an employee because I'm Gen Z and I don't know if this is necessarily a Gen Z thing, but I've always been very much just give it to me, I'll figure it out, let me just, you know, grind it out and I've definitely seen that especially with my millennials and my Gen Z employees on my team, you know, and it may be a factor of how we hire too, for certain personality traits I guess, but they really want to not only know the why, they want all the ambiguity removed.
Shawn Johnson:Yes.
Mike Coffey:You know, and for me, I thrive in ambiguity and so, and I don't know how much of it is personalities and for, you know, our hiring practices and that's worked really well for us or if that is a generational thing. But I guess understanding, at least understanding these broad things about generations as we begin to deal with individuals on an individual basis, it's not fair to make an assumption, guess, that a Gen Z person needs all this information. You know, there are Gen Z people out there who don't want that need, that constant praise and feedback and all that. But understanding that somebody, you know, who grew up with a certain set of experiences, you know, economically and what went on in politics in the world and just the social changes may have a higher tendency to think a certain way or to respond a certain way may give a sensitivity when we're talking to them or working with issues around around workplace issues?
Shawn Johnson:Yeah. I think it's all about conversation and curiosity, asking open ended questions because there's life stage issues like you mentioned in your introduction. You know, there's life stage issues. As we get older, we do things differently. And then there's also personality.
Shawn Johnson:Sometimes I'll be working with a group of leaders and leadership development and they'll say, you know our older, the older people that we're trying to lead, they just don't like change. And while there is some truth in that, I find as I get older, I might be a little more resistant to change. There's also personality types. You know, I do a lot of work with the DISC assessment and people that are High
Mike Coffey:I low S low C, that's me.
Shawn Johnson:Yeah. Yeah. So the high S's they don't like change.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Shawn Johnson:So you and I are good with change. And so to speak, like you know, we're gonna accept it more willingly, but you know, you might have a 25 year old with a high s that is very resistant to change of any kind. So once again, it's more complicated because we're all so different. We're all individuals and we all have different personalities. And I I look at the, generational descriptors if you wanna call them that or categories.
Shawn Johnson:It's just one part of the whole, but a part that can be important when we're looking for ways to connect with people because it describes the problems that people share that come of age in a certain way. For example, if you're Gen Z and you went to high school or college during the pandemic, you may not have had a graduation, right? Not one in person. You may have started work without ever meeting your fellow employees for two years. Those those are things that you experience that other people won't.
Shawn Johnson:So the rest of your life if you refer back to that with a group of people like yourself, they're gonna immediately connect with what that experience was like. Whereas for the rest of us, we can't quite I mean we can understand it logically, but we can't connect with that. So we share the same problems with the people we grow up with and even neuroscience. Doctor Carolyn Leif is her name. She's actually a Texan, but she's done a lot of work in this area and she says that the ideas we focus on, the things we focus on during our formative years will influence our thinking the rest of our lives.
Mike Coffey:That makes sense. Yeah. And I think we know just from the from DISC and other behavioral stuff that age 13 to 15, kind of what you're real short of a really traumatic experience. That's kind of who you are for a big part of the your oh, that's who your what that your natural behavior is gonna be at least for the rest of your life. So let's just for clarity, we've talked about these generations.
Mike Coffey:What are the age groups? When you're talking about these categories all the way, you know, back to the traditionalists of the boomers, what are the years are we talking about for each of those? Just so we're all on the same page because it seems like every time you it up on the Internet, it's a different kind of category.
Shawn Johnson:Yeah. Well, I tend to, refer to the Pew Research age categories. Although recently, I think last year they came out and said they weren't gonna they weren't gonna do that anymore, but they're still out there. And so I think of traditionalist as being anyone over 80. And a lot of times people are caught off guard when I say they're still at work.
Shawn Johnson:My aunt's 81, she's a school psychologist. The right in my family I have that. And you can take a look at Congress for even further Oh
Mike Coffey:my gosh. Yeah.
Shawn Johnson:Supportive of traditionalist being at work. And so Well,
Mike Coffey:they're showing up at least. I don't know if Congress
Shawn Johnson:is really
Mike Coffey:working, but yeah. Okay.
Shawn Johnson:Yeah. Yeah. We could debate that. Right?
Mike Coffey:Yeah.
