Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone! My name is Joanne. Look what i'm your host for the inclusion Byes Podcast.
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Joanne Lockwood: today is episode seventy,
Joanne Lockwood: with a title, a new diversity,
Joanne Lockwood: and I the absolute honor and privilege to welcome me to seeing
Joanne Lockwood: in Asia, describes itself as someone who brings home to people that crying need for generational relevance,
Joanne Lockwood: and who opens their eyes to the threat. Generational dissidents can hold to our collective mental and emotional health,
Joanne Lockwood: and asked Nature to describe a super, she said, a deep desire to leave behind her. A generation is more potent, progressive,
Joanne Lockwood: and productive that her generation.
Joanne Lockwood: Hello, Nature! Welcome to the show!
Neerja Singh: Hi, Joe! It's lovely to be here, and it's like a dream. We were in Dublin just twenty days ago, attending the global Speaker Summit. And here we are across the oceans, doing a podcast on my favorite subject, Generational diversity. Thank you, Joe, for this opportunity.
Joanne Lockwood: Absolute pleasure, and it was absolutely wonderful to meet you in person, as you say, a couple of weeks ago.
Joanne Lockwood: So nature
Joanne Lockwood: um! What do you mean by a new diversity.
Neerja Singh: We talk about diversity in terms of gender ethnicity, socio-economic differences, but generational is a diversity that is just beginning to emerge.
Neerja Singh: I do believe that it presents very unique challenges.
Neerja Singh: The interesting thing about generational diversity. Joe, is that each and every one of us is going to be experiencing this because we are going to enter different age groups,
Neerja Singh: so everyone is going to be affected by it. There are very special circumstances today that make this a very crucial critical diversity which ought to be studied very, very seriously.
Neerja Singh: Yes, you
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I I
Joanne Lockwood: you're right. And I think that's quite insightful. We are all going to a step. Is this experience generational diversity? Because we will all boss, we may stay within our own generational bound.
Joanne Lockwood: That bound relatively changes as time progresses and new generations. Come along, you cultures come along new ways of thinking. Come along,
Joanne Lockwood: and we almost like decay into the past, if you like, for a better way of putting it. So. Yeah, it's It's It's something that everybody that we all experience, and it's saying isn't it, We we're all in. We all in the same storm but different boats. So we're all in the same generational um momentum.
Joanne Lockwood: But we're experiencing in a slightly different way.
Neerja Singh: In fact, there are micro-generations today because things are changing so fast, and it is the technology around us that has given
Neerja Singh: generations that are coming up now a form of autonomy and agency that perhaps you and I
Neerja Singh: have never seen before. So they are very fundamental
Neerja Singh: social systems, dynamics that are under threat. Today, for instance, the collapse of authority, you might have a young person.
Neerja Singh: We feel today that they don't need their grandparents anymore. They don't need their parents anymore. They have such power and their fingertips, thanks to the Internet, one hundred and fifty.
Neerja Singh: So these are phenomena that need to be very, very closely studied, researched, and spoken about, so that everybody at places of work at home in public spaces, is aware
Neerja Singh: of what is at play.
Neerja Singh: And how can we be more productive and happier,
Neerja Singh: who doesn't want a happy workforce that over delivers. Right?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, we want discretionary effort. We want that sense of belonging. We want that um empowerment we want that that is
Joanne Lockwood: is connections within our workplace, and and those those can be tricky when you've got same multiple generations.
Joanne Lockwood: Multiple viewpoints, both of all the
Joanne Lockwood: biases we may be to develop a perspectives in our own life because we've been brought up
Joanne Lockwood: across generationally.
Joanne Lockwood: Our viewpoints are often anchored
Joanne Lockwood: to the situation. We were where we grew when we developed, or grew, or or experience something
Neerja Singh: absolutely.
Neerja Singh: And we need to remind ourselves, Joe, that this generation gap is unique,
Neerja Singh: never ever unprecedented. And The reason is
Neerja Singh: that this is not about style, or music, or sexual experimentation or consumption.
Neerja Singh: This gap is about language.
Neerja Singh: There are battles over inclusivity, about diversity and power structures.
Neerja Singh: And just to make a representative case, I usually use two terms: Pomer and Zuma.
Neerja Singh: They are not entirely accurate, but for the sake of argument. Let's say a boomer wanted a paycheck. Once a zoomer looks for purpose. For one, it is satisfaction for the other. It is development. One Once a boss or worked with the boss and the other
Neerja Singh: it looks for a coach today.
Neerja Singh: One it is a job for the other. There's a life for one. There's a job in a government military public sector, and for the other it's their own business. So there are very, very fundamental differences that we need to be aware of, because at work they present themselves in different expectations, one
Neerja Singh: in different definitions of yes, different definitions of let's say excellence or ethics, or what culture expectations.
Neerja Singh: That's why this new generational diversity needs to be
Neerja Singh: studied.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I mean the reason, I think that's insightful and
Joanne Lockwood: opening my eyes is because I I live and work, and I've been spent most of my life in the Uk uh the south of the south of England,
Joanne Lockwood: and you are based in hydra bad in India. Uh, presumably you've spent a a good proportion of your life in a very similar area to that. So what you're saying there from the other side of the world across several continents
Joanne Lockwood: is very similar to my perception of my reality. So this is a cost generational, cross, cultural experience as Well, so we're not saying A a boomer from your continent has vastly different expectations than the boomer for my constant Yes, we have different
Joanne Lockwood: um nuances because of our cultures, the fundamentally the desires and needs because we're living in a global world. Now, connected global, we're, we're homogeneizing around common thinking and common experiences aren't we.
