The Diversity Wheel is a very interesting tool for exploring the different identities that make us who we are. And particularly effective when used to activate conversations, for example between people participating in DE&I training. The tool was published in the book ‘Workforce America! Managing Employee Diversity as a Vital Resource’ by Loden & Rosener and on the web you can find several versions, some with and some without the outermost circle, referring to the great events that characterised our early years of training, those that have a profound impact on our perception of the world.
Last week I facilitated a two-day training session on the topic of DE&I, aimed at a group of executives and managers of a young multinational company operating in the hi-tech field, divided between generation X and generation Y (later you’ll understand why this data is important).
Many of the questions that the group asked themselves were about managing the so-called Generation Z, those born between 1995 and 2010, and the group noted problems such as: lack of professionalism, inability to concentrate, need for clear and non-negotiable boundaries between professional and private life, extreme sensitivity to feedback, etc.
On the subject of managing the generations, the group expressed impatience, frustration and irritation, particularly towards the youngest members of the company. A few days earlier I had read the results of a survey by intelligent.com, which reported some worrying data, in particular:
- 75% of companies that have hired Gen Z say they are dissatisfied with their lack of motivation and initiative, poor communication skills, lack of professionalism, and inability to receive feedback,
- 6 out of 10 companies have fired a Gen Z this year,
- 1 out of 6 managers hesitate when recruiting from this group.
I was therefore witnessing conversations that I feared would lead to similar decisions being made, or at least to a disinvestment of energy in the management of generation Z. It was of little use to remind them that generational analyses are sociological analyses and that they analyse trends, whereas in a company we find ourselves managing uniqueness. Then I remembered some articles I had read on LinkedIn by Claire Jollain, who runs a business school in Switzerland and has conducted research on the topic of managing Gen Z.
In particular, in a TEDx talk she talks about the importance of exploring the differences starting from the various influences that have impacted the formative years of the different generations. So I asked my participants to form mixed groups of Gen X and Y and to start a dialogue about the outer edge of the wheel, but also about the messages that their families (predictably with parents belonging to the baby boomer generation) had passed on to them.
This led to a whole host of topics (political, technological, social, economic, cultural, etc.) but also to memories of particular games, conversations at the dinner table, words of advice at the front door before going to school, words now forgotten, past ways of thinking about the world of work…
Many things in common emerged, but also many differences, particularly linked to the dominant technologies: for the Xs videocassettes, walkmans, audio cassettes, black and white and then colour TV, arcade games; for the Ys Nintendo, CDs, the first computers, different programming languages…
The thing that particularly struck me, apart from the somewhat nostalgic dive (for me too!) into a world that is now gone, was the passion, the depth of listening, the atmosphere of intimacy that was created during the exercise. For about forty minutes the fifteen managers and executives, divided into groups of five, were completely present to the conversation, they listened to each other, all eager to contribute and add elements to build the picture, sometimes telling parts of their past life with great emotion, reconnecting and sharing memories. During the training there wasn’t a single Gen Z person present… what a loss!
At the end of the dialogue, in plenary, we tried the same exercise for Gen Z, asking ourselves ‘what has shaped this generation’s relationship with the world?’ to help the group develop empathy and understand their different needs in relation to management… Some of the participants, as well as having this generation at work, also had them closer to them: sons and daughters, nephews and nieces, family friends…
And reflecting on the different experiences: COVID first of all, the fragility caused by the forced absence of face-to-face relationships, perhaps causing relationship difficulties in the workplace, insecurity regarding the parents’ work, the risk of unemployment and sudden changes in the social conditions of families, which leads to the need to have a clear picture of the economic conditions of the workplace, addiction to technology that causes reduced attention spans, excessive protection by families and the difficulty as parents in saying no, which can make them susceptible to feedback, have regenerated the participants’ thinking with regard to managing Gen Z.
The exercise led to many ideas of actions: dedicate more time to managing each person in teams and help young people to formulate their priorities, clarify expectations, improve one’s ability to give feedback, be open about one’s emotions to help Gen Z decode emotional storms, be present to help manage anxiety due to organisational uncertainty…
What happened during this part of the workshop was that, by accessing their memories, people didn’t just work to compile a list cognitively, but they also accessed deep emotions, linked to family and loved ones, and they opened up to share all this as a group.
Once the empathy circuit was opened, it was much easier to understand rather than judge, to accept diversity rather than condemn it… and one of the actions that people thought of was to use the Diversity Wheel in their teams and recreate this relational quality, together with their genZ collaborators 😊!