Bridging Generational Gaps: Strategies for School Owners and Education Teams

Chris (00:00):
Out of Zel Media, it’s going to be a great session. And then again, I get more giveaways after that. Let me read to you a little bit about Jessica, our next presenter from Malady. So Jessica George is a licensed cosmetologist educator and training specialist with over 15 years experience in the beauty and wellness industry. Her experience includes working behind the chair, brand educator, fashion and editorial stylist, platform artistry, education director, and curriculum development in both salons and schools. She’s passionate about education and driving digital forward. Jessica proudly currently serves as industry relations manager. She has found the beauty industry that the beauty industry has been incredibly rewarding and continues to evolve. Boy, that’s true. Jessica, are you on with us?

Jessica (00:59):
I am. Hello.

Chris (01:01):
Here we go. Good to see you again. Thanks for coming back. You were so good last year. It’s like we got to have you again. So here we are.

Jessica (01:07):
Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. So good to be here and great to see you, Chris. Appreciate the opportunity. So hello everyone. So happy to be here. I hope you’re still with us. I hope you are feeling energized. We’re going to get started here. And Jared, thank you for your presentation. I think you laid out the perfect groundwork for what we’re going to talk about here today. So thank you. So generational gaps. Let’s talk about some strategies now. When we saw this topic for the sessions today for the Zel Media BD Summit, I’m a complete mush for a good theme, if you will, for an event. Now, legacy to me truly means who came before us, who’s going to come after us, a lot of what was just spoken about. But when we think of this, all of you on this call, you’re leaders, whether you’re a school owner, whether you’re an educator, whether you’re an admissions, you lead and you create change every single day.

(02:12):
So it doesn’t matter your title here today, we’re going to just chat through it and I hope you get something from it. So mixed age workforce today, the mixed age work and multi-generational workforce is more diverse than ever. And really it’s because of different formative years, how we grew up, what we believe, how we show up every day are all based on our core values, on how we grew up and everything that came about with it. I’ll give you an example. Listen, my generation, okay? We had the black and white max, no internet as generations before me. We experienced the internet. I don’t know if that was good or bad, but it happened, right? And then we knew nothing about was good or bad. So at that time, we had to go through learning all the things. Now, personally, as an elder millennial, okay, I’m going to keep it real.

(03:08):
Now, I am a true digital advocate. As my bio said, I love everything digital, but ask me the truth. I am trying to move all my notes to digital, my calendars, to digital all my meeting notes into one note, all the things, right? I don’t even think I have paper or a pen in my office anymore, but I’ll be quite honest with you, around January when we all get that itch to do a planner, I certainly run to the store and I get the pens and the highlighters and all the notebooks. I could probably open a store with all the blank notebooks that I have, but those are my formative years. So that’s what we default back to when we’re just looking for a sense of safety. So I want to explain this for a second. It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong. It’s not that one way is better than the other.

(03:58):
That’s what I’m not saying. But we have talked over the years, if you’ve been on any of Zel sessions with us from a lady or out in the world from different conferences, we have talked about flourishing with digital teaching with technology. We talked a lot about educator burnout and educator retention for a while there after Covid. And it all really comes down to a lot of these formative years and how we all teach and learn differently. So one last story here, get this, okay, my daughter who was 16, she doesn’t even carry books, so I don’t even think she’s had a book in years. She of course has her Chromebook and all the things. And there’s times during the school year where I just want to shake her. I just want to say, okay, get your planner out, get your markers, what goes on, get your life together.

(04:49):
And I know that we’ve all been there as parents, but also as teachers in the schools, we want what worked for us. And that’s no longer the way she’ll look at me like I have seven heads. And trust me, we tried it, it worked for a day, but they have to do what works for them, and we all have to do what works for us. So our formative years, our default is not our students’ default, and our coworker’s default is not our default. But it doesn’t mean that one way is more right than the other. You picking up what I’m putting down? I can’t see the chat right now, but all good. So let’s talk about the different generations. Now. We’ve all seen these terms floating around in the world. So whether you’re a baby boomer, gen X, gen Y, gen Z, and any others, every one of our generations grew up with those formative years.

(05:44):
So baby boomers, if you are in the virtual room right now, I want you to, yes. So here’s some of your characteristics. You emphasize teamwork and collaboration. You value job, career advancement, and you may prefer more formal communication channels, emails and things like that. You are what I call the OGs, okay? If you don’t know that term, ask somebody. But you are the originals. You have paid the way. And for a lot of us who are coming after you, you have made that way possible, and we have learned a lot from you and what you’ve done. Now, gen X, gen X in the house, if you know your Gen X, raise your hands. Gen X value life experiences. They value work-life, balance and independence. They prefer feedback and recognition for their work. They tend to be adaptable and resourceful. If that’s true, say yes, yes in the chat.