Neerja Singh: So today each generation is like a culture, so that is one with their own language, with their own visuals, with their own values that they internalize, and they practice. So that is one second, one hundred and one
Neerja Singh: in India. There has,
Neerja Singh: you know, the social revolution has happened so fast. Currently several revolutions are going on in my country there is the industrial. There is your political one.
Neerja Singh: The most important is a social revolution, a foot around me, and until the two thousand and thirteen. I was quite blissfully unaware of this generational gap, and how fundamental it could be. There were two incidents, Jo, that happened in two thousand and thirteen.
Neerja Singh: My husband is a fighter pilot, and we were posted at an Air Force base, where a mig twenty one crashed and the twenty five-year-old pirate lost his life.
Neerja Singh: Of course. The plane went down too. Now crashes have happened before What was disturbing about this was the cause. The cause was sleep, deprivation, social media addiction. This young Violet was up at night
Neerja Singh: chatting up with his girlfriend. Now this is something that did not happen in one thousand nine hundred and eighty six. When I got married
Neerja Singh: my husband was flying those days, and he told me very firmly that escape is very important,
Neerja Singh: that is one. Imagine the extent of the loss, and the second was in two thousand and thirteen. My daughter! She was twenty three. Then she went to depression completely out of the blue for us unexpected. We considered ourselves fairly progressive parents. We read up on the
Neerja Singh: new ideas around, and we thought we were on top of it.
Neerja Singh: But here we were faced with this
Neerja Singh: very desolate, bleak, and frightening experience with our older one, who
Neerja Singh: all the check boxes. And here she was
Neerja Singh: with this very dark space that made me set up and start looking around what is going on. And that's how my engagement with generational diversity started,
Neerja Singh: And so
Neerja Singh: the more I started the more I realized that because of the hyp connectedness to Rajo,
Neerja Singh: whether it's Uk: whether it's South Africa, or whether it's India.
Neerja Singh: This is. There is a mass, mind, you know, almost a colonization of minds, young minds, I say colonization of young minds that is happening around us,
Neerja Singh: So it's hard to say
Neerja Singh: what is influencing the young people the next generation all across the world.
Neerja Singh: It is mostly
Neerja Singh: the same similar information that they are getting from the Internet unfiltered information.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, as I As I was talking now, I was thinking that uh,
Joanne Lockwood: my generation, if you like. Um, we'll always see. I I think you would class as a Gen. X. Uh born in the mid sixty S. I'm, i'm just a Gen. X, not a a a boomer.
Joanne Lockwood: So
Joanne Lockwood: I But I spent most of my life
Joanne Lockwood: in a technical. It connected. So I was always at the leading edge of technology. Um, creating knowledge, training other people to use it. And also I spent a lot of my lot of my
Joanne Lockwood: formative years, my twenties about thirty to fortys, traveling around the world. Um for work and also for pleasure. Um going to
Joanne Lockwood: world meetings of of of of in networking and home hosting in people's, homes, and living with people in their countries. So I I've always considered myself to be not a uh,
Joanne Lockwood: a true Gen. X. So in terms of technology or connectedness, because I I feel like I've got those aspirations. I think one thing that's taught me in the last two years with Covid
Joanne Lockwood: is that I was already ready for a technical, global perspective and not seeing things very parochial, a very low Cal based, but more what we do globally. Um. So is
Joanne Lockwood: what I think we're trying to say is, we've got to be careful. We don't create stereotypes or label people as being of a certain age. Some some of it is,
Joanne Lockwood: it's mindset,
Joanne Lockwood: but I also appreciate. There is. There is some definite
Joanne Lockwood: generational anchoring of my age. That means, I do think, in different ways than someone who's maybe uh a a a zoomer, as you, as you call them. Yeah,
Neerja Singh: that's true.
Neerja Singh: The only thing today is that
Neerja Singh: what's happening is again the rate of change.
Neerja Singh: For instance, today the average age of founders of unicorns would be, let's say, thirty, one,
Neerja Singh: and the age of the Ceos will be forty, one, perhaps, and many of them have little guidance or experience to run companies that are scaling very quickly,
Neerja Singh: like they say this has yet no microwave in the market for leadership skills.
Neerja Singh: So one is awareness, a global viewpoint like you, developed because of your traveling, which is, which is great. But
Neerja Singh: the other
Neerja Singh: is
Neerja Singh: what is what is going on in in what places, in companies and businesses
Neerja Singh: so
Neerja Singh: far is moving younger and younger, and the older people, many of them begin to feel irrelevant, George Day, and that's a paradox, because longevity
Neerja Singh: is that it gets better and better. People are living longer. They stay healthy. They are quite aware of medical issues, and they would like to stay relevant. And however they begin to feel out of place. So the thing in being aware of generational diversity is
Neerja Singh: to examine and apply ways in which we can include the different generations, and read the benefits of their very unique strength. Because, let's say, for the younger unicorns,
Neerja Singh: there's no microwave as yet in the market for leadership skills, so you can't instantly have them learn how to lead,
Neerja Singh: so they,
Neerja Singh: while the older generation may lack in what you call digital intelligence, maybe team, but they can make up an accumulated in you.
Neerja Singh: So these are ways to get together various diverse generations, age diversity, and
Neerja Singh: make the most of their strengths. But for that, managers and their leaders have to be up to speed with the
Neerja Singh: how differently these various generations think, and what their life paradigms are.
Neerja Singh: Finally, that is important.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And I saw so my generation Um, without casting any discussions on your age. But maybe our both senior generation here is that we grew up in a world where leadership wasn't
Joanne Lockwood: nurtured with Eq.
Joanne Lockwood: Or even see queue or d queues d key with an exist that time, so we can open it very much more command to control hierarchical.
