Inconveniently Complex

We love to talk about generations.

Boomers don't like change. Millennials are entitled. Gen Z doesn't want to work.

At least that's what we're told.

In this episode, we're unpacking why generational stereotypes have become one of the most socially accepted forms of bias and what gets lost when we reduce complex human beings (especially women) to labels.

The moment we start using those labels to explain someone's entire personality, we stop being curious about who they actually are.

We explore:
• Why generational stereotypes feel so easy to believe
• The fear and uncertainty often hiding underneath them
• How these assumptions show up in workplaces and leadership
• The hidden cost of replacing curiosity with judgment
• Why women have an opportunity to learn from, not compete with, women in different generations

Human beings are inconveniently complex, but maybe that's not a problem to solve. Maybe that's the point.

Thank you for listening to NDA!

If this episode made you think, challenged a perspective, or helped you recognize a pattern in yourself, consider sharing it with someone else who might need the conversation.

You can connect with us on Instagram at @nda_pod, where we continue the discussion between episodes.

Until next time, notice the pattern. Then decide what happens next.

Transcript

0:00

Today we're going to be talking about the generation trap that we hear so frequently. And Elizabeth and I have sort of a hot take on that topic. Do you want to share what it is? Well, let me just say this. If you and I hit a dollar for every time we heard someone say, we need to figure out how to get these younger workers, these kids these days to work because no one wants to work. Or let's flip it around. I've heard lots of times these older workers, they just don't want to change. We'd be millionaires. True. Right. So we'd be retiring on a bench somewhere warm. Because you and I and our listeners too, we've all met lazy 25-year-olds and lazy 75-year-olds, and we've met arrogant or entitled 25-year-olds and arrogant and entitled 75-year-olds and everything in between. And guess what? We've also met super creative and innovative and flexible 25-year-olds and people just the same way who are 75 and everything in between. Here's our hot take. Ready? And we'll get into it. But human beings, we are inconveniently complex. That's the hot take, and we're gonna dive into it together for this episode. Most NDAs keep people quiet. Ours does the opposite. Around here, NDA means no dicks allowed. Not men, the behaviors that keep women small. This is the podcast for women who are done shrinking and ready to rise. I'm Amanda Kachurka. And I'm Elizabeth Cipola. Welcome to NDA. Stereotypes don't appear out of nowhere, right? I'm using this word stereotype very intentionally because that's what we're talking about. These are generational stereotypes. It's still a way that you're flattening people into assumptions. And as you just stated, we are complex. We're inconveniently complex because it takes time and effort and curiosity to understand what makes a human tick. And it's so much easier if we just lump them into, oh, you're part of this generation, so you must exhibit all of these qualities. And we skip right over the part where we actually get to know each other. Patterns do exist, different generations are shaped by different economies, parenting styles, workplace expectations, technologies, cultural events, cultural norms, stressors. There's lots of different factors that go into this. But people, to your point, are so much more complex than the categories that we assign to them based on their birth here. I freaking love it. And do you remember, Amanda, we were actually participating in a focus group, maybe was it five or six weeks ago at this point? I think. And one of the participants in the focus group was making a lot of commentary and just lumping, they were talking about millennials, but just lumping millennials and not in a very complimentary way in one big group. And you know, I just love it when I hear people like that say things like, Oh, you know how millennials are, and you're a millennial, Amanda. And it's like, no, Karen, I don't. Uh why? Because there are 72 million of them, and turns out they're all a little different. So and we've shared, I'm Gen X. So I'm older than you, but in so many ways, aren't you the one constantly corralling me and keeping me focused? Right? Guilty. Yeah. And then here's another one, Gen Z, right? The the most common thing I hear about Gen Z complaints from business owners, leaders with whom we work is Gen Z, they just always want constant feedback. But meanwhile, that 58-year-old vice president at the same company, what's he doing? He's checking his inbox every six freaking minutes, waiting for someone to tell him his presentation was good, right? We all want feedback. It's just that some people, for lots of different reasons, have learned to disguise it differently, right? Yes. This episode is really about what happens when your observations become assumptions and those lines become blurred instead of observations that lead to curiosity and digging deeper and asking questions, observations leading to making assumptions and then patterns that you're witnessing become lumped into an identity and labels that you assign replace the curiosity that you should have. This is an issue, women, we do it to ourselves and to each other. I think that adds a layer of complexity to this because we do that just among ourselves. We talked a little bit about that, a lot actually, about that in our uh making of a mean girl episode. But the more conversations Elizabeth and I have had, and the more we've we've heard these stereotypes just being applied