Working Across Generations

Most workplaces now hold four generations in daily working contact — and a fifth, mostly retired, still present at the edges — and most teams have never once talked honestly about what that mix does to how they communicate, give feedback, run meetings, share knowledge, and judge each other. Instead they trade quiet assumptions: the older colleague is "resistant," the younger one is "entitled," the mid-career manager is "stuck." Those assumptions are usually wrong about the person, often unfair, and always expensive — they misdirect work, withhold opportunity, and turn solvable differences of habit into unsolvable verdicts about character. This course teaches the mixed-age craft plainly: how to see the real differences that do exist — of formative experience, life stage, and habit — without stereotyping the individual in front of you; how to communicate and give feedback across the mix; how to run mentoring in both directions, meetings that hear everyone, and knowledge transfer that respects both the holder and the learner; and how to hire, onboard, and hold career conversations fairly at every stage. The course works on your real team throughout: bring its actual mix, anonymized, and leave with agreements that fit the people you actually have.