Joanne Lockwood: Um:
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Not necessarily. Dictatorship, certainly authoritative, like leadership, whereas the leadership styles that work better today.
Joanne Lockwood: A more collaborative, the more transformational, the more bottom up. Um, and some, maybe leaders who are
Joanne Lockwood: forty forty-five, fifty plus
Joanne Lockwood: haven't necessarily grown their career
Joanne Lockwood: with that mindset. And that's a That's a real tough,
Joanne Lockwood: tough, retraining for me at least, to get a head. I understand
Neerja Singh: absolutely.
Neerja Singh: Certainly
Neerja Singh: it is, it is, and it requires an entire process of reframing, their assumptions,
Neerja Singh: being willing to listen, being willing to speak. Only, like they say, twenty five percent of what they're thinking and it
Neerja Singh: Yes, it is, but it has to be done. Because today, Joe,
Neerja Singh: we need to appreciate
Neerja Singh: that.
Neerja Singh: For instance, I call myself a temperature. But what is preaching today? What does it imply? Well, breaching today is start where the next generation is not from where you are,
Neerja Singh: so it's not a bridge from me to the next. You know you are helping them build a bridge from where they are and where they want to go.
Neerja Singh: That is Jed prison here in this case.
Neerja Singh: So that level of empathy, that willingness to acknowledge that things have changed so drastically, Joe, that to tame, For example, let's say something beautiful. I read it says that
Neerja Singh: our young may need us for the timeless values
Neerja Singh: and virtues that makes civilization work, but
Neerja Singh: we may need them to envision where the future is taking us.
Neerja Singh: They are the ones who are going to envision where the future is taking us. So it's true. What you're describing was a very different form of leadership, authoritative, prescriptive,
Neerja Singh: that is, not working any more, because in many cases a millennial or a G. And it might turn around like seven. But I really don't need them.
Neerja Singh: All my questions have been answered by Alexa by series by Google, What do I need older generation for,
Neerja Singh: and i'm empowered by social media. If I have an idea, I don't have to wait to give a proposal. Have it approved and then implemented.
Neerja Singh: I can just put a note on Facebook. I can put it out on Linkedin, and I can connect with people, mobilize funds and just get this done
Neerja Singh: so that agency and the autonomy that technology has given to the next generation has really tipped the balance.
Neerja Singh: So we are in a new World job.
Joanne Lockwood: So I mean, if we just think about uh cultural intelligence as a as a concept. The first element of that is to be aware is is that drive that drive to recognize that you need to find out more, and in our conversation about different generations.
Joanne Lockwood: But we have to. We have to realize that not everybody has that drive has that aspiration. Many people locked into their own
Joanne Lockwood: way of working. We get to certain point in our lives where we've been through so much change over our years, we want to to say, Actually, we just carry on as I am now want to stick and and carry on. So for for many now introducing this this new concept of leadership,
Joanne Lockwood: the way the world works with our hyper connective, we're more in touch with different generations. It must. A lot of people who Haven't perceived this need to to create knowledge and drive around different generations of uh, probably struggling, we struggling. Ha! Actually they?
Joanne Lockwood: How do they become aware? And how do they embark on this journey?
Neerja Singh: So they become aware, Uh, firstly, this podcast that we are doing this is one way, and this is a step closer uh this generational diversity and the need for generational, I call it benevolence, which is not a given anymore.
Neerja Singh: If generations begin to feel that they don't need each other to survive Joe the
Neerja Singh: and that till
Neerja Singh: they can, they can get on with their lives, and They live very very polarized, you know the Indonesia, and very narrow,
Neerja Singh: narrow eco-chambers. The same age group will live in the same age Group interact with the same age group. So if you are not interacting with your grandparents, if that is not happening,
Neerja Singh: then this is this is a red flag. This is a red flag for humans, I feel so. That's one. And second is that when they start losing they have trouble with retaining employees.
Neerja Singh: If they have trouble with estrangement from their children
Neerja Singh: when there is a sudden crisis like I faced. I faced a crisis in two thousand and thirty. That was that was out of the blue, I should have been sensitive enough and informed enough, and prepared enough to anticipate it. I didn't,
Neerja Singh: but we can't afford that. That proved to be extremely expensive and affordable.
Neerja Singh: So when people start to
Neerja Singh: be faced with these difficult situations in their lives, that's one of your waking up. The other is people who are in a position of authority and power.
Neerja Singh: They enjoy something. Very, very
Neerja Singh: did they step up to this challenge. Mostly they recognize this, and then they start addressing it, for example, at the workplace,
Neerja Singh: a comprehensive
Neerja Singh: hiring strategy. For instance,
Neerja Singh: there is a lot of lip service show that is paid to diversity. But how many companies have
Neerja Singh: the processes in place? Diversity, hiring processes in place. So if a generational diversity is acknowledged, companies can do this, the bosses at the leaders can be doing this. They can also make sure that one
Neerja Singh: other leaders understand the benefits of an age diverse workforce
Neerja Singh: and
Neerja Singh: basically strategize better. You address employee on boarding team integration,
Neerja Singh: that communication problems that arise from an H diverse workforce are addressed and keep talking to the wider team about age, diversity, normalize it make it make it imperative for people to accept it and to just
Neerja Singh: it anticipated, in fact.
Neerja Singh: And so these are some ways of ensuring that
Neerja Singh: people become aware of
Neerja Singh: of diversity, and they begin to
Neerja Singh: recognize the benefits that they stand to gain. So a happier life, a healthier life, a better communication, a more wholesome social system, and our collective, emotional and mental health progresses and flourishes.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, i'm.
