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Racquet Fuel provides insights into the best practices and innovations of racquets industry business leaders.
Co-hosts Kim Bastable, Director of Professional Tennis Management at the University of Florida, and Simon Gale, Senior Director Racquet Sports Development at the USTA National Campus, help racquets leaders in your ability to grow the game and to improve the experiences you offer to both your staff and players by talking to industry leaders, including USTA executives, authors and innovators. If you are on a career path in racquet sports or already a racquets business leader and you want to stay up to date on ideas and innovations in racquets industry business and leadership, this podcast is for you.
Presented by the Athlete+ Podcast Network at the University of Florida Institute for Coaching Excellence.
Hi. This is Kim Bastable. And as Simon and I plan and record season four of Racquet Fuel, you will be enjoying replayed episodes from seasons one through three. There's incredible content from our previous episodes, and we want to inspire leaders and really help any tennis player or rackets player to consider a career path in the rackets profession. The content from our previous episodes should not sit on the shelf, so we're happy to provide it for you.
Kim Bastable:Please enjoy this episode recorded last year. Welcome
Episode Narration:to Racquet Fuel, where we launch into great conversations and share powerful tools to help you become a stronger rackets leader. Your hosts are Kim Bastable, a former all American tennis player and now the director of tennis management at the University of Florida. And Simon Gale, the USTA National Campus Director of Racquet Sports. In this episode, we continue our discussion with doctor Tim Elmore. Through his research, he shares how we can help everyone at any age work better together.
Episode Narration:Tim is a best selling author with a new book addressing the diversity challenge of having as many as four generations in the same workplace, something we see a lot in the Racquet's industry. Now, here's Kim and Simon. Welcome
Kim Bastable:back to doctor Tim Elmore on Racquet Fuel. We have Tim, who is the author of A New Kind of Diversity, back for a continued discussion on age diversity in the workplace. And if you missed our last episode, we encourage you to go back and listen to that because we discussed the research in Tim's book in detail. To remind listeners, doctor Tim Elmore is thought leader, researcher and author on leadership. He's the CEO of Growing Leaders, a nonprofit created to develop emerging leaders.
Kim Bastable:His curriculum is used by sports teams such as the Kansas City Royals from my hometown, the Buffalo Bills, the Tampa Bay Bucks, San Francisco Giants, Houston Rockets, Minnesota Vikings, as well as a dozen college and universities, and he was voted one of the top 100 leadership speakers in America by Inc Magazine. Simon and I are so honored to have Tim to help us learn about leadership. So, Tim, thank you for being here again. And please just tell listeners, you know, where can they find your book? Where can they find out about what you're doing and and more about your work?
Tim Elmore:Yeah. Sure. Thanks for asking, Kim. So the book can be found certainly on Amazon or wherever you get books, but there's a site you can go to to get a free assessment where you can assess your GQ, your generational quotient, we call it. I love that.
Tim Elmore:So you can take a 41 question test, and you get a feedback, you get a report back, oh, you're good with Gen Z, but not so good with Xers or whatever. So the website is real simple. It's newdiversitybook.com. Newdiversitybook.com. And there you'll find the free assessment, and certainly you can get the book there as well.
Tim Elmore:But, yeah, we're having a lot of fun just seeing old and young get together and find out, oh my gosh, there's so much to learn from each other.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. I mean, we were opened up. Our eyes were opened to this challenge. I know, you know, when I saw I've read read some of your other books and always been a fan, but then I saw this subject and and just picked it up and thought, I I didn't, you know, I didn't really realize what what a what what this was. I guess I didn't really realize the problem, which you Yeah.
Kim Bastable:Have pointed out well. And once you see it, it's it's quite a large problem. So you you mentioned that there's this generation gap that you first noticed in the nineteen sixties. It's widened today. It's making collaboration and synergy more challenging than ever.
Kim Bastable:So can you unpack this problem? Because, you know, for our listeners that related to the Racquet's industry, we have typically the average age of a director of Racquet Sports around 55, if not older. You know? And and we have entry level tennis pros, you know, commonly in the twenties. So so how do we tackle that?