over and over and over again without any curiosity happening, it's just frustrating. And I think it's gotten to a boiling point for both of us. We're like, all right, you know what? It's time to talk about this. As we said before, there are behaviors that are commonly associated with generations because generations are shaped by collective experiences. But those behaviors are never, and I use that word intentionally, never ever exclusive to one age group. People carry traits from environments they were raised in, from experiences that they had, not just the generation that they belong to. To Elizabeth's point, we've seen members of one generation exhibit stereotypical qualities of another generation many times. If you actually pause and reflect on it, I bet you have too. You've just never taken the time to stop and get curious about it. We've we know what this behavior sounds like. It's dismissive jokes or statements, it's immediate assumptions about competence or character, it's using your age or your generation as a shorthand for this is your personality. And again, this feels for some people, clearly not Elizabeth and I, but for some people, this type of stereotyping feels quote unquote lighter than other forms of stereotyping. People say things about generations that they would never ever say about other identity groups publicly. Yes. But the outcome is still reductive. So the moment that we start thinking that a label is explaining someone completely, we stop being curious about them. And that's the problem. Exactly. I believe big time that the generational stereotyping, you know what it is? It's lazy leadership. Because if you can just explain away someone's behavior and say, oh, well, they're a boomer or they're a Gen Z or Millennial or Gen X, whatever it is, then you probably stop being curious too soon. Yes. Right. That is just something that truly is just a way to be lazy as a leader and not to have to hold yourself accountable for actually, I don't know, getting to know each of your employees for who they are, and not trying to paint everyone with a broad brush and lead everyone in the same way. I don't care what generation you are in, every human being appreciates being seen for who they are absolute, right? No question. Why do people do this, right? We touched on it a couple of times, but I think to put it a little bit more blatantly, people lean into stereotypes because why? There's a few reasons. One, your brain likes to take the shortcut if you give it the opportunity. So if you're not having to do the extra brain work and you can just group somebody in based on the tendencies that you know or have witnessed from other members of that generation, your brain is viewing that as a shortcut. So, okay, there's one reason. Another reason, stereotypes create social bonding. I feel like I haven't seen as much of it recently, but for a long time there was this like very heated rivalry between boomers and millennials. Yes, but that shared contempt creates social bonding, right? It gives you something to commiserate and bond over, as sad as that is, but it's true. Yeah. And you know, one other thing you you saying that just made me think of the fact that, well, first of all, for those who've listened to our other episodes, you know that I am a firm believer that fear drives so much of our behavior without us even realizing it, right? And what I what you just said is where things I think start to get really interesting because I think most people don't even realize that fear is driving these generalizations that they make, these sweeping generalizations. And by the way, I'm talking about whoever it is, right? Whether you are a Gen Zer making generalizations about boomers, just as a person, I think fear drives it. Because I think very few people, and now I want to just be specific about leaders here for a second in the workplace. I think very few leaders actually wake up consciously and think, I'm scared. So I'm going to stereotype an entire generation. I mean, people don't. So instead, how does a fear show up? Well, it shows up as certainty, right? So they might say something that sounds like they're all like that, or you know how millennials are, or boomers hate change, or Gen Z just doesn't want to work. Did you notice I didn't say anything about Gen Xers? But yeah, it's almost like statements like that then create the illusion for that leader who's saying things like that, that they understand what the problem is. But guess what? In reality, probably what's happening is they're avoiding a more uncomfortable question, which is I don't know how to lead someone who's different than me. This kind of subset of the larger issue specifically gets into something that I know you and I have presented about in the past, which is so you have this dynamic of the generational stereotypes, but then that gets layered in with the shift in the quote unquote social contract between employers and employees. So there's multiple layers here of complexity. And what we mean when we say social contract between employers and employees. So historically, if you go back to like the 30s and 40s, the contract between employer and employee is the employee gives long-term loyalty, hard work, following organizational rules and policies, and the employer gives them in return job security, stable pay, predictable career progression, pensions, retirement support. Meaning the basic understanding is if I dedicate my career to this company, the company will take care of me. So then we moved forward, and around the like 80s, 90s, we saw a shift where employees began realizing loyalty doesn't necessarily guarantee me security. Employers increasingly expected adaptability, higher productivity. So the old promise of lifetime employment