Joanne Lockwood: I I
Joanne Lockwood: So I suppose, as someone in my age and my my late fifties
Joanne Lockwood: is that the on this is now on me
Joanne Lockwood: to build that bridge as you talk about building the bridge at generations, because the younger generations.
Joanne Lockwood: I'll probably looking down. Not up.
Joanne Lockwood: So we we have to disconnect. We have to take responsibilities, the older generation to build that bridge rather than the the younger ones to meet us halfway. Is that right?
Neerja Singh: Yes, absolutely. And to prove my point, let me talk a little about what is coming up next, we are talking about generational C agency. There is an Alpha generation that's coming up next. So children who are born in let's say, in two thousand and fifteen, two thousand and sixteen.
Neerja Singh: Ah!
Neerja Singh: That there is debate! Some people want to say that the Alpha generation came in at two thousand and ten, but
Neerja Singh: two thousand and sixteen, Let's say, because a lot of a lot of very pivotal points pivotal events happen in two thousand and sixteen. So
Neerja Singh: this generation
Neerja Singh: that there is a There is a Whatsapp message that was doing the round some time ago. You may have seen it. There is this pitcher of an Alpha toddler trying to.
Neerja Singh: Ah, he that that the child is using the index finger on a book and trying to move it and treat it as a smartphone or a smart screen. He hasn't the child Hasn't seen a traditional book. The child doesn't know that this this thing has to be opened so that they can look at the pictures.
Neerja Singh: A very, very immersed generation, completely, most immersed generation in technology. That is one. And also remember that every generation is a product of the world that they grow up in. And this particular generation
Neerja Singh: is very interesting, because
Neerja Singh: for them,
Neerja Singh: pandemic, mental health. Of their parents
Neerja Singh: thirty three percent of their lives has been affected by watching a particular brand of adulting, which includes a very polarized world.
Neerja Singh: Well, uncivil world yelling, going on, neighbors not being neighborly. I've talked about the even the political leaders we've had during that period. So they've seen all these events and one
Neerja Singh: they are.
Neerja Singh: Ah, there are certain things which are predicted about this generation. It's also said it's too early to seen too much, because that kind of research isn't, very accurate. When you're just, you know, basing it on very, very young people. However, this generation will be the most educated one
Neerja Singh: I mentioned. They'll be most tech embossed. They'd also be most materially endowed generation, most impatient generation.
Neerja Singh: The generation that gets the root with Alexa screens at an excel
Neerja Singh: also very self-directed most self-directed generation ever and the other generation they'll be used to giving directions to technology as well as receiving directions from technology. And, interestingly,
Neerja Singh: this generation is going to experience more virtual relationships, perhaps, than human ones because they are
Neerja Singh: working with robotics,
Neerja Singh: not electronics. There's a difference there, and
Neerja Singh: they, unfortunately they're also a generation that's going to be probably probably spending their childhood without both of them
Neerja Singh: biological parents.
Neerja Singh: So
Neerja Singh: the three is the three is that will
Neerja Singh: probably again, probably because this generation is very young. They say that they are going to define in this generation as the level of autonomy is one
Neerja Singh: high level of autonomy, because you're working with a tablet in preschool
Neerja Singh: anxiety in preschool
Neerja Singh: because they are exposed to the war in Ukraine. You can't keep it from them.
Neerja Singh: They are exposed to
Neerja Singh: that. There is a talk that the extinction of child likeness
Neerja Singh: and
Neerja Singh: extension of childishness which
Neerja Singh: which may happen with this generation, because in the later years you want to compensate for what you lost when you were younger, and finally your own agency.
Neerja Singh: They have this sense of agency. They don't feel the need to need to put their ideas into practice.
Neerja Singh: You have Youtube, that can teach them quickly how to do what they want to do. And then there is social media to get
Neerja Singh: what they want.
Neerja Singh: So today, Joe, What is being spoken of is that parents and bosses
Neerja Singh: have to stop being guards,
Neerja Singh: but begin to be guides
Neerja Singh: from guards to guides.
Neerja Singh: So These are the kind of you know, the reorientation, reorientation of our perspectives and our approaches when when managing, when taking care of the younger generation. This is what we need to be aware we need to anticipate. We need to anticipate what is coming at us and not assume we
Neerja Singh: that this is how it's going to be. Do not assume,
Joanne Lockwood: I think, as you're talking there. I'm finally understanding about building this bridge. I'm i'm finally understanding because what I am doing is I've I've recognized
Joanne Lockwood: some of the things you just mentioned. I I can't function with that, my Alexa.
Joanne Lockwood: It turns the lights on it as a telly on it it. I change the color of light. If I could control even more of my home with it, I would just be shouting at it. And and you're right. I get really really frustrated. If it doesn't do what I say. So i'm i'm acting already Petulant was my my my digital assistance. So I'm:
Joanne Lockwood: I'm. Now have to reach into the modern technology and bring that to me, as you say. So i'm building that bridge upwards to me and Youtube and tik Tok: I'm. Now i'm now, uh absorbing the knowledge through these channels, which is is the native, for, as you say, jen out for even a a to it.
Joanne Lockwood: I i'm being driven by technology. My, what beeps at me tells you to stand up. My watch tells me it's raining. My watch tells me it's going to stop raining. So i'm now taking instructions for my Ai or my digital assistant, as well as giving instruction. So everything you're saying Now i'm thinking, Hang on with it.
Joanne Lockwood: I've bridged into this world, and I've had to build that into my life. Um, it helps. I'm a bit tech savvy. It helps. I have a bit intrigued by all this. Um! It would definitely scare people who are maybe not in that environment uh who are maybe detached from technology where that wasn't part of their business.
Joanne Lockwood: So yeah, and yeah, we we
Joanne Lockwood: Facebook, the metaverse.