Shawn Johnson:So baby boomers of course are behind that. So the oldest baby boomers are about 79. The youngest baby boomers are 60, 60 one. And then we have Gen X. And so Gen Xers are gonna be about 45 to to 60 somewhere in that age age range.
Shawn Johnson:You know and you see that we have these cuspers you know in every group. Mhmm. So like you and I are both probably cuspers and we might lean one way or another. We might be a blend, you know, of the ideology of the generations. Like you might be you might have some boomer ideology along with your Gen X.
Shawn Johnson:It's hard to that's why it's so complicated. It's kinda slippery. Right?
Mike Coffey:And and and and I'm probably unique in that my grandparents had giant impact on me growing up. Yeah. And so they were traditionalists. Mean they, you know, they were definitely children of the depression, World War two and all of that. And there are times where I do things and I realize, oh, that was my grandfather speaking when I said that.
Mike Coffey:And and so, you know, I guess, you know, the different influences people have make a difference, there too. So so Gen X is what about 65 to 1980, is that about right?
Shawn Johnson:Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Because 1980 is the beginning of the millennials, 19 80 one.
Shawn Johnson:Because they came of age at the time of the Millennium. '2 thousand. Y '2 k.
Mike Coffey:Okay.
Shawn Johnson:That's when they were you know, really the oldest ones were entering the world of work. And then of course, Gen Z follows them. So about '97 through 02/2015. And we call the youngest generation alpha, and starting this year, we have betas being born.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning. HR is brought to you by Imperative. Bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. Today, Thursday, March 20, I'm hosting a webinar entitled alt control delete, protecting yourself from remote employee fraud.
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Mike Coffey:You can register or watch the recording later by clicking on the education tab at imperativeinfo.com where you can also find all my previously recorded webinars. If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been pre approved for one half hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information visit goodmorninghr.com and click on research credits. Then select episode one ninety two and enter the keyword generations. That's g e n e r a t I o n s.
Mike Coffey:And now back to my conversation with Sean Johnson. So what are those as we talk about these different generations, especially in the workforce, what are the primary factors that shape those generational differences? We've talked on it a little bit. We just mentioned social or politics. Yeah.
Mike Coffey:But what are the things that really make a difference in how people, as they come of age, see the world?
Shawn Johnson:Well experts, tend to believe and and agree on the fact that parenting is the biggest factor. And, and we and I would say parenting influences the way we look at leadership the most of all of the things that we grow up with parenting because those are our leaders as we come of age. Might have faith based But that's where we get our information. And you see traditionalist, you know, they I'm gonna reach back to that generation because they thought of the leaders as the authority. When you were watching the news during the years that they were growing up and even afterwards, whatever Walter Cronkite said, that was pretty much it.
Shawn Johnson:And he would say that's the way it is when he'd close this, you know, his news broadcast. And then we see the baby boomers come in there a little more skeptical, know, Vietnam, things like that. And so you see leadership shifting with world events in that way because then you have Gen X and Watergate and all kinds of, know, corporate bankruptcies and corruption and people losing their jobs who should not have lost their jobs. And so there's more and more skepticism. News becomes more and more questionable.
Shawn Johnson:Right? We start having investigative reporting, things like that. And then alongside of that, we have the parenting trends of, you know, the mother being home, the authoritative parenting. Boomers grew up very in a very competitive environment because the parents had four or five kids. So the focus wasn't just on you and then you know, like I mentioned as we go forward Gen X, parents are busier, dual income households and millennials.
Shawn Johnson:We it's almost like a flip back, you know, where parents all of a sudden are very involved. They go to every sporting event. They only have two kids. Very focused on, are you in the right pre k? Are you going to the right college?
Shawn Johnson:Or whatever the case might be? Mhmm. And then Gen Z who tend to be raised by Gen Xers. It's a little different because Gen Xers tend to be a little more hands off than millennial parents were. So all of that, does that make sense?
Shawn Johnson:That all comes together. It's kind of world events and parenting and education side by side molding the way that we look at leadership. Look at what should happen at work.
