Generation Gap

Challenge:

You’re having difficulty relating to some of your younger mentees who seem to differ from you in their technology use, value systems, approach to life/work balance, and other issues.

Self Reflection:

1. What am I feeling?
   • I’ve been very successful in my field, so my mentees should adapt to my way of doing things.
   • I don’t really understand what motivates my mentees.
   • My mentees look at their phones all day but won’t answer my emails.
2. What do I need to learn about my mentee’s perspective?
   • I need to better understand how today’s research environment differs from the one I experienced as a trainee.
   • My mentees might have different goals and approaches for things like how they’d like to develop their careers.
   • Perhaps I could learn a thing or two from digital natives.
3. What outcome(s) do I want?
   • I want all of my mentees to feel respected and supported, regardless of our differences.
   • I want to create a productive research team that combines the novel ideas, passion, and talents of younger generations with the wisdom and experience of more experienced team members.
   • I want new investigators to be attracted to my lab as a place where great research gets done and performance expectations are high, but that is also welcoming to new ideas.

Conversation Openers:

• I prefer to keep my cell phone private and only use email for work communications. But we seem to be having trouble connecting in this way. Maybe there’s a better approach, one that works for both of us?
• This is my vision for the research team. How does this fit with what you were expecting and hoping for?
• You’re helping me see that there’s more than one way to approach this problem. I have some thoughts on which of these strategies will be most effective, based on my past experience.
• It’s a lot harder to land that first job than when I was in the market. I recommend you talk with my former postdoc; she has a lot of experience interviewing in today’s climate.

Tips and Tools:

• Be sensitive to differences in generational attitudes about work/life balance, such as requests for a “mental health day”
• Be open to different approaches to reaching the same goal (for a project, career in science, etc.).
• Consider ways that you can be flexible in work arrangements, while still fostering a sense of cohesion in your research group.
• Be cautious about referring to the past in ways that suggest intolerance for change, for instance: “I remember going for days without sleep as a resident. Today’s duty hour restrictions are pampering new clinicians.”
• Support a mix of traditional mentoring (to leverage the expertise of senior members of the organization) and peer mentoring (to leverage the shared profiles of same-generation colleagues)
• Be careful about stereotyping generations. Some older individuals are very tech savy and some younger individuals may not use social media.
• Engage in “reverse mentoring,” a practice in which you are mentored by a younger scientist in unfamiliar topics or current trends.