largely disappeared. Fast forward to today, there is, especially from the employees' perspective, a much more balanced desire as far as as long as this relationship is creating value for both of us, we'll continue it. So the employees are looking for competitive compensation, growth opportunities, meaningful work, flexibility, support of their work life, harmony, because I don't love the word balance in that context, and a positive culture. Whereas the employers are still, many of them, looking for the same type of contract that existed in the 40s. And it's unrealistic. So then if you're not meeting that expectation as an employee, you automatically get lumped into a group of, well, they don't want to work hard. And I think a large portion of it can be attributed to what do new generations being brought into the workplace bring. It brings change. The relationships change, the dynamics of the teams change, the actual work can change, especially when you have a ton of pushback. It's important to dig deeper not only into the people that are being lumped in and stereotyped as a generation, it's also important to look at where it's coming from from the people who are doing it and getting curious and digging deeper about where it's coming from for them, because it's a good indicator that, hey, maybe there's some fear here. There's some fear around are these people going to come in and replace me? Am I going to be irrelevant? Those are actual fears that people have. They're they're not usually going to communicate them, but they're there. I truly think that a lot of times we don't even realize what is the fear underneath it, right? And if I could lump all the fears into one category, driving stereotypes, what do you think about this? I wonder if we could just say it's scary because it's the fear of losing control. When we say a certain generation doesn't want to do fill in the blank or, you know, we don't like the way they behave. What we're often saying, especially as leaders, is what the hell? The things that used to motivate employees, they're not working anymore. And guess what? That's scary because now the leader has to evolve. And from what I've seen in the coaching work I've done over all these years, those generational labels that can almost be a way to resist and try to avoid that reality. Yeah, no question. The impact, there's a couple layers of impact that I want to talk about here as far as the stereotyping creates defensiveness, shame, self-consciousness, resentment. But I think there's an impact on women specifically that I want to touch on. Because as I mentioned earlier, there's there's another layer to this because I think women experience age-based stereotyping differently than men do, because there's this other layer, which spoiler alert is going to be a topic of a future episode, where women are simultaneously, in addition to the pressures of being stereotyped by their generation, there's also pressure to stay youthful, but also be experienced, remain adaptable, not be too emotional, not be outdated, not be immature. And it becomes this impossible standard. It further serves the division. And that's when that happens, especially among women. That's when we stop learning from each other. So younger women are losing out on mentorship perspective, institutional wisdom, older women are losing out on fresh perspective, adaptability, and reciprocal growth. There's a loss on both sides, and it's so sad. There are some, as you know, we always like to share some practical tips for navigating this a little bit differently and better. Some questions you can start to ask yourself when you either experience others or even yourself slipping into using those generational stereotypes. Ask yourself first, am I reacting to the individual or am I reacting to a category? Did I make assumptions before gathering any context? Am I treating observed behavior as an identity? Saying, okay, I saw this one characteristic, Amanda didn't get that project completed on time. So that means she's lazy and she doesn't work hard. Right. Have I confused explanation with judgment? And I think your point earlier, Elizabeth, about staying curious longer is a good one because this takes time. This is not ask a couple of questions and automatically get to an answer. This takes time and effort and intention, one of our favorite words, to dig deeper. I'd love to challenge our listeners to try the next time they're in a situation, whether it be at work or social, whatever, and someone makes a comment that is obviously overtly biased based on, well, today we're talking about generational stereotyping and biases. But instead of assuming intent, you know, a really good question that you could ask. Oh, I love this. What makes you say that? Because nothing causes someone to backpedal faster than actually being asked to explain their stereotype out loud, you know, or you could just even say, Oh, do tell more. I'd love to hear more about what you've noticed. That's a good idea. It is that challenging of the dismissive comments or the stereotyping comments casually, but directly. I mean, you don't, we're not asking you to like jump down somebody's throat, but we have to at some point stop reinforcing these comments and stop using it as social currency, stop using it as a way to bond with other members of your generation. There's plenty of other ways to bond, I promise. This does not have to be one of those creating more cross-generational collaboration intentionally. We talked about that on the Making of a Mean Girl episode too, where a lot of times, especially younger folks or even folks who are close to retirement age or retirement age get left out of things. So then you've got a lot of rooms where there are conversations happening