Tim Elmore:Yeah. It's a it's a huge question you just asked and one that probably deserves two hours of response. Let me try to do it in two minutes here. So I was just with some NFL teams, and I told two quick stories that I'll share right now that I think illustrate the dilemma that you have brought up. So there were two student athletes that are pictures of millions and millions of young athletes, whether it's tennis, football, baseball, basketball, you name it.
Tim Elmore:So Quinn Ewers is a quarterback for Texas football, talented young athlete just a couple years ago in high school. He ended up adjusting his graduation year because he wanted to come out at just the right time. I'll explain that in just a minute. And then he committed to Texas at first because it was a great deal, their NIL deal, but then he got a better deal up in Columbus, Ohio at the Ohio State University. So he decommits from Texas, goes back up there or goes up there to Ohio State, but then CJ Stroud is there, the quarterback for Ohio State, he goes, oh, maybe it won't be as good as I thought.
Tim Elmore:So he decommits, comes back down to Texas, and now he's and he's a wonderful athlete. This is not a cut down or insult to Quinn Ewers, great young athlete, but he illustrates something I wanna I wanna talk about in just a minute, and it's a high sense of agency that these young athletes have. And by agency, there's sense of audacity and moxie and I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna sign a deal, and I'm in charge. And it's almost like it's almost like as student athletes, they come with a free agent mindset. You know?
Tim Elmore:Ever heard of the portal? Anybody? So there's that. But then I wanna talk about another student athlete. Many of us listening have heard about Katie Meyer.
Tim Elmore:Katie led Stanford University to a national championship in soccer in 2019, a fabulous young just star athlete. But if you remember her story, this very happy student athlete on Instagram ended up completing suicide. It was just stunning. In fact, nobody saw it coming. Her parents didn't see it coming.
Tim Elmore:Her teammates didn't see it coming. That's what's scary because, you know, you're around and you go, oh, I see she's depressed or anxious or something. But her parents later confirmed it was indeed suicide. That was what took her life. And I'm just saying, these two student athletes I've just talked about, Quinn Ewers and Katie Meyer, are pictures on the spectrum of generation z that our generation just doesn't quite understand.
Tim Elmore:Quinn Ewers is a picture of the high agency they have. Katie Meyer is a picture of the high anxiety they bring with them. It's almost unexplainable. I mean, it's just like, oh my gosh, what do have to be don't you ever think this, Simon? What do have to be anxious about?
Tim Elmore:You're on top of the world. You're talented. You came from a upper middle class family. You got a car when you were 16. I'm just saying.
Tim Elmore:I'm not saying. So here's what we don't understand. The high agency, we don't understand because we say, when I was your age, I was listening to my coach and respecting my coach and doing everything he told me, and I'm not asking questions. I mean, don't we say that? Sure.
Tim Elmore:Today, a young team member, they hate the word pay your dues or the term pay your dues. They hate It's like a cuss word to them. And the reason they do is because they go, you know what? I got a phone. I've looked up everything I need to know.
Tim Elmore:How many coaches do you talk to? They go, I'm not their only coach? They go, YouTube, they have this, they got a personal consultant, they got mom and dad. You know what I'm saying. So the high agency, we don't quite understand because they just need to be humble and respectful.
Tim Elmore:The high anxiety, we don't understand because of what I just said. You guys are on top of the world. What do you have to be anxious about? And we don't understand that if they got a phone and they're on social media, there are 10,000 messages a day coming at them. It's overwhelming.
Tim Elmore:The number one word that college students use to describe their life today is the word overwhelmed. 94% say I'm overwhelmed. 44% say I'm so overwhelmed, it's difficult to function. That's scary. And nearly one in ten has thought about suicide in the last year.
Tim Elmore:Now maybe they didn't pull out a weapon, but across their mind, it might be easier to end it all. So we look at them, and I say we, I'm saying you all of us here on this call are older folk here. Can I just say that, Simon, I'm so sorry I'm calling you older, please forgive me? It's alright. You're the young whipper Okay, set yeah, yeah, you've gotten used to me and my disrespectful comments.
Tim Elmore:But I'm telling you, coaches that are listening, they're are maybe over 40, we need to look back and say, alright, I've experienced fluid intelligence, I talk about that in the book, I'm now moving into crystallized intelligence where I need to be imparting wisdom, but listening to the intuition. Imparting wisdom, but listening to the intuition. And I think it's it's a volley of conversation, not just tennis balls that we need to have on that court.