Mike Coffey:And so we talk you said Gen Z is at age seven to 25, which only a small portion of that group has come into the workforce. And I think about the the that later group, you know, that were born 02/2005 to 2015, the last half of that, they've seen a lot of change in their formative years and they're not even in the workforce yet. I mean, they're, you know, 10, 12 years old and with the advent of AI, the the political discourse of the last fifteen years, all the things that they they see and, you know, I'm wondering if we will end up splitting Gen Z off just because there's been so much change into Gen Z part one and Gen Z part two or something just because it seems like that change has been so radical. I mean, I don't know if there's any prognostication out there about that, but I'm curious, you know, when we're 97 to twenty fifteen is a pretty broad range and I'm with the amount of change we've had, I wonder if that'll split. I'm I'm not sure.
Mike Coffey:Is there anything out there? Is there any research out there yet to say that these nine year olds are are are that different from the the rest of that cohort?
Shawn Johnson:There's not that I know of on Gen Z, but we do tend to look at generations, like baby boomers. Sometimes people call younger boomers generation Jones because they were always trying to keep up with the Joneses, where the older boomers were more concerned about, you know, civil rights and things like that. And the same thing with the millennials. The younger millennials have been called IY, generation y, and they're the ones who grew up with eye technology. So it's very possible the Gen z you might separate those that really grew up entering a workplace or finishing school during the pandemic versus those that were little kids.
Mike Coffey:Interesting.
Shawn Johnson:Okay.
Mike Coffey:Yeah.
Shawn Johnson:So but I haven't seen it yet, but it could be out there. Someone may have already done some research on this.
Mike Coffey:And time will tell I guess. So Yeah. As generations mature, do we see those values and work styles shift? You know, so what we said, you know, are we saying the same thing about Gen X at in our fifties as that we said we said about them that we would have said about them in the 80, you know, mid eighties to early nineties? Or do do we as we mature, do the does that population tend to change?
Shawn Johnson:I I think as we mature, we do tend to change. Jean Twinsch has done a lot of research on this And she says, one of the things that really caught my attention was when she talks about the fact that generations overall become more conservative politically and otherwise as they get older. Now that doesn't mean everyone that was at a liberal point of view as they were young are gonna become conservative, but they do trend that way as they get older. And there there's a lot of reasons that that could be. And she goes into in-depth analysis.
Shawn Johnson:But her book is called general I think that's in her generations book. I'm looking at my bookshelf. But yeah, she's done a lot of work on that. Yes. We do tend to change as we get older and become a little bit more like those who came before us.
Shawn Johnson:It's funny what life will do for you.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Well, there's that old there's that old saw that if you're if you're not liberal when when you're young, you don't have a heart and if you're not more conservative when you're older, you don't have a brain. I mean, you
Shawn Johnson:know, you can get
Mike Coffey:more to conserve and hold on to. I don't wanna get emails about that, but the, you know, and and definitely I can look back on my my, you know, thoughts about what the world should be like, what work should be like and things like that and how they've changed over, you know, almost forty years in the workplace. Actually, than forty because I got my first job in fifth grade, so fifty years. So, I can see that and I would I wonder what that tells us about, I guess, just leadership having to be pretty dynamic and really pay attention to maybe the Gen Z of today is in ten years for, you know, forgive me Gen Zers, maybe they won't be so needy or won't need that affirmation maybe they'll feel more independent and and maybe that's because workplaces will respond and give them that independence. But maybe that's what we should talk about is we've got these different generations, the boomers, gen x, millennials and gen z are the primary ones that are in the workplace.
Mike Coffey:Kind of go through the high level differences between what, you know, we'd just pick one whether it's what they expect from let's talk about what they expect from leadership what meaningful work means to each of those and how those would be different because I think those are you've got a by the way, her book's great and she's got a great on her website, a great cheat sheet. We'll put a link to to that in the in the show notes that you can download this great PDF that Sean has on her website. But kind of just go through maybe leadership, what to expect from leadership and and what meaningful work. Because I'm always concerned about making sure the work that people are doing is meaningful to them so that's it's more than just going and punching a clock.
Shawn Johnson:Yeah. Well, to start off with, I would say that every generation does want meaningful for work, just look at it differently.
Mike Coffey:Mhmm.
Shawn Johnson:Know for example, traditionalist would look a meaningful work is for the greater good. They grew up in a world rebuilding after World War two. They still tend to think about is this for the greater good. Think outside themselves, kind of a responsibility focus, know, like we're responsible for everyone around us. Boomers might think of meaningful work as something that helps them in their career, helps them in their growth, you know, helps them achieve their personal goals or helps them at this point maybe become better mentors.
