Retiring the Generation Gap

Jennifer Deal is a research scientist at CCL, where she currently heads the Emerging Leaders project. In this role, she investigates the effects of generational issues on leadership. She also has research interest in global leadership, conflict management, mediation, and small-group decision-making. Jennifer has authored and co-authored reports and articles on executive selection, global management and development, women in management and generational issues. She holds a PhD in industrial/organizational psychology from The Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and she is a regular speaker at Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), ASTD, and CCL's Friends of the Center Conference and has also spoken internationally at conferences of the Australian Human Resources Institute, Asian Regional Training and Development Organization, Academy of Business and Administrative Sciences, and International Conference of Applied Psychology. Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is the world's largest institution devoted exclusively to research and education. For more than three decades, CCL has studied and trained hundreds of thousands of executives and worked with them to create practical models, tools and publications for the development of effective leaders and leadership.

• Preface viiIntroduction Do Not Pass Go Without Reading This Chapter! 1Principle 1 All Generations Have Similar Values; They Just Express Them Differently 14Principle 2 Everyone Wants Respect; They Just Don’t Define It the Same Way 31Principle 3 Trust Matters 51Principle 4 People Want Leaders Who Are Credible and Trustworthy 72Principle 5 Organizational Politics Is a Problem—No Matter How Old (or Young) You Are 84Principle 6 No One Really Likes Change 100Principle 7 Loyalty Depends on the Context, Not on the Generation 118Principle 8 It’s as Easy to Retain a Young Person as an Older One—If You Do the Right Things 144Principle 9 Everyone Wants to Learn—More Than Just About Anything Else 172Principle 10 Almost Everyone Wants a Coach 194Conclusion 210Answers to a Few Questions 214Appendix A 215Appendix B 219Appendix C 223Appendix D 227Appendix E 231Appendix F 235References and Suggested Reading 237Acknowledgments 241About the Author 243Index 245About the Center for Creative Leadership 259