(06:46):
Now, gen Y, gen Y seek purpose and meaning in their work. They value diversity, inclusivity, and social responsibility. They also prefer flexibility and feedback and opportunities for growth. And then Gen Z, if any 13 year olds on the call, just kidding, tech savvy and entrepreneurial value, authenticity and transparency. Quite frankly, these may be a lot of your newest educators coming onto the team or newest admissions team members, somewhere in the 21 to 25, 26 range. So these folks are true tech savvy, entrepreneurial, want that flexibility, all the things. And they also prefer instant communication and feedback. Now, there’s a distinct difference between these two. I’m not going to spend a lot more time here, but we’ll think of baby boomers and Gen X as more like, let’s say trailblazers. They’ve paved the way, like I said, gen Y, gen Z, they’re more innovators. They’re thinking of all the ideas.

(07:54):
Their brain is busting with ideas because they’re constantly thinking and constantly exposed to information. So what is your role to fill this gap? Let’s think about this now. Leaders, like I said, we are all leaders on the call, okay? So leaders, identify your team strengths. That is imperative. Identify them, forecast their individual opportunities. Treat every individual employee as just that, right? Think about those accountability and follow-ups, that team culture and curating a safe space just for them to continue to grow. Now, educators, lean into your strengths. I want to say that again. Lean in into your strengths. Alright? I don’t know if anyone’s taken a Gallup strength test. I don’t know if that’s exact word. But anyway, the whole premise behind it is to lean into your strengths. And if you do see your weaknesses there, most of our natural thought is, okay, let me make my weaknesses match up to my strengths. Not so much hold still kind of lead into those strengths. So that is your superpower. It’s okay not to be great at everything. And it’s okay for your weaknesses to stay weaknesses, quite frankly, I know mine very well and I leave them there. I always want to own it. I want to learn more, but I know my strengths and I continue to build on those. And honestly, I feel like that has been an incredible superpower.

(09:25):
Be transparent about your growth areas. Where do you want to go? Where do you see yourself? Make it known. Talk about it. And where do you want to grow to? Don’t be embarrassed about it. Oh my goodness. Tell somebody, have an accountability partner and leaders encourage your educators to have this thought process. So how will you fill that gap? That’s a big question. How will you thrive in the middle of a gap? It seems like a problem. Well, not, it’s not a problem. Now, this image completely displays what I’m talking about. You’ll see a ladder here in the middle of a huge gap. That gap is between our trailblazers and our innovators and everything in between. Then you have two different groups of people seeming like they’re working in the workplace or maybe not so much working in the workplace together, right? So let me ask you this.

(10:15):
I want to flip the switch here for a minute. What if we talked about this as filling the gap. What if we stuffed this gap with all the things that make it comfortable for us all to live in the middle? What if we started working together? What if we empowered our teams to live in the gap, to fill the gap? So let me ask you this. How motivated are your seasoned team members right now? How motivated are they? Are they burnt out from trying to keep up with changes? We hear from schools a lot. There’s a lot of shift in team members in education. Seasoned educators are feeling like they’re ready to retire. Your newer educators, they’re lacking some maybe direction or motivation or knowing where they want to go with their education journey. So empowering them, living in the gap. And then your seasoned educators, are they feeling overwhelmed with digital, the new age learners, or have they owned that?

(11:14):
Have they owned that portion already after this digital transition, after covid? Now, your seasoned educators may be what you call the backbone of the school. They’ve been through it all with you. They may have been there for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. I consider myself a more veteran educator. There are definitely educators that would come in after me that have new fresh ideas and do new things. And I’d be like, dang, that’s cool. How’d you do that? So how are they feeling? Can you think of a few names? Is that you? Maybe? Yeah. So we’re going to come back to ’em in a second. Now, gen Y, gen Z, they’re coming into your teams on fire. I mean, they’re blazing with ideas. They have an entrepreneurial mindset. They’re ready to give things a try. But what does that mean when they start bringing up ideas?

(12:02):
Is it filtered through a lens that, Hey, we’ve always done it this way, so we’re going to continue to do it this way? Or is it an open, comfortable, safe environment to share those ideas and watch them flourish? So I just want to leave you with those thoughts. What is the impact on the workplace with generational gaps that we need to fill now? We need to have great communication as leaders. It isn’t just saying what we have to say. It’s also making sure the level of which someone is understanding what we say. Now, one size fits all, communication may not work anymore. Do you feel like, I don’t know, if you’re sending emails and nobody’s reading them, maybe it’s time to reinvent the process. Collaboration. How are folks collaborating in your schools? How’s your team collaborating? When does it work best for your team to collab?

(12:51):
Is it in between night and day class or is everybody spent by then? Are they done? You ever get into a team meeting and everybody’s just blank staring and we’re trying to come up with new ideas and we’re just like, oh, I don’t know. I’ve been there. I’ve been there. I’ve been an educator that you’re just done after the day. So what works best? So is it virtual collaboration? Is it a posting board where you can share ideas? When your brain’s fluttering after a commute, what is it? Ask your teams productivity. Now I’m not talking about being busy. Okay, productive, encouraging confidence. When teams know that they’re outputting value, how do they feel when they pour out into your business? What if you and the team created a list of everything that’s slowing down productivity or could be done more efficiently? You can come up with it together.

