Knowing your own work style and how it integrates with the work style of the workplace and others is critical to your career success.

CIO-logoThink the generation gap went out with bell-bottoms and love beads? Think again.

Take a good look around your IT department. Who’s that cohabiting in the cubes outside your door? Boomers and X-ers and Y-ers. Looks peaceful out there, doesn’t it? Don’t bet on it. What many CIOs fail to see are the generational tensions simmering among their employees that threaten to lower morale, increase turnover and hobble the IT department’s ability to produce wins for the business.

“One of the big struggles companies have is with people who are not playing well in the sandbox,” says Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing for Yoh, an IT talent and outsourcing services firm. “And it’s more pervasive when we talk about the situation we have between the generations.”

Relations among the generations seem to be at a low point. Gen Y (defined as people born after 1982) thinks Gen X (spawned between 1961 and 1981) is a bunch of whiners. Gen X sees Gen Y as arrogant and entitled. And everyone thinks the Baby Boomers (1943 to 1960) are self-absorbed workaholics.
None of this generational trash-talking surprises Linda Gravett and Robin Throckmorton, authors of Bridging the Generation Gap, which advises managers on how to minimize conflicts and miscommunication among the different age groups in order to get everyone working together.

“We had a sense that there was tension,” says Gravett, a human resources consultant. “This was confirmed in our research. We found there was a lot of generational tension around the use of technology and work ethics.”

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 Source: CIO.COM