Simon Gale:Yeah. I mean, let me just pick up on one thing you said there, you talked about that gen z generation not wanting to hear about, well, back in my day, kind of the, so I worked very hard not to say that, but there is, Maybe it's the word apprenticeship, maybe it's the word, you know, that's saying you're in the learning phase before you're in the earning phase, all those one liners that are out there. But it seems like one of the stats I noted from the book was around seventy five percent of Gen Z believe they should be promoted in their first year on the job. So one of the challenges in our industry is the pathway for promotion is quite limited in terms of you might be a staff professional or campus professional, entry level professional and then your next step is to become the head pro and then a assistant director and a director. So that could be, depending on your skill set, at least five years to a ten year cycle before you're ready to be that leader.
Simon Gale:And the challenge then is how do you move somebody up? How do you reward them and promote them if your layers of of growth are very limited? So Yeah. The the definition of a promotion and and and helping a teaching pro feel like they're progressing within a potentially limited system.
Tim Elmore:Yeah. It's a great, great loaded question. Let me do my best to offer some some insight. I think we've the first step we need to take is we need to have the conversation about this topic earlier rather than later. In other words, right up front say, hey, listen, Janet or Steve or whoever, I know you're talented, and I want you to win here.
Tim Elmore:So you you build the ally conversation. I'm I'm your ally. I want I want you to move up as much as you wanna move up, but can I share something with you? It's probably gonna take longer than you think. It was for me, and then you tell a story about your own life, you know, and just say, we're gonna move you as quick as we can, but please know it's gonna take longer than think.
Tim Elmore:And then I would offer a metaphor. So we teach leadership with metaphors, with images, actually. Fact, Kim, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but years ago, University of Florida decided to have a customized version of our Habitudes for their athletic department, the life skills program. So we have some of our Habitudes that are Florida Gator, but one of the images is called Crockpots or Microwaves? Crockpots or Microwaves.
Tim Elmore:You ought to bet you already know what I'm about to talk about, don't you? Crockpots and microwaves both cook food, but it's really different. Microwaves, we love because, man, in sixty seconds, that thing is done. That hot dog's done in sixty seconds. But you eat it, and it's not really good.
Tim Elmore:You know, I mean, it's hot, but it's just rubbery, and you put something in a Crock Pot, you gotta wait for three or four hours. Does it taste good? I'm saying your career, young tennis player, it's in a Crock Pot, not a microwave. So I know you like the sixty second thing, but it doesn't really turn out very well. It turns out really well if you give it time.
Tim Elmore:Stay in the game. You gotta wait to be great. You gotta wait to be great. Now there's exceptions, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, but I'm telling you, isn't it true? You gotta wait to be great.
Tim Elmore:Put in your time. Do the work. Do the work. So, anyway, that would be I would do the the have the conversation early and then that metaphor just to start a conversation. And then here's one more bit of good news.
Tim Elmore:Later, you don't have to have the same conversation. You just yell out, Crock Pot or microwave? And they go, I know. I know. You know, this is gonna take longer than I thought.
Tim Elmore:Anyway, I'll stop there.
Kim Bastable:I like that. I'm gonna jump in here because I think that's a great, great analogy. I'm super proud of the Gators for jumping in on Tim Elmore early on. Yay for the Gators. But, also, I would like to add that, you know, the idea, early conversations.
Kim Bastable:I also got inspiration within your book about job diversity in the idea of using the skills that that people bring from their generation. So I thought, can you give them an idea of a promotion by giving them taking them off court? Maybe they're only on court 75, 80% of their time, and they do something else they're good at, like manage the social media of the club. And that's an hourly paid job, but it's it takes them off the court, and it gives them some leadership. It gives them responsibility.
Kim Bastable:It gives them working off court, which is where we ultimately wanna get them. And Simon's job, he doesn't spend much of any time on court, and generally
Tim Elmore:Yeah.
Kim Bastable:Many directors don't. So it progresses you. It's a job diversity, I guess, would be the way I would call it. I don't know. I got inspired when I read your book to think about that that way.
