Dividing people by their generations can, by definition, be divisive.  At No Umbrellas we are not keen on stereotypes as a way of classifying people – the differences between individuals are made up of a host of variable of which age would only be one. But there are undoubtedly some truths (and some misinformation) behind the headlines that, when examined, can bring better understanding between people – and that is our aim.

We cannot find specific research on what percentage of human differences relates to age but it would seem reasonable to be around 10-20% of the variance in workplace attitudes and behaviours.

This small impact on an individual’s capability would be defined as the difference between a fictional person in one generation compared to the same person brought up in another. Clearly this is a nonsense concept but it illustrates the point – and the complexities.

We understand that humans are made up of their Personality Traits (usually described as the Big Five: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness & Neuroticism) and then during life it is layered with Cognitive abilities, Emotional Intelligence and Motivation. And that is only the character traits – add the life experience with upbringing, nationality, health, class, education etc and that’s what makes up the wonderful mosaic of amazing people on this planet.

At No Umbrellas we believe that everyone will have at least some aspects of their attitude and behaviours that have been affected by which generation they are in.  This breaks into two significant categories that we examine in our workshops.

1)       The generation that you have grown up and lived with eg Gen X, Boomer

2)     The Life Stage that you are currently living in eg your 20s or 40s

The attributes of these two aspects of a person are what we uncover in workshops and by working on these aspects of the differences between individuals we are finding that we are reaching improved understanding between team members and better cohesion across a range of other aspects as well.

This is not a process of stereotyping – it’s a process of looking behind headlines, sharing the scientific research then using that to find the real differences between individuals but more importantly finding the commonalities. Then finding ways of bridging gaps and improving teams.