only between people who are in their, say, late 30s to late 40s, I think is probably accurate. How many times have we heard from employers over the years? Oh, we have all these retirements coming up, and there's so much institutional knowledge that's gonna the door with that. Dude, you had it in your power to fix this. Oh my gosh, avoidance is a very real thing. And again, uh, you know, that's lazy leadership. You don't get to complain about this now. You've had plenty of opportunities to create. See, now I'm fired up, to bring people together cross-generationally, and now you're making it someone else's problem. It's ridiculous. It's so, so preventable, so avoidable. One thing that I think is really this has served me well in my life is I would love to challenge every single listener to find one woman who is either 15 years ahead of you or 15 years behind you. Because one of the things that destroys stereotypes the quickest is actually getting to know someone, get to know a woman from a different generation because then those labels they start falling apart, right? Some of my closest friends is a whole generation older than me. And one of Amanda's favorite people is a whole generation older than her, right, Amanda? Very true. That would be me. But for real, because what do I rely on you for in a lot of ways, Amanda? You explain different things about technology, right? But then what can I help you with? I can explain things about life. So many things. I think the point is that wisdom is not age exclusive, emotional intelligence is not age exclusive, adaptability isn't either. It's recognizing that every individual person, regardless of how old they are, regardless of what generation they belong to, has something to contribute, has something that you can learn from. And it's all about taking the time to stop and get curious instead of judgmental about learning more, digging deeper, understanding what truly makes that person tick. It's like one of my favorite scenes from Ted Lasso in the episode where he's playing darts, and he says that. He saw this quote about being curious, not judgmental, because when you take the time to dig deeper, you learn so much more, and it's so much more useful to you and to the other person to be able to truly learn more about each other. So it is, it's so important to dig deep. And I just want to point out, too, that every generation thinks that this next generation has it all wrong. And personally, when I think of a lot of the things that I'm hearing now from the current generation that is gearing up to retire about the younger generations coming behind them, it's like a real rich comment to to grumble about the younger generation because guess what? You know what you guys did? You willingly paid for tubfuls of beanie babies, right? That are rotting in your attic. And so I think we need to remember that. Remember the beanie babies. Yes, seriously, man. I love so much that you just brought that into this conversation. Makes me happy. Anyway, I think it might be time for shrink this. Let's do some shrinking behavior. Do you want to go first? Yeah, I will. One area that I have really noticed myself shrinking around big time. I've been shrinking around social media, not just second guessing my own voice, but also not really feeling comfortable in my skin right now, not super eager to post pictures of myself right now. If I'm honest with myself, it's almost like I'm frozen here because it's like I believe that I need to become someone else in order to be accepted or be relevant on social media. I think for me, from the feedback I've gotten my whole career, one of the things people either love the most about me or don't love about me, because people either love me or really don't like me. That's just been across the bear my whole life. There's no in between. But one of the things about me is how authentic I am. I just I feel like I'm fine being authentic in person, but for social media, I'm terrified. So then I just have been avoiding it and not posting anything. But I need to trust that authenticity, that part of me that's always been there, that has a much longer shelf life than how I look or if I say things a certain kind of way. That's an experience. Something that's always helpful for me when it comes to social media is to remember that there are far more people out there who are only posting themselves on their best days. So to compare ourselves to that, and not to mention like the advent of heavily AI-generated content, images, all of that, how much of what you see out there is actually real. So I think there's a lot of value in bringing that reality lens, especially now. And I think it's also important to give yourself some grace because you were never a huge social media user prior to all of this. So to expect yourself to like suddenly flip a switch and be this super active content creator, it's just not realistic. And there's a double shrink here, a double shrink. This is like an ice cold plunge shrink. So you created this lovely post on your personal page. You're like, hey, I'm really proud of us. We reached this many downloads, and it's a huge accomplishment for us for our podcast. I'm so proud of us. I couldn't even bring myself to comment on it. I'm like really in the world. Okay, what stopped me? I guess just wanting to say just the right thing. That and we talked about this the last episode from this past week. I think also that it's too early to celebrate because we need to, we haven't earned the right. We have to become even more. Oh, come on. No, we have definitely earned the right to celebrate. A mentor of mine called me this morning and she is a listener. Hello to Kathy. Thank you so much for listening. Commented on the post, but then she brought