Kim Bastable:Is that a good way to kinda create some interest in a sort of promotion?
Tim Elmore:Absolutely. I love the idea, Kim. It's finding other areas. They're gonna have other strengths besides swinging a racket, so find those other areas. I actually think it's healthy.
Tim Elmore:How many times have you seen, at least I'll I'll just speak for me. I've seen a number of NCAA division one coaches that go, I want a two sport athlete because they're mentally healthier, they've not been siloed, and they burn out in middle school, you know? So maybe not all sports would say that, but a number of them would say, I think it's healthy to have a few diversions, and then make tennis your number one, you know, baby. But, so I love it, love it, love it. Help help them find strengths, and then play to those strengths so that when they get on the court, they're a healthier person after all.
Tim Elmore:And they understand life and careers better, maybe.
Simon Gale:Tim, how do you feel about, one the things that I've spoken about recently at a couple of conferences is adding to that pathway. So instead of being stuck in that entry level professional position before you become into a leadership position, you have some more levels so that they do see within eighteen months to two years, I am moving and you just redefine Yes. The job pathway a little bit versus keep it what it's always been, which is generally fairly simple.
Tim Elmore:Simon, I'm so glad you said that. I meant to say it. You beat me to it. You're brilliant. Yes.
Tim Elmore:Yes. Yes. Yes. We need to look at the current system and say, because they value moving up faster perhaps than my generation, I need to create steps for them to move up. Now it may not mean money, it may not be notoriety, but it's levels that they say that was a my leader noticed something, some growth in me, some progress in me, and then I get to play or work at a different level, so I think it's brilliant.
Tim Elmore:At Growing Leaders, we did that a few years ago. We added different layers and levels, and for us, we bumped the pay up a bit, you know, so we allowed them to be a little monetary reward, and then it was notoriety with team team members. So I think we need to find out what they value, and I think that's one thing. And we need to say, I'm gonna create some steps then that are not disingenuous. They're not we didn't make them up.
Tim Elmore:We're we're actually gonna help you move forward, but you'll have a feeling that you're moving forward rather than spend another year at last year's level and hope to God maybe there's progress later.
Simon Gale:Great, thank you.
Tim Elmore:Yeah, you bet.
Simon Gale:So one of the goals of the podcast, as we've said a couple of times, is to train and develop future leaders or even continue to grow our current leaders. And and you mentioned that it's been said that managers treat everyone the same and leaders treat everybody differently. Tell me about this idea in leadership and how that plays into the way leaders should treat people of different generations.
Tim Elmore:Yeah. It's a it's a great question. So one of our images remember, we teach with images. One of our metaphors or images is called chess and checkers. So both of those games, chess and checkers, have the very same game board.
Tim Elmore:So we could be tempted to think, must be the same game. You and I both know that's not true. When I play checkers, all my pieces look alike, they all move alike, so I treat them all alike. When I play chess, I have to know what each piece can do, the bishop and the rook and the pawn and the king and the knight and the queen. That's what I think our people are in front of us.
Tim Elmore:They're chess pieces, not checkers. Mediocre leaders play checkers with their people. They treat them all alike, and they get average performance. Great leaders connect with others at the uniqueness of their personality, their strength, and their generation. Those are the three.
Tim Elmore:Their personality, so everybody's got a different personality. Their strength, where are they strong? They're gonna flourish where they're strong. And then, are they 20 or 40 or 60? You know, that seems rather obvious.
Tim Elmore:They're probably gonna think a little differently. I help them flourish when I lead them based on who they are, not who I am. So my pithy phrase is I gotta read them before I lead them. When I do that, I'm always a better leader, and they're always a better team member. And what
Simon Gale:would be an example of an exercise? Would that be something you would do annually with your with your staff or semiannually? How would you go about actually implementing something like that?
Tim Elmore:Okay. Yeah. So one way is I'll get, I'll get different generations two people from different generations together. Certainly, it could be reverse mentoring, which we talked about in our last, podcast. But, I love the exercise, share your superpower with me or share one of your superpowers.