Joanne Lockwood: And you said that we we're living our lives in in this digital world with digital relationships, digital everything, and even deep fake technology. I it.
Joanne Lockwood: We don't need actors anymore. We don't need voice. I was actually thinking the other day, If I wanted to build a show, real or a video training course, I could. I could create a diverse set of actors
Joanne Lockwood: with A. I
Joanne Lockwood: develop an entire course and give it a script with different actions, different languages
Joanne Lockwood: in time, maybe not quite today, but by this time, in three or four years time I could to build all of that for my computer and and build a complete film as an amateur, let alone what Hollywood, let alone what everybody else can do, and we've already seen. Is it a
Joanne Lockwood: Carrie Fisher played Princess Layer in Star Wars? She was Avatar Wasn't she, and that last steps in that last one she'd already died, and we've seen the aging going on. We've seen all these kind of things
Neerja Singh: erez agmoni and bolograms for speakers and leaders holograms where you don't need to be present physically to be able to do that. There's a famous story in India, because in India and some of the religious during elections. One of the political leaders, one hundred and fifty,
Neerja Singh: and, in fact, a prime minister. There was a hologram, and the reporter narrated how the religious tentatively stepped up and pulled back the curtain to see Where has he disappeared? They couldn't believe that he was not there. One hundred and fifty.
Neerja Singh: It caused them such amazement and surprise. So yes, technology is. It is going to change.
Neerja Singh: It's already changed, and with the Ai already already so integral a part of our lives.
Joanne Lockwood: I I I see it already with my parents, who are
Joanne Lockwood: late eighties, early nineties, and they are used to having a certain level of trust with authority. They see authorities being the police, the bank government, so they take without question instruction and order from people in authority,
Joanne Lockwood: and that manifests itself as as as being targets for scamming for fraud, because it's very easy to create that that power perception of somebody in authority to instruct
Joanne Lockwood: my parents how to behave, and they they just go. Okay, you and authority I will be. I will listen. I will do as you tell me,
Joanne Lockwood: my generation and younger. I'm more savvy. I I I start with. Everything is is like it to be a scam until I can prove otherwise, especially if it has money, or they want something, so I always i'm with it. Kind of can't keep. Prove it to me to me. Okay, I now trust you.
Joanne Lockwood: So what i'm saying here is when we talk about deep fight. Talk about Ai, which is all this. We just talked about that the challenge there is. The emerging generation are going to have to build trust into into the interfaces here that I, as A. As a Gen. X won't understand, and i'll be vulnerable to.
Joanne Lockwood: So they will deep distrust
Joanne Lockwood: video media television imagery because I will know about deep faking inherently. They'll be living in that metaphor.
Joanne Lockwood: Whereas I won't. I Won't. Just mistrust that yet I have to. I have to build that bridge again and and learn that that modern concept of of of it, and build a new trust with technology, and that's
Joanne Lockwood: I could see why my parents are worried about that. I'm not thinking, How do How do I? How do I live in this world.
Neerja Singh: No, that's true, because there is a trust deficit
Neerja Singh: as it is you. And
Neerja Singh: again, you know there is it.
Neerja Singh: I have to say this that um wisdom is, and the everybody says, Don't stereotype and Don't studio time by generation. But the fact is that they are stereotypical. I mean they are about stereotypical. There are characteristics that we can use
Neerja Singh: to address wellness programs for generations. For instance, you just mentioned trust and authority for a boomer for me a Doctor's word is
Neerja Singh: the Bible. He knows what he's doing, he says, but i'm not going to question the doctor, but for the next generation, for the younger generation. What they're going to do is first go online and do all their surfing, and that's where the anxiety also begins. One hundred and fifty
Neerja Singh: at what they need. I realized that that with my daughter who went into depression, and who had to see doctors and psychiatrists,
Neerja Singh: she she needed a partner. She didn't need an authority figure, and a wellness program for her would have been ideally something that included not just nutrition, but financial planning, mental health. All of this a middle ground, so to say,
Neerja Singh: so. The needs of every generation is very different.
Neerja Singh: You look for somebody who can partner with you
Neerja Singh: in your recovery,
Neerja Singh: but not not an uncle, not an uncle psychiatrist, who, you know, telling you, put on your shoes and go and run, or you know
Neerja Singh: not, is not compassionate enough enough with behavioral health. Let's say challenges
Neerja Singh: so,
Neerja Singh: and that's That's where, if they were more aware, if they were more open and compassionate, and judged a little less and more aware of the circumstances of the next generation and their struggles.
Neerja Singh: Then we could help them stay important, and they could prevent lives from spiraling out of
Neerja Singh: out of control.
Neerja Singh: That is what I feel very strong in your budget. That's why we need to understand what is happening and What are the new realities that we are dealing with?
Neerja Singh: We need to be proactive. Step up and find out. Anticipate. I write a column, Joe. I write a column. I want to mention that, and I got it a step ahead.
Neerja Singh: So parents, teachers, poses
Neerja Singh: be aware of the language of the next generation of what their belief systems are, of what they value of when they are going where they want to be,
Neerja Singh: and
Neerja Singh: then
Neerja Singh: be there
Neerja Singh: be the ally, be an asset
Neerja Singh: be relevant,
Neerja Singh: be relevant because the mandate are mandate. I believe every generation's a mandate is to leave behind one that's more important to progressive and
Neerja Singh: a productive.
