96: “Okay Boomer” | NYU Professor Mike North | Bridging the Generational Gap

Mike North is a Professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business where he teaches leadership. Mike’s research focuses on challenges of, and considerations for, the aging and multigenerational workforce.

Mike was named a "Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professor" by Poets and Quants, a "Top 50 Best Undergraduate Business School Professor" by Poets and Quants, and a "Rising Star" by the Association for Psychological Science.

He has authored op-eds for the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Newsweek, Quartz, and New Scientist, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, BBC, New Yorker, Washington Post, Forbes, and TIME.

Mike earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from Michigan, a PhD in Psychology and Social Policy from Princeton, and completed a postdoc at Columbia.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Leaders can come from anywhere, because leadership is a behavior, not a position, a verb not a noun.
• We can lead by example, by challenging the status quo, by having difficult conversations, or by listening to others. Ultimately, we get to decide what kind of leader we want to be.
• Age unnecessarily divides us in many ways, especially given that age is the only universal social category.
• We will all join each of ages identities and subgroups if we live long enough. But rather than glue us together, age often divides us, whether its younger people saying, “Okay, boomer” or older people lamenting “kids these days.”
• Generational tensions are not new. There are quotes dating back to 800 BC where the older generation complained about the younger generation in the same way we see today.
• Although both young and old are discriminated against, sadly young people tend to be viewed most negatively, both from older and younger generations alike.
• One way to bridge the generation gap is to recognize that advice given by young people is equally as good as the advice given by old people. Just as leadership can come from anywhere, so too can good advice.
• We probably focus too much on chronological age. To better appreciate people we can view people through other age lenses, such as generation, tenure, and experience.

 

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