Tim Elmore:Now that's just a a vogue word. We all think we got superpowers, and we're all superheroes. But you know what? If I'm a baby boomer, one of my superpowers is I got a truckload of stories to share that might help you and inform your journey. I I can be a coach.
Tim Elmore:I can be a and I don't mean literally, but I can coach you. I can mentor you. I can I can impart? An exer brings pragmatism. They've got they've got contrarian points of view and pragmatic points of view that they have.
Tim Elmore:Millennials often bring confidence and idealism. You know? I most well, not all, but most bring an incredible sense of energy and confidence to a team. Gen z brings a hacker mindset, not just about technology. I'm gonna get behind the system, find out how it works, and make it work for me.
Tim Elmore:Well, that's good. That can be really good. Remember Tony at the paint store in our last you know, he found a way to monetize TikTok and started his own company. So I feel like if we do the share a superpower with me, we're both gonna have some superpowers, and we just start learning. And the learning then becomes organic.
Tim Elmore:We don't program. We don't wanna overprogram this connection thing. I think good mentoring is somewhere between organized and organic. We need some structure, but not too much structure. It needs to feel like we're really getting to know each other in a very grassroots sort of way, and that's what I think works best.
Kim Bastable:Right.
Simon Gale:Yeah. Thanks for sharing.
Tim Elmore:Appreciate that.
Kim Bastable:That that's that's excellent, Tim. So the next challenge we have for you, for our industry, part of our industry or much of our industry works six days a week. I recently did a survey where at about two hundred pros respond, and, you know, we had 66% say they work six days a week and another 12% said they did seven days a week. So we have a five and a half to six day a week is the norm type situation. And yet I, you know, getting down to five days is is a goal or a challenge.
Kim Bastable:I know Simon's done that. We did a podcast on Simon's work at the national campus to get us down get his staff down to five. But you mentioned in some of your research that, some of the Gen Z team members would really prefer to work for. I suppose even if maybe you could describe what those four days are, long long days.
Tim Elmore:Or Yeah. Yeah.
Kim Bastable:You know, why is that? So tell us a bit more about, you know, where that desire is coming from. You know, what suggestion can you have for our industry? Do we need to work to appease that group and get shorter work weeks?
Tim Elmore:Yeah. To cut to the quick, I think the answer's in the middle, probably not four or seven, but somewhere in the middle. And it sounds like you guys are even thinking that way. So the idea actually started overseas in Europe and Asia, but it's made its way over to America, and Gen Z has quickly thought, awesome, you know, four days, that sounds better than six. So many times when I hold focus groups and I ask, they say, oh, I'll still work forty hours, it'll just be cramped into four days, you know, rather than five or six.
Tim Elmore:Other times they say what you suspect, they they just wanna work less and have fun doing whatever they want to. So I I feel as though if I were a veteran in your sport and I were a coach, I would say, we need to get this done. So let's work together to figure out a way to get this done. I care less about the hours and more about getting the job done, so I'm not so much interested in you clocking in as much as how do we get this done. Usually, they come to some of the same conclusions I do.
Tim Elmore:Oh, we probably need to work more in order to get that done, but you're taking a journey together. So this is what I call moving from prescriptive leadership to descriptive leadership. Here's the difference. When a kid grows up in America, I don't know, maybe Europe too, but for sure in America, adults have been very prescriptive in our leadership. We prescribe every step of the way they're to take.
Tim Elmore:Do this, do that, do this, do that. Teachers teach for the test. Parents prescribe to their children, don't forget your backpack, don't forget your gym shorts, don't forget grandma's birthday on Tuesday. So they're just leaning on mom. You know, mom's prescribing.
Tim Elmore:Well, they get used to this. And by the time they reach college age and pro, they've got to learn how to own this. So descriptive leadership is the is the need of the day. Descriptive leadership is where you sit down together and say, let's describe together a goal you want to reach. And they're not gonna be used to this.
Tim Elmore:They're gonna well, just tell me. No. No. You tell me. What goal do you wanna reach?
Tim Elmore:And you describe it together. You you you create a vision together because you're gonna help, you know, as a consultant of sorts. But when you get it, then you start saying, what steps do you think you're gonna need to take to reach this goal? Well, they're probably gonna realize, wow, that's probably gonna take six days a week or five days a week, not four. Bingo.
