Imagine you’re in a race. You put all your willpower and strength to win this race and so far things are looking up for you. You trained extra hard for this race because you know the grand price is worth giving your all. The grand price is 1milion dollars. So far you are ahead of the competition and you’re approaching the finishing line. Then the unexpected happens. All of a sudden you start choking and are soon out of breath. You watch helplessly as your colleagues run past you in neck-breaking speed. You curse underneath your breath as the medical team makes their way to you to help you get out of the racing track. You are devastated. You were so close. Too close to the finishing line for you to exit the race in this way. You can’t help it. It’s too late and the race is over. Everything you worked so hard for during the training down the drain, just like that!
Now imagine your office environment. What if something happened to stifle your breath and you did not make it to the finish line? Am talking career growth. Here is a case of Sarah, a hardworking middle-aged woman who has devoted almost her entire career life to this company. She is a devoted worker who has been with the company for over a decade now. She has been with the company all through the high tides and the low tides. She has seen it all from when the company was experiencing a financial crisis to the sunshine days when they would be given bonus like it’s Christmas. She is busting with experience and is laced with unmatched wisdom pitted against her juniors.
Then there is James. The happy-go-lucky university graduate who joined the company a couple of months ago. Sarah never liked his type. These millennials as they fondly call themselves. They spelt trouble for anyone who had toiled in that company for more than 10 years. James did not see the likes of Sarah as wise. On the contrary, to James, Sarah represented a bunch of old fogs who had no idea of the new tricks of the trade. These generation X needed to be smoked out if the company was to make any progress and stay on top of their game; this is according to the millennials.
What was even more threatening with these millennials is that they had good English mastery to boot. Meaning that the boss would invite James to luncheons and business trips abroad whenever investors from the Western countries came around. His excuse? That these millennials had that “something” that would appeal to foreigners. Sarah with all her experience would stay back in the office wishing that she were the one getting all this cultural diversity and exposure but all because she belongs to generation X.
To cut the long story short, James the millennial gets promoted to lead a project because of his cross-cultural intelligence and good command of the queen’s language. Needless to say, all of Sarah’s hard work was all a waste just because she is not well conversant with English and out the window goes her chance of being promoted. She remains stuck in her position as James gets the coveted corner office.
Sign up for the PWCIB Academy and learn how to work with and along the Millennials for mutual benefits. If you have large Millennial group working at your office, contact us for an in-company training on how to match Generation X and Millennials in one workspace for mutual benefit and satisfaction.
With PWCIB Academy at your disposal you can now avoid being a novice in your diverse teams, like Sarah in this case. You can actually learn how to manage your age diverse employees’ talents and skills to make the most out of their performance, working style and experience. If you want to know more about managing across generations feel free to read this recent article “How to make exceptional employees stay in a multi-cultural, multi-generational and remote team?” from Outsourcing Magazine, 2017.
