Stop Judging Generations. Start Learning From Them.

This article is adapted from Ted's Smart Thinking podcast episode 380: Generationally Diverse Teams .

Everyone Is Doing the Best They Can

I have been on the road a lot lately doing keynotes and leadership trainings, and one topic keeps coming up again and again: generational differences. And every time I dig into it, I get fired up. Not frustrated. Fired up. Because the data on Gen Z and every other generation is remarkable, and yet we keep using it to divide instead of unite.

Here is my honest truth: I am absolutely clueless why anyone thinks they have the right to cast judgment on the generation above or below them. Everyone out there is doing the best they can with what they have in the form of knowledge, experience, and circumstance. And yet we keep looking for deficits in those around us, especially the young. Before we go any further, let’s just all agree to stop that.

What Was in the Backseat of Their Lives?

At a recent leadership conference, I asked the room to think about one thing: what did children observe from the backseat of their lives as they were growing up?

Think about it. The backseat of a car, a van, an SUV. One view. The people raising them. The conversations happening in the front seat, whether with another adult or over the phone, were always being absorbed. Kids may not seem like they’re paying attention, but they hear tone. They hear voice. And they interpret emotion. Our work stress, our friendships, our frustrations, our anxieties. All of it was being observed and filed away.

Now think about what was in the backseat of a Gen Z kid’s life. They were born after September 11th. They experienced the housing collapse, the Great Recession, racial unrest and tension, a global pandemic, and everything in between. So I don’t know why they’re a nervous wreck. Do you?

And today, we’re back in what feels like a weird repeat cycle. Recession. Global conflict. National instability. And they are young adults now, trying to figure out their place in all of it.

We created the conditions. We need to own that before we say a single word about the people who grew up in them.

The Gen Z-er Who Asked Me the Right Question

After I shared all of this with the leadership group, I was buzzing out of the room when a young woman came up to me. She was excited. She said she had never heard anyone advocate for her generation before. All she ever hears is the negative.

I smiled. I felt humbled. And then she asked me something that stopped me in my tracks: “How do I gain the respect of the other generations?”

Before I could answer, someone my age nudged into our conversation and said, “Hey, how many years before you retire? I want to see if we can get you to come speak.”

Every bit of energy I had from that Gen Z-er deflated right out of me. Why? Because that is all anyone my age wants to talk about. How much longer do you have? I hate that question. My answer is always the same: I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ever going to stop working.

I stopped that Gen X-er and went back to the young woman. I told her: the only way to increase your influence is through a process. A process that allows you to be seen as valuable, and that allows the generations around you to be seen as valuable too.

The Taillight That Changed My Thinking

Let me tell you about the day my son taught me something I will never forget.

I wanted to show him how to change a taillight on our Honda Pilot. Classic dad move. Come on, son, let me show you how it’s done. He was 16. I was old. We got the screws out, and I went to pull the taillight fixture off. Nothing. I tried again. Nothing. I started getting hot under the collar, frustrated and embarrassed that I had told him this would be easy.

Charlie, my son, quietly asked, “Dad, what year is this Honda?”

I snapped at him. “It’s a 2014. What does that even matter?”

He walked away without another word. I stood there in the garage, on hold with the Honda dealership, getting angrier by the second. Then Charlie tapped me on the shoulder and showed me a piece of string. I watched as he threaded it behind the taillight housing, dragged both ends to the center, and gently pulled. The taillight popped right off.

He changed the bulb. Put it all back together. Tested it. Looked at me and said, “Is it blinking?”

I hung up the phone. I stood there in silence. He had looked up a video of a Honda service technician in California showing exactly how to do it for a 2014 Honda Pilot. He found his answer in minutes from a complete stranger on YouTube, while I had been standing there with my mental Rolodex, Googling a phone number, and getting angrier by the second.

Here is the question I want you to sit with: what would it have felt like if I had ignored him while he was sitting there with the answer?

You’d feel useless. Frustrated. Dismissed. And that feeling would have been created entirely by the older generation. We cannot keep doing that.

How Generations Actually Approach Problems Differently

Boomers and Gen X have a similar instinct when they run into a problem. They mentally scroll through their Rolodex and think: who in my life knows how to fix this? Then they call that person. Or they dig through a manual. This approach takes time, energy, and relationships. And if they knew no one who could help them, they would often give up. That was the world as we knew it.