Joanne Lockwood: So you've been used used to micro generations earlier, and I'm: i'm seeing in in my own reality that the pace of change is far more rapid. Yeah, it change. We don't go back one hundred and fifty years. Society fundamentally didn't change that quickly. We went from
Joanne Lockwood: many hundreds of years, using horses to suddenly
Joanne Lockwood: steam to suddenly from steam to pet, for from petrol to it. Yeah, and that pace of change we're going to the moon with with with it crossing planets, so I can see the pace of change rapidly increasing, especially when we're talking about
Joanne Lockwood: climate change,
Joanne Lockwood: planetary care, sustainability, removing plastics, which is what
Joanne Lockwood: the younger generation really deeply care about. They care about their future, their planet, they they, they, they they've owned it is their planet now, not ours.
Neerja Singh: They get their telling us so. The same cannot show the to die of the way, to have the luxury of time of old age.
Neerja Singh: They could die of climate. Some other catastrophe,
Neerja Singh: which is, which is, which is pointing, which is not right, which is unacceptable, which is not the way of nature, which is not the law of nature, and therefore again,
Neerja Singh: and for workplaces for leaders, for managers of the new generations. They need to really be clear on what leadership, Let's say we were talking about the Alpha generation, which is the time going to be joining the workforce. What is the leadership of Alpha going to look like one?
Neerja Singh: What are the skills that leaders will have to focus on with this generation,
Neerja Singh: for instance, and not just out by even change the the generation that is right now one thousand nine hundred and ninety, five or one thousand nine hundred and ninety, five, one thousand nine hundred and ninety six onwards.
Neerja Singh: The emotional development,
Neerja Singh: Joe, so focus on development of the emotional,
Neerja Singh: the emotional Ah, sorry, the emotional management, the self management. That is what we are seeing around us. With young people. The self management is somewhere going all right, one hundred and fifty.
Neerja Singh: The one more thing you see, and I saw that with my children my children are in millennials.
Neerja Singh: This is served in repressed anger,
Neerja Singh: and sometimes it's that anger which is manifesting which is presenting as depression. There is a lot of anger about the state of things around them,
Neerja Singh: about what they see, as what they perceive as injustice. How the world has been messed up Greater Thunberg is an example, a young girl standing in the Urban Parliament and saying, i'm redust from book i'm sixteen, i'm from Sweden, and then I want you to panic.
Neerja Singh: So there is this sense of urgency that things are spiraling out of control.
Neerja Singh: Uh which again, I talk about this, which is why we have to which which is Renaissance also around us. When a generation feels
Neerja Singh: that they are
Neerja Singh: not in control of things, that things are slipping out of their hands. That's when they turn to
Neerja Singh: let's say portions or portions, or the lunar, the Lunar Festival land.
Neerja Singh: Oh,
Neerja Singh: I I I don't know if you're aware, or you're kind of you know about the which is run a solar. So. But I was really really struck by this new development of how the young people are trying to
Neerja Singh: soothe themselves literally
Neerja Singh: tempting with these interpersonal skills, and how to manage conflict and
Neerja Singh: help them cultivate deeper relationships.
Neerja Singh: That's that's That's a that's huge. Today. I mean a lot of young people are not able to sustain relationships,
Neerja Singh: and of course promoting physical activity, outdoor exercise. So these are some of the things that leader of the next generation needs to be focused on.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: But when I was growing up, you know, when I was sixteen
Joanne Lockwood: i'm not I. I wasn't hy for aware of every little thing going on because you were. You got the news once a day. If you were lucky as a teenager, you probably didn't watch it or care about it.
Joanne Lockwood: So I think, because
Joanne Lockwood: younger people are hyper connected with devices. They're getting notifications. They're seeing the news pop up. They're seeing this the Facebook is on everywhere. I want to talk where they're going, so they they can't ignore it, so that, as you say,
Joanne Lockwood: they becoming hyper aware that they being, I, I would say, overwhelmed with knowledge and data, where,
Joanne Lockwood: if you're sixteen years old, four years is a quarter of your life,
Joanne Lockwood: if your for our generation. It's five percent of your life.
Joanne Lockwood: So what is a big deal to when it's a quarter of your life is it becomes less of a big deal when it's such a small percentage of your life. And obviously time goes quicker when you're older, because you perceive it because you've done it before, and it's in a different different frame. So yeah, I can understand why the younger generation are feeling this
Joanne Lockwood: anxiety. This overwhelmed when we talk about well-being is mental wealth being is is more hyper intense than physical. Well, being in in many cases. And you said the point about the doctor is, I want my doctor
Joanne Lockwood: to know how I feel, not where it hurts. I want to know how I feeling about something, and I I guess the when we talk about the the next generation of of medical intervention. Here is it's about treating my my mind as much as treating my symptoms
Joanne Lockwood: and making me feel as though I trust you as you. I've done this. I've walked into my doctor with Google on my phone, saying,
Joanne Lockwood: I've got I've got. I've got. I've got colleagues, and my goal bladder needs to come out and they went. They'd be They'd be so hasty we need to do ultrasound to them on my scared. I said, what you need to do.
Joanne Lockwood: It's three weeks later they admit you me to hospital to my go blood around. Um, but I I self diagnosed this through. Um, I can't. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Goldstone support grips online through Facebook channels through this and people's lived experience. I mean, that's exactly what I have to be. That's exactly what. So when they started telling me that I had the indigestion, I said, No, it's not in just you. You're not these aren't the droid you're looking for. This is completely different. So
Joanne Lockwood: but yeah, I mean, okay, I'm: i'm A:
Joanne Lockwood: I've built that bridge, if you like, into that technology zone. So I I feel quite comfortable doing that. But again not everybody is, and it's it's a real challenge in business. Isn't it, because
Joanne Lockwood: we we, I, as I always say is, you can't be inclusive by excluding people, and we're going to recognize that some people
Joanne Lockwood: who are
Joanne Lockwood: mid life later life. They, their their role has changed
Joanne Lockwood: immensely because the rapid change of pace, of of technology, et cetera.