Shawn Johnson:Meaningful work might mean mentoring others and bringing people with them on their journey as they get older, they tend to wanna leave a legacy. So that might be more meaningful work to them. Gen X and I you could correct me if I'm wrong here. But I think, you know, Gen X like work that's, balanced and pragmatic and practical and makes sense to them. They're very as a generation, very practical.
Shawn Johnson:And the millennials like work that's collaborative, that has purpose. You know, they're the first generation to say, what's my purpose? I have to have a purpose at work. And a lot of that came out of the way they were raised, you know, that they were special. That you have a special purpose, a special meaning.
Shawn Johnson:Some of the older generations didn't really get that message growing up. And then Gen Z, they wanna be authentic. They they want work to be flexible. They want to, you know, be adaptable. They they're very entrepreneurial in their work.
Shawn Johnson:So when you think about things that work well for them, you might think about giving them some autonomy and allowing them to discover things. At the same time, their work's gonna be more meaningful to them if they get this constant feedback loop that they're used to from social media and things like that to make sure they're on the right track. You know, where some of the older generations would just assume unless no no news is good news. Right? When you get to the younger generations, even though they like that meaningful work, they wanna connect to the bigger vision and they wanna know that they're on track to get there.
Shawn Johnson:They want that reassurance.
Mike Coffey:And I wonder if it's just a factor of being young means you're naturally impatient because certainly I was when I was early in my career. But it does seem like the younger generation, especially Gen Z, is less comfortable putting in their time
Shawn Johnson:Mhmm.
Mike Coffey:To to advance. That they, you know, they want more rapid know, they want acceleration in their career, want to to move ahead at a faster pace. And that's just my impression. Is that Yes. That really characteristic to them or is that all of us when we're young?
Shawn Johnson:I think we're all a little impatient when we're young, but the expectations once again, at least when I came to work, was that you paid your dues. And you know, I remember hearing like you, I grew up with grandparents and great grandparents and it was good things come to those who wait. Right?
Mike Coffey:Right.
Shawn Johnson:And and millennials and Gen Z in particular grew up with good things come to you second day air from Amazon. So you know Yeah. Yeah, fast is good, slow is bad. That's the that's the world they grew up in. That's the message they received from everything going on around them was that everything had to be faster And we as a society were expecting things to happen faster as technology increased.
Shawn Johnson:You know, think about it, you know, where we used to wait for things more even all of us, every age group got used to things moving along faster. And so that's the world they grew up in. They never grew up in the world where people said, know, good things come to those who wait, the early bird gets the worm, you know. That was not the world they grew up in.
Mike Coffey:So the title of your book is, strategies for generational inclusion at work. And that term inclusion, like everything with diversity, equity, inclusion has become a loaded term and means different things to different people. So when you're talking about general generational inclusion, what does that mean? Let's get that really clear for for
Shawn Johnson:everybody. Sure. Yeah. It it means the, the seamless blending of the wisdom of experience with the young ideology and the new perspectives of younger generations. I I had been in leadership development quite a few years when I kinda took this pivot into talking about generations.
Shawn Johnson:And the reason I was so inspired to do it was because I saw companies, especially larger corporations pushing people out by the time they were 60. They wanted to just put that person in a corner office and start encouraging them to retire. And I thought, how short sighted. Because these are people that intuitively know things that you can't learn in school and you can't Google it. You know, you Right.
Shawn Johnson:You know it because you've learned it through experience. And at the same time I was hearing my younger nieces, nephews, my children and their friends, younger people in my leadership development classes saying, no one listens to us. You know, we got all this education and we're excited about our new job and we try to share good ideas and we're just shot down immediately. No one wants to hear what we have to say. So why did they hire us?
Shawn Johnson:Why are we here? And that's how I got into the, discussion of inclusion. I know it's a hot topic or has been. Things are shifting a little bit right in the DEI space. But it was a hot it has been a hot topic.
Shawn Johnson:But what happens is when you have people that don't feel like they belong because of age, which is something we cannot help among other things. We cannot help how old we are. That's how old we are. And there's no sense of belonging. We feel unappreciated.