it up as well. She was like, that's great that you're sharing the metrics. That means something because it's demonstrating, hey, people are listening. And that's exactly what I wanted to emphasize. I am always afraid of saying the wrong thing on social media. And there have definitely been times where I've written posts that I look back in my Facebook memories. Such a double-edged sword. Sometimes I look back and I'm like, oh, that was so nice. And then I look back and I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. Anyway, but that's just it, right? Is it's trial and error. And there are going to be posts that you make that you look back on and you're like, oh God, why did I say that? And there are going to be posts that you look back on and you're thinking, that was a really great post. That was a really great day. It's a mixture, it's a learning process. I think it boils down to that thing that you and I have in common, which is striving for perfection. And it's coming to a point of acceptance of it's never going to be perfect. Yeah. So can we just agree that maybe whatever I come up with is better than nothing? Yeah. Thank you for sharing your shrinking behavior. My shrinking behavior is actually something that I have witnessed in my very close friend group recently. So I have a group of friends. We grew up together. Some of us have known each other since we were like six, seven years old, even earlier. And we have a constant group chat. And there was a text that came through from one of our friends recently apologizing for going MIA for a little while, meaning she hadn't been participating in the group chat. And she is incredibly accomplished in her career. She has children, they're in the process of moving. And I felt bad that she felt like she had to apologize for going MIA. Yeah. She said, I just needed to unplug. I've been really overwhelmed. And I texted her back and I was like, you never, ever, ever have to apologize for stepping back and unplugging when you need it. Yeah. I do it myself. I have witnessed many people doing it over the years, personal connections, work connections. There was a piece of advice that I saw several years ago, and it really changed the way that I think about that because I, as you know, really pride myself in a quick response time to emails and calls. Yeah. Right. Sometimes that response time is not sustainable because I've been on vacation or I've been really busy or whatever. And I used to, when I would respond to an email, if it had been more than like 24 hours, I would respond with, I'm sorry for the delay in my response. Meanwhile, there are people who take actual weeks to get back to an email. And so I saw this, and it said, instead of I'm sorry for the delay, try thank you for your patience. Oh, I like that. So you're not immediately shrinking yourself. So you're not apologizing for something that you did or didn't do. And so I listen, I'm not going to sit here and say that I don't do that anymore because I definitely do. There are still times where I catch myself apologizing for something that I don't have to apologize for, but saying thank you for your patience or hey, thanks for understanding I've been on vacation or I've just been really busy and overwhelmed. I think it goes back to what we've said in previous episodes about being authentic about your feelings and kind of where you are. Modeling that vulnerability creates space where other people feel comfortable to do the same. Definitely. Don't be hard on yourself about how you show up in these group texts because the whole beauty of these awesome friendships with this group of women is that it's a joy of getting to hang with people and communicate with people, meet them where they are who are not exactly like you. And I mean, a group text is really it's where all of our dysfunction somehow balances out. Yeah, truly. I mean, it is. I'm that friend that'll show up at the very end like 50 messages later when all the plans have been made, and then I'll be like, oh wait, what's going on? Yeah, you know, but that's okay. This group, we've been friends for 30 plus years. So, like, we we've seen each other through multiple seasons of life, through really high highs and really low lows, and we've seen the best and the worst of each other. And that's one of those things where like we're never ever going to judge you. We're gonna ask, are you okay? Do you need to talk? Let's set you dinner for a night this week so you don't have to think about cooking. We want to support you. So if you're struggling, we would actually rather you share that with us because we want to be there for you. We want to support you. We want to make sure you have what you need to carry on with your life. Exactly. Yep. So that's mine. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the members of the Rise. We're so, so grateful. This is our 10th episode, which is so exciting. We are truly amazed and humbled by the response that we've gotten. And so, as we always say, if you would like to submit shrinking behavior to be shared on a future episode, send us a DM on Instagram. We are at NDA underscore pod. We're looking for any behaviors that you exhibit or that you've witnessed in others. It could be in the form of is this shrinking behavior, or it could be here's my shrinking behavior and here's what I've learned about it. Because the purpose, as we always say, is to share and learn together and grow together. So thank you again for listening. Make sure you subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, wherever you get your podcast so you never miss a future episode. And as a reminder, anytime you are able to replace assumptions with curiosity, you're allowing people to become human again. Absolutely. Love that.