Managing Across Generations

Skill Building

Businesses and organizations face the challenge of bringing together people from four generations to meet organizational goals. Each generation brings diverse perspectives, values, needs, and expectations to the workplace.

Learning to blend the distinctive creative energies and accommodate the different styles of these four generations creates a dynamic work team. Helping individuals from divergent generations develop skills that enable them to appreciate their differences greatly enhances task efficiency, effectiveness and enjoyment. "Communicating Across the Generations" is a peer-reviewed curriculum. Learner objectives are to:

• Increase knowledge and understanding of the four generations in the workplace
• Enhance comprehension of how generational differences affect you
• Promote skills for effective intergenerational communication
• Expand capacity to manage diverse generational working styles

This curriculum is designed to be fun, flexible and easy to use and is available, for sale, on a CD. It contains cutting-edge information, background material, and both individual and group activities.

Program content is designed to help participants define the generations and identify forces that shape attitudes, beliefs, and expectations. Participants explore what motivates individuals from each generation and their differing communication styles. Skills and strategies to meet diverse needs are learned, enhancing participant ability to both lead and follow.

Evaluations indicate past program participants, including staff of the Wisconsin Departments of Corrections, Workforce Development, and Public Instruction; Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College; University of Wisconsin-Extension; Wisconsin Rural Leadership participants; and numerous private sector businesses, have found "Communicating Across the Generations" relevant and meaningful in meeting the generational challenge.