As New Generations Arrive, Culture Changes. Will You Stay Relevant?
As I consult with organizational leaders on change, corporate culture, and how to effectively lead in uncertain times, I have to occasionally perform my own self-check of my perspectives. I’ve faced the person holding onto past standards and she is me!
I am a product of corporate America of the late 1970’s-through-1990’s. Not only am I a product of corporate America, but also one of the Fortune tech companies, “uniformed”, whose blue suits, white shirts, and 3-letter blue-and-white-striped logo was as ubiquitous then as that smile swoosh on cardboard boxes is today. The corporate culture of that period shaped how I developed, performed, led, and created the career success I achieved. It also influenced what I taught and coached younger business freshmen on how they needed to dress, groom, act, and communicate to succeed in the corporate environment.
Until I aged and new generations emerged.
I’ve had to reassess what constitutes “professionalism” and what is acceptable as “business presence” over the years. I’ve had to release some of my early perspectives and open my mind to new measures.
I remember the one time I saw a young man on the Metrorail train commuting to work in DC. He was smartly dressed in a tailored suit with a well-designed leather briefcase…and wore his hair in long braids. I was horrified! As a black woman raised to blend into the white male-dominated corporate world, my standards were that men must be clean-shaven with well-groomed short haircuts. Over time, after seeing more business-suited young men of various ethnicities with varying lengths and styles of hair on their faces and heads, it became apparent to me that being well-groomed for business was an evolving standard that I needed to accept if I was to continue relating to a younger generation in the workforce.
I am of the Boomer generation. My business partner and company co-founder is almost half my age. And we are bringing a young man still in college — perhaps a third my age — on board and up to speed to take on some of our content development duties. I still “suit up” for business meetings with clients although my execution of “suit” has relaxed a bit. My business partner presents just as professionally with an open-collar dress shirt and facial hair (which I admit I initially had to adjust to). And now the young man I’m coaching needs to present himself professionally in the videos he’s creating for our target corporate market. I reviewed the first set of videos he recorded and had him re-do the ones in which he was wearing T-shirts. Yet I realized that he looked nicely professional in collared polo shirts. I relaxed my perspective of professionalism yet again, for today’s audience, as long as he maintained a clean and well-groomed presence.
All this is to say that there will always be new generations entering the workforce. Standards, culture, and norms evolve more rapidly and dramatically after major social shifts due to economic or global health disruptions. As of this writing, we Baby Boomers who were once the dominant generation in the workplace are now creating a tectonic cultural shift to redefining retirement. The generation dubbed “Generation Z”, born between 1995-to-2010, is the incoming (and arrived) dominant workforce demographic.
Older workers who are still corporate executives, business owners, and top-level organizational leaders need to consider how they remain open to continual cultural evolution. They — we — must ask ourselves what is really important to maintain and be firm about and what we can relax or release in order to respect incoming and unavoidable change. We have a lot to teach and pass on as our legacies. We also have a lot to learn and reassess if we are to remain relevant and forward-thinking.
Our leadership requires what Aretha Franklin demanded in her seminal song — R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Every incoming generation asks that of their leaders. And yes, so too do we ask that of them!
