The Generational Handoff: When Boomers Lead Gen Z (And Nobody Speaks the Same Language)

This podcast episode discusses the challenges of communication and collaboration across different generational groups within church staff. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and bridging communication gaps to leverage the strengths of each generation effectively. The hosts, Todd Rhoades and Matt Steen, advocate for personalized communication approaches and highlight how different generations perceive leadership and work dynamics. • Generational gaps can cause miscommunication and inefficiency in church staff meetings. • Each generation has distinct experiences, preferences, and values regarding leadership and communication. • Boomers value face-to-face interactions and hierarchy, while Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have diverse expectations ranging from independence to efficiency. • Misunderstandings arise when generational communication styles are not acknowledged or accommodated. • Leaders should tailor their communication methods to individual preferences within the team. • Recognizing and leveraging generational differences can enhance team effectiveness. • Organizations should aim for generational diversity in staff to ensure long-term success.

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Transcript

The Meeting That Breaks Communication

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Okay, you're sitting in the staff meeting and uh everybody's around the table, your 63-year-old executive pastor just asked everybody on the team, hey, let's circle back offline about this new thing that we're gonna start. Right? And then your 25-year-old worship pastor, look physically confused, he just isn't even sure what circle back offline means. The youth pastor, who's a millennial, is internally cringing at all of his corporate speak, and your Gen Z children's pastors wondering why this why the world are we even having this meeting? This could have been a Slack message. And meanwhile, nobody's actually communicating very well. If this sounds familiar, this podcast episode today is for you because we're going to talk about the generational gap on church staff because it's not all about age, it's actually about completely different operating systems. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffing.com, along with my colleague Matt Steen, and you're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. There's this invisible divide that it's not so invisible anymore. Every generation just brings something different to the table, different experiences, different ways of doing things, different ways of processing. For example, boomers over the years, and I'm on the latter edge of the boomers, boomers learned leadership through hierarchy and face-to-face relationship building. That's how we operated, right? Gen X and still operate. Gen X cut their teeth on independence, and they're really big on figuring out things as they go. Millennials, on the other hand, they expect that collaboration and that feedback and that purpose-driven work. Meanwhile, Gen Z just really wants efficiency and authenticity and to skip all the small talk. They just want to get it done. Every one of those different generations, same mission, but completely different languages. And most of the time, we're just all assuming that everybody thinks like we do. And that's where it gets messy on a church staff. And maybe you've experienced this. I call it the drift, right? The boomer leader schedules another meeting, another meeting to discuss what could have been decided in five minutes. At least that's what everybody else thinks. The Gen Z staff member thinks that the meeting culture is performative and inefficient. The millennial craves regular check-ins and feedback that they're not getting, and the Gen X pastor just wants to be left alone to do the work. They'll get it done. Right. Everybody's frustrated. Everybody thinks that the others just don't get it. And the real killer here is that each generation thinks they might not admit it, but each generation thinks that their way's a bit more spiritual, right? I'm a boomer. I think my way. It just works. It works, right? It's worked for years. Why change it up now? But listen, everybody's trying to serve God faithfully. And they all bring those they bring their different age, their different everything is different. And they're all trying to serve God faithfully. The problem isn't bad hearts. It's that we're speaking different dialects of leadership. So we need to build some bridges. We start with communication preferences, not communication content. So ask your team, how do you best receive feedback? Do you want feedback in person? Do you want it written? Do you like it to be scheduled? Do you like it to be on the fly in the moment? Do you like it in a Slack message and email? Do you like it in a video? Do you like it in person or sitting across from my desk? How do you best receive feedback? And along those same lines, what does feeling supported look like to you? To one person, it's just let me do my job. To the other person, and this is age-related and generational, but it's also the way that we're wired. Some people just need a lot of positive reinforcement. And other people just they're you give them a compliment, they're just gonna look cross-eyed at you. What are you doing? Stop making your communication style the default for everybody. And this is the problem, especially because most of the senior leaders are older. They're like me. They're they're older, they've been doing this for a while. They're boomers, or they're just we can be set in our, you know, it's hard to believe, but we can be set in our ways, but we start thinking that our way of communication should be the default for everybody in the organization. The boomer still needs that relationship-building conversation. The Gen Z person just wants the bullet points. And you can give, you not everything has to be face-to-face. Sometimes you can do it in bullet points and get it to the Gen Z person. Same information, different delivery systems. But here's the key make the why really explicit for everybody. Because when you don't bridge this gap, you lose really good people. Your 26-year-old associate pastor isn't being disrespectful when they ask, hey, what's the objective here? They literally process information differently than somebody who's been in ministry for 30 years. And your seasoned ministry leader isn't being controlling when they want a longer conversation about direction. They're drawing from decorate decades and decades of watching quick decisions blow up. The tension isn't generational dysfunction. It's generational diversity that just needs a little bit of a translator. And you as a leader, you might need to become fluent in multiple generational languages. Don't just talk down to them. Don't just try to bring them into your world and understand how you handle things. You need to learn to speak their languages well. Because here's your bottom line for today great teams do not eliminate generational differences. As a matter of fact, they build on those generational differences. They leverage them as complimentary strays. So this week, if you can do one thing, have one conversation with each staff member about how they best receive information and feedback. Don't assume, just ask, and then adjust your approach to try and match their wiring, not yours. The church really does need the wisdom of every generation working together. Matter of fact, we're in a boatload of trouble if we only have one generation on our church staff team. And I see a lot of church staff teams that all have the same generation. That might work for you really well now, but it's not going to work for you in the long term. When you bridge the communication gap across generations, you're going to unlock the full potential of your team and the full potential of your church. I hope this has been helpful for you today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes. Hope you'll join me right here again tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Have a great day.