Tim Elmore:But they came to the conclusion, not you. So this is helping them practice metacognition. They're owning the decision. So can I tell you a quick I know I'm monopolizing this conversation, but there's a great professor in Alabama at a private university, but she's mastered this? She teaches science, biology, and she said the first week of class, hands are going up from her classroom.
Tim Elmore:How many tests do we have? What about this? What about that? And she goes, every single one of the questions are answered in the syllabus. So and you probably heard this before, haven't you?
Tim Elmore:So she said, I stop creating a syllabus, and the first three days of our class now every year, they create the syllabus. So she goes, alright. What do you wanna learn in this class, biology one zero one? Well, they start listing the subjects. She said, Tim, almost every year now, they list the very subjects, maybe except for one, that I wanted to teach them, but it was their idea.
Tim Elmore:Then I asked the question, how many tests do you wanna take? Well, the first year she did this, one knucklehead raised his hand and said, one. We just want one test. But all the other classmates got on him for saying, we don't want our grade to rise and fall with just one test. So they came up with four.
Tim Elmore:And my friend, the professor, said that was exactly the number of tests I wanted to give him. But when I give him a test, I go, now you asked for four tests. You see how this ownership thing is brilliant? It will lead descriptively, and I'm probably oversimplifying because we just have a couple of minutes, but this is absolutely the way to lead gen z, with descriptive leadership where we're not prescribing, and we own the lesson. We want them to own this education they're getting, this tennis lesson they're getting, this whatever they're getting.
Tim Elmore:And then they own their life later. This is what every parent wants, but we gotta stop controlling it and saying, this is yours, honey. You take it.
Kim Bastable:Well, that's awesome story. Very good example. I think you could apply that, can't you, Simon?
Simon Gale:Yeah. I think about what we do here from a on court delivery point of view, it's getting away from leadership a little but it's it takes us down the same pathway as we often talk about instead of having a prescribed hour long lesson Yeah. Approaching it from the, you know, asking questions, getting feedback and so I'm thinking, if you did this with a group of kids on a tennis court, what an impactful way to run a lesson is, what do you think you need to work on and let's run-in that direction. It's the same concept you're talking about from a leadership point of view, but how powerful for the participant to have some control over the destiny. Yeah.
Simon Gale:I love it.
Tim Elmore:And the incentive goes up too. They're motivated and incentivized. Yeah.
Simon Gale:So one of the last questions I wanted to get to here today was I think across our industry, large or small staff, there's real age diversity and these generational gaps are clear and well represented. So I have someone in their sixties, I have many in their twenties on staff and you talked about the superpowers idea of how to bring generations together. What else would you suggest in terms of ways to bring them together that could Yeah. Could enable this this this cross functional collaborative effort?
Tim Elmore:Yeah. Yeah. The bridge rather than the wall. Right? Rather than the wall.
Tim Elmore:Exactly. So I did some research that didn't make it into the first printing of this book that I wanna share right now. So I asked representatives from each of the five generations that are at work today, what do you want most from other generations as they interact with you? Well, you can imagine I got a myriad of answers, you know, from the older folk and the younger folk, they all want, but there were three items that showed up in every single generation. And I thought, this is golden because if every generation wants this and we did this, this could be huge to connect with each other.
Tim Elmore:So here are the three words. Number one was humility. Every single generation said, if you would come at me for an encounter with some humility, which basically screams, I know I have a lot to learn too. You know, I know I'm still on my journey too, and we don't have all the answers. That's just so winsome, isn't it?
Tim Elmore:To to have humble you know, old, I want old people to be but I want young people to humble, so that's good. Number two, this is a predictable word, but it was respect. But here's what I find older generations do. They go, well, you gotta earn my respect, Sonny, you know, or whatever. I think if we, the older generation, said, I'm gonna start with respect, not make you earn my respect, it tends to be reciprocated.
Tim Elmore:I tend to get respect from that 20 year old or 23 year old because I started with it myself. I believe the best. I begin with belief. I believe the best about her or him, and then it tends to be reciprocated. The third word I did not predict would come up, but it did, curiosity.