Joanne Lockwood: Our organization is doing enough to help them build that bridge. We talked about, help them retrain, help them to become more relevant,
Joanne Lockwood: or we just assuming everybody has to pick it up from sales, and I think that's the challenge to business have is seeing the worth of people
Joanne Lockwood: in their fifties, in their sixties and in the seventies, because
Joanne Lockwood: the reality is, most of us were better retire because pension funds are depleted. There's more people drawing than I've ever contributed. Um! Our health is actually our average
Joanne Lockwood: uh lifespan actually going down again. Now isn't it. We're becoming, I I think, for the first time, many generations. But we're dying early, and now due to pollution and mental health well being and other other factors. So there's a lot of. There's a lot of challenges for the older generation to try and adapt to the younger one, and and it's, I suppose it's the prerogative of
Joanne Lockwood: not to care to be to think about yourselves rather than what went before you.
Neerja Singh: Yes,
Neerja Singh: and that's happening.
Neerja Singh: You mentioned anxiety. I
Neerja Singh: I know that for some young people just a buzz of the phone, cause they're not stupid.
Neerja Singh: It's like, Oh, what? Oh, what's coming Now You know what's the message now. So
Neerja Singh: that's happening with young people. And you talked about
Neerja Singh: the doctors. Joe, my my my daughter, my thirty, one year old, would also talk about the Pharma big Pharma frauds. So my personal is political. For many of this generation they are social justice warriors, and
Neerja Singh: they choose. They choose, they take sides, and she would say that I don't want to eat medicines, because these, you know, pharmacy companies are
Neerja Singh: uh lying or uh it's it's very commercial that profit oriented, and all kinds of uh bigger, bigger issues would sometimes of influence the decisions, and our attitude would be. The doctor has told you to eat this medicine just to take the medicine. This is for your good one hundred and fifty.
Neerja Singh: But there was so many other underlying concerns that would
Neerja Singh: influence their choices.
Neerja Singh: So
Neerja Singh: you talked about the onus, whether the unus
Neerja Singh: uh should be with the young one. Did you say that with you? I don't believe that the
Joanne Lockwood: meet us halfway, or at least help us with our bridge.
Neerja Singh: Well, that will not happen just by wanting it to happen that's going to happen with
Neerja Singh: when we build a sense, give them a sense of connection where they feel invested. Enough, like, I said, the reality today is that it's easy for the younger generation to mean just.
Neerja Singh: It is a cancelled culture, just just shut out People just shut out ideas that Don't.
Neerja Singh: I know you have people who are
Neerja Singh: moving away from their biological families.
Neerja Singh: They they are charting, they are writing down the living wills in which their friends are involved.
Neerja Singh: So they're creating families outside of what was once there
Neerja Singh: real family. You always say this is a real family. It's a biological family. Well, that family.
Neerja Singh: It no longer holds the kind of sanctity that it once held.
Neerja Singh: Then, like young people who are not marrying today, Joe, the young people, if they're marrying, they don't want children. They don't want to have
Neerja Singh: children. There are. There are countries where the you know the rate of replacement and how that is going.
Neerja Singh: They're not enough to. Yeah, that the population is going down bad for iconically bad for society. It's not a good sign for survival of the human species, i'm saying one hundred and fifty.
Neerja Singh: So when you say that the owners ought to be on the younger one. Well,
Neerja Singh: that that's going to happen. Only if they feel hard seeing, and
Neerja Singh: if they feel that term.
Neerja Singh: There is a genuine desire from the older generation, too,
Neerja Singh: to help them. I think they have a very keen bullshit meter, and they they pick on that very fast. So
Neerja Singh: none none of that works anymore. I've I've you know. I I've done that with my children, and I've been told. Now I've been passive, aggressive in my communication, and all of that. They they they they very, very quick, they very sensitive to all of this. I I I go so far as to say that you feel as though they can read your mind.
Neerja Singh: So be very, very, very straight. Cut out the nonsense, cut over the shaft like, get to the core,
Neerja Singh: and then, if they then they begin to trust you. They are coming from a place of integrity
Neerja Singh: and a clean desire to help,
Neerja Singh: that is, when they might meet you. Cough
Neerja Singh: that that's that's what my experience has been to,
Joanne Lockwood: and that's going to create a challenge in the business world isn't it because
Joanne Lockwood: with the leaders and the senior people in the organizations are disconnected from the younger generation,
Joanne Lockwood: and the younger generation is is not taking any part of responsibility to build that bridge it. It's all on the oldest of the leaders, and if they don't recognize that they need to build this bridge. They just get it. It's going to grow wider, and then it's going to be poor communications. And
Joanne Lockwood: uh, we, we're not gonna be collaborative, and all the all the good things about the modern way of working won't be realized in some organizations where that bridge can't be built
Neerja Singh: suddenly. That's why leaders and business bosses have to stop operating from a place of fear and a place of
Neerja Singh: this fight, or flee, or just shutting the cabin. And because you are not able to communicate with them,
Neerja Singh: that I don't think that's working with a lot of people, and this is the time to make an attempt.
Neerja Singh: Make an attention for yourself. Get into the trenches with them, and try and understand, because remember the
Neerja Singh: Ah! There are micro-generations today, and more and more age diversity coming in that many different cultures, If you accept that in generation is functioning like a culture in a cell, and it's that big a headache and exhaustion of communicating with this one
Neerja Singh: vast variety of
Neerja Singh: Uh!
Neerja Singh: Well,
Neerja Singh: you know generations.
Neerja Singh: So
Neerja Singh: which is why I say that this is a subject that
Neerja Singh: it has to be taken up, and this subject that has to be studied and addressed and talked about.
