Bridging Generation Gaps At Work With Barbara Randell

Action's Antidotes

Ok, Boomer. These are the things millennials would say to make fun of how old boomers are. While boomers would make fun of how spoiled and reliant millennials are on technology. The cycle keeps on going, and it will continue to go until someone puts an end to it. Instead of vilifying each other, we can come together and learn a whole bunch of new things. Barbara Randell, the Founder of Future Image Group, is joining your host, Stephen Jaye, to talk about bridging this generational gap at work. Join Stephen and Barbara as they talk about adopting the correct mindset that will bridge this divide. Learn how taking that first step can fix many of the other divides prevalent in our world and culture today. --- Listen to the podcast here Bridging Generation Gaps At Work With Barbara Randell One thing that's been on my mind quite a bit lately is relationships. This pandemic has been hard on a lot of people, but one of the things I hope that we're coming to the realization to over the course of the past year of being restricted and hold up at home is the importance of relationships in our lives. Sometimes, especially in work environments, we don't get to sit and necessarily choose who we want to interact with. It's not always this like attracts like, this mirroring phenomenon. We have to find an effective way to interact with the people around us regardless of who they are. Without further ado, I bring you Barbara Randell, the Founder and Leader of the Future Image Group, which helps a lot with work relationships. Welcome, Barbara. "You can boil every single human emotion down to two things: love and fear. And if you're coming from a place of fear, which means if you're feeling insecure, you're not going to ask. We all assume that we're supposed to know everything. We're all a work in progress." Thank you. It's good to be with you. Let's begin by getting the readers oriented to Future Image Group. Tell us about what you do, what your mission is, and how you do it. In my former life, I was a legal recruiter for many years. The reason that I was successful in that endeavor was because of relationships and the personal interactions I had with my clients. Towards the end of that phase of my career, I started noticing this alarming trend of the senior folks in the workplace complaining about the Millennials and Millennials complaining about the awful dinosaurs of Boomers, and how nobody was talking to each other. You have uniquely five generations all working together at the same time for the first time in history. Each generation looks at work and life through a completely different lens. Nobody was taking the time to get to know or get to understand which lens people are looking through. They were just vilifying each other. Bridging Generation Gaps: Each generation brings a unique set of skills that each generation can learn from. Nobody is taking advantage of any of that because of factors such as social media and technology. You've got all of these generations all working together and all speaking different languages. Essentially, I started researching it. I found out that this is in fact, a thing. The generations are not communicating amongst themselves, they are tending to gravitate only towards people that are like them. When in fact, each generation brings an extraordinary, unique set of skills, tools, and brilliant gifts that each generation can learn from and grow from. Nobody was taking advantage of any of that because of a huge number of factors, social media, and technology. We're losing the tools and the skills to communicate with one another and relationships rely on communication, curiosity and interest. How are we doing this? Who are you? Why are you doing what you're doing? Asking people the questions that you asked me. I wrote a curriculum that teases apart the actual components of what it takes to develop, build, maintain and nurture relationships.