Shawn Johnson:Well that's why we used to have conversations about quiet quitting Mhmm. Disengagement. Because when you feel like you're not important and it's something you can't control, what do you do? You have to have a paycheck so you just kinda go through the motions.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. And you're not not in in some very low employee engagement. You're not contributing to the team. The team doesn't have that cohesiveness to really, solve problems and to move ahead. So we recognize these differences and that's interesting, but how can an employer leverage the knowledge that we're, you know, that we're that, you know, that we have about these generations to create a more inclusive and, you know, ultimately the key goal is a more productive workforce.
Shawn Johnson:Yeah. I think that's very important. Thanks for asking that. And it's a it's a cultural shift and it has to come from the top down, top leadership down because you have to have a climate, a positive climate where everyone is respected. I heard a story last week from an executive VP in a corporation say, he was in a meeting with younger leaders and he felt like every time he said something, they looked at him like, you're old, you're grumpy and you don't know anything and we got better ideas and yeah, just like go sit in the corner.
Mike Coffey:Mhmm.
Shawn Johnson:And that's not helpful and that's coming from the top levels of that corporation that they're not setting a tone for respecting across the board. At the same time, you know, younger ideas should be respected too. And then there should be a safe positive environment where we can discuss and and have those have those ideas and those differences collide in a positive way. Because what that does is expand options. We start having conversations about things that we would have never thought of if we were busy shutting each other down or staying in our little silo of thought.
Shawn Johnson:So it's a top down cultural shift to look at our differences as opportunities rather than problems.
Mike Coffey:And that's interesting because as I press the bell curve of age groups and start to go down on the other side in my volunteer activities, my board activities, and in my own company, sometimes I'll hear an idea and my first reaction will be, yeah, we tried that. And, you know, or yeah, that won't work because we've done this rather than hearing the idea out. So definitely there's something on I think with, you know, with the the higher experienced people, you know, because maybe we did try it and maybe it didn't work. But maybe it didn't work because of the people that were trying it or the technology available or the circumstances. And maybe a different perspective could make this thing happen and maybe we need to stop and hear these ideas from from young people.
Mike Coffey:But on and on the flip side, I would say that, you know, maybe the the the young people need to say, okay, you did try that. Tell me about what happened there. Maybe we can learn from that too and flip that conversation, oh, you know, and take some of the initiative to, not shut down that idea, you know, that this won't work, but understand why maybe it didn't before and how we plan against against that into the future.
Shawn Johnson:That's absolutely the right thing to do. Yeah. And me being older too, there are times that there are conversations that I get from younger people where I'm like, oh, no no no no, please. But if we can take a step back, hear each other out, and then really talk through it without feeling threatened. No one should feel threatened.
Shawn Johnson:It doesn't have to be my idea or your idea. Once again, that's that's kind of a mind shift. Right? You know, because it's hard sometimes to hear that we're wrong or we don't know what we're talking about. But those are the important conversations where we can really leverage the older experience, the younger bright fresh perspectives, and come up with possibilities that we wouldn't otherwise.
Shawn Johnson:But there it is important and I think this came up in this conversation with this executive is that he was watching things happen that had failed in the past. And it just seemed like, you know, the whole group was running in the wrong direction, gonna make the same mistakes and they didn't wanna hear about what happened in the past. So it is that balance between let's listen to what what's worked in the past and then let's also listen to how we might change that a little bit and avoid some of the the mistakes and and come up with a better way, better way to do things, better way to approach things.
Mike Coffey:Well, that sounds like a perfect place to end it. But thank you for joining me today, Sean. That was great.
Shawn Johnson:Thank you for having me. I've really enjoyed being here, Mike.
Mike Coffey:And you can reach Sean at SeanJohnsonSpeaks dot com.
Shawn Johnson:Link is It's
Mike Coffey:Oh, I'm sorry.
Shawn Johnson:It's SeanSeanJohnsonSpeaks.com.
Mike Coffey:Oh, yeah. SeanSpeaks.com or you can go to her website SeanJohnsonSpeaks.com and we will include all those contacts in her in the show notes. And thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please write us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen, and then share this episode with your favorite show social media platform. It really does help us reach more listeners.
Mike Coffey:And we'd love to hear your thoughts at goodmorninghr.com. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at rob makes pods dot com. And thank you to Imperative's marketing coordinator Mary Anne Hernandez who keeps the trains running on time. And I'm Mike Coffey. As always, please don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally.
Mike Coffey:I'll see you next week. And until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.