Tim Elmore:So if I approach everybody with a sense of curiosity, oh, I bet you have something to share with me. I bet you could add value, and I wanna add value to you. Just imagine for a minute, Simon and Kim, if every one of us interacted with all generations with humility, respect, and curiosity. Oh my gosh. What kind of world could we create?
Tim Elmore:Starting with a tennis court, starting with a school. But and those are soft skills, not hard skills. Doesn't require higher IQ, doesn't require more talent, doesn't require, you know, better looks, thank God for me. But I'm just telling you, this is magic, and it all goes back to basic life skills that we gotta reinstill in our people. Yeah.
Simon Gale:It's great answer.
Kim Bastable:That's Thank good. Yeah. That's that's really good. And you know what? Another thing I I I think that you know, to say that they need to respect each other.
Kim Bastable:They need to have humility for each other, curiosity for each other. I found it interesting, I think, when you woke me up to say, we this is a self inflicted situation.
Tim Elmore:Yeah.
Kim Bastable:I am 22. I make assumptions about my place in the works in you know, my place in the workplace, my wisdom as compared to the guy who's 50, or my we do it and make assumptions about ourselves, not just assumptions about others, which I guess I think people need to wake up and how much are they really doing this, you know, harming themselves the way they look at themselves versus Yeah. If that's making sense.
Tim Elmore:No. Totally. I think you're spot on. And I I keep going back to we have stereotypes about everybody, including ourselves, that aren't necessarily accurate, and it gets us in trouble. So we gotta chuck the stereotypes.
Tim Elmore:In fact, my goal for this book is my goal is not to stereotype, but to understand. That's what we gotta do.
Kim Bastable:Well, and I think you said when we were off air, and it was just the first thing that you said is no more them.
Tim Elmore:No more us than them. Just us. Yeah.
Episode Narration:More us
Tim Elmore:than I love that phrase. I'm in love with that phrase. No more us than them. Just us. So that means the water cooler conversations in the clubhouse or whatever where we're talking about those millennials or those Gen Z We go, no.
Tim Elmore:No. No. No. No. Let's stop that.
Tim Elmore:Let's let's be family. We have uncles and grandparents and nephews and nieces. Let's love each other. Let's be a family, and let's get this job done. I know I sound like a coach right now, but that's what we gotta do.
Tim Elmore:We've gotta do this.
Kim Bastable:So So would you say that's the summary takeaway, or is there another one that you'd say? I mean, when you just gotta boil us down to what we wanna make sure we take with us into our jobs, in our workplaces, what what would it what would those, you know, be
Tim Elmore:Yeah. That in? It'd be two things. That, no more us and them, just us. And also, I'm gonna be able to leverage the strength that each generation has to the benefit of the organization or the team.
Tim Elmore:So I'm even thinking of an under you know, a team an NCAA division one team. Well, those freshmen are a little different than the seniors. How can we leverage that rookie smarts they bring, you know, or whatever? So that's what it is. The book is in fact, the subtitle of the book is how to make the, you know, the different generations on your team a competitive advantage.
Tim Elmore:I think we need to do that. So those are the two big takeaways. Yeah.
Kim Bastable:Well, that's excellent. Because as I'm trying to, you know, educate leaders in the future, you know, we wanna kinda get to those action items, those takeaways, those what can we really apply right away. Think there've been a lot of good stories. Simon, do you have any more final thoughts?
Simon Gale:I think we just touched the surface of what you could do with this. This could be a multi day conference, but I think there's been some fantastic takeaways and insight and I love the way you've presented this material the way you spoke about it today so passionately. So thanks for your time.
Tim Elmore:It's my pleasure, great to hang out with you guys.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. It's been a great, great discussion. We thank you so much for your guidance, expertise to the Racquet's industry. Help us manage with intentionality. As you say, many businesses just don't get intentional about So I encourage all listeners, pick up the book, A New Kind of Diversity by doctor Tim Elmore or many of the other books he mentioned, Habitudes, which is another series that he has.
Kim Bastable:It's super, helpful. And then please provide, you know, comments on our web page for Racquet Fuel. Get in touch with us all on LinkedIn. We'd love to hear your feedback, thoughts, comments, and what you'd like to discuss on future episodes of Racquet Fuel. We'll see you next time.
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