(13:40):
You may identify that there’s outdated systems that are costing you time or energy that just isn’t working anymore. Now, what if you had, let’s say, a Gen Z employee who’s really awesome with solutions and creative output, and then you have, I don’t know, gen X, which is more understanding of all the systems. So what if you put them together with that creativity in the systems and create a solution together? Boom, productivity is boosted and so has morale. So speaking of morale, morale, there’s no doubt that culture and morale are tied together. So how intergenerational teams manage this can greatly affect all of the energy. So I’m going to give you a quick story here. I think I’m almost out of time. I didn’t start my timer, so I’m going to give you a quick story here. I had a friend and colleague, we’ll call her Ms.

(14:38):
Sweets for sake of privacy. Now, she was the best at what she did. No doubt about it. I mean, she spoke with her chest. She owned the room. When she walked in, she was the best at what she did. Okay? I admired her. One of the most knowledgeable educators I ever worked with. When she was pumped up, man, she was up here. She was on fire and she was a force. However, as new team members started coming in and we actually started getting really close, I started to notice that I was getting a sense from her that she was feeling pushed away or backed down or finding it hard to really reinvent herself in this new space. And with so many new team members, it felt like she was, I guess, becoming irrelevant. And I watched her light completely dim. So it’s important to honor where everyone is to get the best out of them.

(15:35):
We started chatting and we started leaning on each other and creating this peer mentorship program, which I’m going to talk about in a minute, that’s reverse mentoring. I knew Ms. Sweets was stronger at things that I didn’t yet know how to do, and likewise, vice versa. So we started saying, Hey, you’re good at this. Can you help me with this? You’re good at that. Come help me with this. And we created this partnership where we knew we were going to empower each other and it worked and it started to trickle down. So I encourage you to see those trends and make moves on them. Now, strategies for closing that gap and filling it up. Mentoring and reverse mentoring. A lot of what I just said. Pair a younger employee or maybe even not younger, like different strengths with a more seasoned employee or different strengths to facilitate knowledge transfer and skill development, flexible communication.

(16:27):
Listen, encourage multiple communication channels to accommodate different generational preferences. If it is an online group, great. If it’s a text group, great. If it’s an email thread, great, whatever it is, whatever works for your team, do that. But ask them if they don’t like emails. Maybe you find something different to do. Training and development, offer training programs that cater to those learning styles and preferences of generations. Now, creating a development plan or growth track for your educators, this is so important. Like I said, it needs to be curated and customized. Where does that individual want to go? It’s not everybody’s taking the same cutting course and everybody’s taking the same methodologies course. Where do they need help? Where do they need support? Maybe you have an educator who needs to know how to just save a PDF. Maybe they need to know how to use an Excel file to properly download reports from their online platform.

(17:22):
Maybe it’s an educator who needs to learn boundaries to not create friendships with students. So all of these things, curating it for them. And then finally, recognition and feedback. We all love to be praised. We all love to be praised in private and also in public. So acknowledge and appreciate those diverse contributions and set up a safe space that can be done. Promote collaboration. Create opportunities where team building can happen in team meetings and any other place, whether it’s lunchtime, whether it’s break time, where can those collab opportunities happen? Flexible work arrangements. Now, this may not be easy for most schools, but I don’t exactly mean moving around hours and hey, come in when you want. Or you can work from home for an hour. I don’t necessarily mean that. What I mean is where can they work from? Do you have a space outside that they can go do theory outside and maybe they’ve been waiting for your yes, give ’em yes, right?

(18:26):
If it allows in your state, et cetera, et cetera. Can they change a place in the school where they can do different practical or theory or activities, something super different. And then lastly here, celebrate diversity and inclusivity. We’re a culture where all employees feel valued regardless of their age. So shout outs, appreciation programs, and find those appreciation little nuggets that matter to them. Maybe it’s not just a gift card, maybe it’s something really personal that you know that they’ll love. And I want to lead with this. We talked a lot about development and next steps for your team as you start to curate those development plans. Leaders, lead educators, Hey, educators, yourself. If you’re here, map out your development plan, present it to your leader. I bet you they’ll be super wooed by you and be there to support you. so@malady.com, if you have not already visited there, there are quite a few resources.

(19:28):
You have master educator classes that you can tap into at Malady training and also the RISE Educator Program. So Master Educator courses are all different lengths, all different costs. Rise Educator Program is a longer course, it’s about six months. It’s created for states that may not have an instructor license, but you may want some additional training. So this is a great hybrid format that you can tap into, or even for instructors who just want to expand your knowledge and reinvigorate your fire. So again, thank you, thank you, thank you for having us. Listen together, let’s change the face of beauty. Let’s do this together, and thank you,

Chris (20:14):
Jessica. Thank you so much for that. Appreciate you being with us. Morgan, put in the chat your email address as well as website and your number. So if you want to get ahold of Jessica and learn more about Male Lady and what they do, I mean, they do a lot of amazing stuff.