Neerja Singh: You can't just presume that communication is happening on its own, and you know you are communicating, and it's working. It's not working. It's not working.
Neerja Singh: There are very different ways of, for instance, authority. Some of them are.
Neerja Singh: They just don't accept authority.
Neerja Singh: They don't understand it.
Neerja Singh: So what are you going to do with a workforce
Neerja Singh: that might tell you If you are the boss and their phone. They get a phone call and they pick up the call in your presence and go so far as to tell you to go out of the room, so that they can have some privacy with their call.
Neerja Singh: This is a new. It's a new template.
Neerja Singh: But if you made an effort to understand where all that is coming from, where their behavior is coming from,
Neerja Singh: then
Neerja Singh: we can have that productive and happy workplace,
Neerja Singh: therefore very important to study this new diversity, be aware of it being conscious, and
Neerja Singh: get into it,
Joanne Lockwood: because right now we have five generations that we there's five generations that bridge has multiple spans to get down to the bottom doesn't it
Neerja Singh: so, Joe. They say that never before in mankind's history have so many generations been alive because of longevity,
Neerja Singh: and
Neerja Singh: that many generations that that many years about
Neerja Singh: earlier it was closer. So there were three generation they would be yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Neerja Singh: Today is different. So this is an unprecedented age. Diversity that we see around us
Joanne Lockwood: on the message you're saying, here
Joanne Lockwood: is it's cross-cultural as well cross continent cross time zone cultural, and we can't look at it in isolation
Joanne Lockwood: and be siloed into our own thinking. Because the world is global, We're connected globally. Um things that happen on one side of the world have impact on the other. We saw happened with the Uk economy when we tried to play with our our interest rates, and it Here the markets around the world
Joanne Lockwood: kicked in what's going on in Ukraine with Russia. It's affecting the global markets. Everybody is interconnected,
Joanne Lockwood: and you add into that. As you said, this generational diversity that is inherent, and it and
Joanne Lockwood: it it it so in eight into our lives
Joanne Lockwood: that we can do really is, is, learn to adapt around it or be aware of it.
Neerja Singh: You have to be aware of it. You have to treat
Neerja Singh: treat them not as as so they are all the same. They are not,
Neerja Singh: and you have to treat them because each person is different with their own, and needs their own expectations. And
Neerja Singh: again the need to build a bridge and not be a wall. Joe, we talked about creating a bridge, and the
Neerja Singh: finally, I would say one particular phenomena that could and is working beautifully where people have managed to pull into office, reverse, mentoring,
Neerja Singh: reverse mentoring. If we practiced
Neerja Singh: the right way,
Neerja Singh: can give phenomenal phenomenal results, and probably is the answer
Neerja Singh: to all these generational issues or dissonance that we face around us at work and at all.
Neerja Singh: So they would be the secret to every generation, adding and gaining value from each other from each Other's stress
Joanne Lockwood: was the voice of the pitfall of the the reverse, mentoring being a one way street, where the the
Joanne Lockwood: the most senior person does all the drawing of the knowledge without giving back, so sometimes they'll be careful with reverse mentioned. This could be truly symbiotic. A win win. A Both parties have to get some, some inspiration and some motivation out of it, and I and I think that goes for also.
Joanne Lockwood: We think of other other elements of diversity
Joanne Lockwood: be able to understand different lived experience, different, both challenges different needs. That's an excellent Well, I I agree with reverse mentoring is it should be baked into many leadership uh development programs. And uh, yeah, and we can learn absolutely. It's an art. It's an art and science of reverse, mentoring
Neerja Singh: an entire subject.
Joanne Lockwood: But it
Joanne Lockwood: nature, I mean, we've been chatting away for just over an hour. Now it's time is flying. Um! We probably both age generations since we've been talking. Um, Jen, Charlie is is is already on the way somewhere. Um, absolutely amazing. So
Joanne Lockwood: i'm sure our listens would love to be able to get hold of you. Um! I believe you got a book a website Linkedin prefer to to tell us about your book test about how how we get all of you.
Neerja Singh: Yes, I have written for books, Sir Joe, on generational issues, and
Neerja Singh: I have an author's page on Amazon. I have a website. You just sing com
Neerja Singh: with the Url, Http. Ps. All of that you're just in com, and my linkedin is also linkedin com and new. Just signature. Sing
Neerja Singh: and Twitter is Underscore, New Jersey,
Joanne Lockwood: fantastic and just for people who are listening. It's a nature is N. E. E. R. J. A. And Sing is S. I. N. G. H. So if anyone do a
Joanne Lockwood: needs to help the spell in that. But you also find all the teachers on the show notes on this podcast as well.
Joanne Lockwood: Amazing. Thank you so much. It's been a a absolute pleasure to meet you in person a few weeks ago, and also catch up in now, and I appreciate your time and
Joanne Lockwood: so huge. Thank you to you. The listeners tuning in for getting to the end of the podcast. I always appreciate it when my listen to get to this point to the show. Um, we've obviously inspired you to keep listening. So please keep describe to keep updates on future episodes of the inclusion bytes. Podcast. That's the it. Yes,
Joanne Lockwood: please tell your friends, please tell your colleagues, please share the love and the links.
Joanne Lockwood: I have a number of other
Joanne Lockwood: exciting guests lined up that i'm sure you'd be equally inspired by over the next few weeks, months, maybe even years. And remember, if you'd love to be a guest, i'd love to have you on, and I also welcome any feedback suggestions. So please contact me at Joe Dot Wilkwood St. Change up on the K.
Joanne Lockwood: And finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood.
Joanne Lockwood: It's just been an absolute pleasure to host, this for today. Catch you next time, Bye,