Now think about someone born in the nineties or two thousands. When they hit a problem, they go straight to the internet, especially YouTube. They find an expert they have never met, watch them solve the exact problem they are facing, and then fix it and move on. No waiting. No pride. Just results.

Neither approach is wrong. Both have value. But when we refuse to see the value in each other’s approach, we all lose.

The Game That Proves It All

I am always looking for ways to get people to collaborate, find fun in their work, and come together across differences. So when I spotted a multigenerational trivia game called Mind the Gap at a boutique in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood, I bought it immediately.

The premise is simple. There are four generational decks of questions: Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. To win, you need members from every generation on your team. You literally cannot advance without the wisdom of the crowd.

I busted it out with my family at the holidays. My brother-in-law decided he and his wife did not need any of the “kids” on their team. Fine. They took two Boomers and four Millennials. My team had two Boomers, three Gen Xers, two Millennials, and four Gen Zers.

The other team breezed through the Boomer questions. Then they hit the Gen X lane. First question: in what country did the Clash originate? Blank stares. No Gen X on their team, and no one who had grown up with that music in the front seat of their car.

My team? Everyone smiled. Gen X knew it. The Millennials knew it. Our Boomer knew it because she was related to me and had heard me play it constantly. And the Gen Zers? They knew it too, because they had grown up in backseats where London Calling was cranked up by the Gen Xers in the front seat, or rediscovered it through TikTok.

We completed the first game in under 30 minutes. The other team was still stuck in the Gen X lane. We played again. My team finished in 15 minutes. The other team did not even get a turn.

And the stars of the whole thing? The Gen Zers. They had been exposed to every generation’s culture, music, film, and history through their backseats, their phones, and their curiosity. While others had stopped exploring at a certain point in life, the Gen Zers had never stopped absorbing everything around them.

How to Use This With Your Team

Here is how I run this game with large groups, and I want to give you the exact setup so you can use it.

If you have 20 to 30 people, create two teams. If you have 30 to 50, break into three or four. Now here is the most important part: the two youngest people in the room are the team captains. That is right. Flashback to recess. The youngest people pick their teams, and their one directive is to build as much generational diversity as possible.

I skip the board and pull one card from each generational deck. There are five questions per card across five categories. I read them all and watch what happens. And what always happens is this: people who came in looking at each other with skepticism start looking to each other for help. They start leaning in. The Boomers perk up when their questions come. The Gen Zers light up when they know something no one else does. And somewhere along the way, the team stops being a collection of people who are different ages and becomes something much more powerful.

They almost always tie at the end. Because when you build a truly diverse team, no single generation dominates. Everyone contributes. Everyone matters.

Stop Imagining and Start Doing

Can you imagine if we let the newest person on every team pick the groups and gave them the directive to include all generations and all skill sets? Can you imagine if the youngest voices consistently came in with the most to contribute because we had created the conditions for that to happen? Can you imagine if we ended every team activity with a real conversation about how we honor our generational diversity and work better together because of it?

Stop imagining. Start doing.

Buffaloes run into the storms they face. And if you tell the young buffalo cows to wait back while the older ones take it on, they may never learn how to face their own storms. And if those young ones find a better route and come back to share it, but no one is listening, that is a loss the whole herd pays for.

Everyone has the ability to contribute. I don’t care how long someone has been in the organization or how many years of experience they have. The person who just walked through the door might have an innovative approach born entirely from a life experience you have never had. That is not a threat. That is an asset.

The Smart Thinking Challenge

Before you do anything this summer or this year with your teams, I want you to do three things.

List the teams in your organization that would benefit from more generational diversity. Be honest. You probably already know which ones they are.

Describe how you can use a tool like Mind the Gap to bring those people together in a way that feels fun, not forced.

And then describe how you are actively embracing the wisdom of the crowd, not just tolerating it, but actually building conditions where every generation’s knowledge is sought out and honored.

When you have four generations equally represented with all of their life experiences and wisdom, there is no storm that has not been seen before. There is no innovation that cannot be imagined. There is no challenge you cannot face together.

That is the point. That has always been the point. Lead well out there.