WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
strategic workforce consulting practice, said cross-generational mentoring offers numer- ous advantages that organizations, includ- ing senior living providers, should consider. She said mentoring is a particularly useful tool for industries that are confronting an aging leadership demographic and looking to improve their pipeline of young, up-and- coming talent. “I think this is a great time to be having
this discussion in the senior living industry,” Kowalski said.
Sharing knowledge and bridging generations Cross-generational mentoring starts with an understanding that generations differ from each other in their strengths, preferences, working styles, and ways of thinking, and it serves to make those differences an advan- tage rather than detriment in the workplace, in part by creating an opportunity for mem- bers of those different generations to share their knowledge with each other.
from,” Tardy said. “In fact, senior executives could make some really course-changing decisions for an organization because they took the time to listen to someone younger in this setting. We look at problems all the time and think that we’ve got the solutions, but sometimes we really need new ideas and new perspectives.” Meanwhile, just as younger workers are
often reduced to their knowledge of tech- nology, more senior workers frequently are viewed as long past finished with learning. However, Sylvia Benatti, associate professor in the School of Business and Public Ad- ministration at the University of the District of Columbia, said her research with Anna- belle Reitman has demonstrated that older workers remain hungry to learn as a group. Consequently, many older workers grow weary of only being asked for advice and guidance, she said, while struggling to find opportunities to grow and expand their base of knowledge. A cross-generational mentor- ship that encourages a junior worker to bring
“What we see is a honing of interpersonal skills, in both directions, so that millennials may learn to soften the edges of their communication style and traditionalists or boomers may learn to offer more encouraging perspectives, rather than something that’s more critical,” Kowalski said. “That kind of development is a great thing.”
A firmer grip on new technology is often
cited as the chief skill that younger workers have to offer more senior workers in mento- ring situations, but Tardy said that amounts to an oversimplification that shortchanges the value of the junior employees. Younger workers are digital natives and often can help their more senior counterparts understand not only technology’s capabilities but its potential impact, but Tardy said they can offer import- ant viewpoints in myriad other ways, too. “Younger workers can offer truly valuable insights that a senior executive can benefit
52 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE MARCH/APRIL 2018
their own knowledge to the relationship can invigorate their more senior colleagues. “You want to give them opportunities
to keep learning and being mentored by a younger worker is a great way to do it,” Benatti said. Kowalski said efforts such as cross-gen-
erational mentorships that serve to bridge the generational divide and help workers of different age demographics erase their mis- conceptions and find a better understanding of each other “is hugely helpful.” “Quite frankly we all could have a bit
more age diversity in our networks,” Kow- alski said. “It would do us all some good.”
Improving interpersonal skills— and the customer experience When workers of different generations con- nect in a mentoring relationship, the result is a “sharpening” of their ability to relate to other people, Kowalski said. “What we see is a honing of interpersonal
skills, in both directions, so that millenni- als may learn to soften the edges of their communication style and traditionalists or boomers may learn to offer more encour- aging perspectives, rather than something that’s more critical,” Kowalski said. “That kind of development is a great thing.” Kowalski said those improvements in
interpersonal skills can have wide-ranging impacts on an organization. For instance, in senior living, Kowalski said, it can better train public-facing staff to interact with not only the older residents of their communi- ties but with the families that visit them. “There’s a real need to mimic what you’re
experiencing with your consumer base rather just within your own organization,” Kowalski said. “We get so bound up in the day to day of our businesses that we don’t realize we’re doing business with actual people—people from many different backgrounds—and when we train each other across generations we gain more empathy and understanding for other people and that has a ripple-in-the- pond impact on our organizations and the people we do business with.”
Ensuring two-way learning Amanda Cavaleri, founder and CEO of Connect the Ages, which strives to connect students and young professionals to multi- disciplinary career, internship and volunteer opportunities with older generations, points out that an important element of mentoring relationships is the learning the mentor re- ceives from the experience. For instance, she once had a younger employee she mentored informally. The employee was interested in new technology, so Cavaleri took her to conferences and gave her opportunities to practice and learn in that realm. This
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