I am not a bridge. I have my own problems, and actually resent this notion that, once again we have to drop our own plans to bail others out. Nope not happening.
As a GenXer, its exhausting mentoring Millennials. They're like 5 year olds. What do I do? Why do it that way? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Good lord, when I was in that position, I just wanted the objective and then for the supervisor to leave me the hell alone so I could figure it out myself. If I had a question, I would ask A question, as in singular. Millennials are so bereft of initiative and self-sufficiency, I worry for the future of the world.
No, the reason why GenXers don't get along with the older and younger generations is that; they have no respect for anybody; you GenXers have no self-respect yet you demand it from everybody else.
Love being a GenXer! Karen, I think you are spot on with your description of us. How ironic that we are sandwiched between two generations that need to be coddled!
I'm Gen X. I like Millennials. I don't personally know any other Gen Xers that dislike Millennials other than a few people who still listen to nothing but 80's music and wish they were back in high school. Let me tell you a story Boomers. It's about a father, a mother, and their children. The father spent most of his time womanizing and drinking. The mother spent her time watching tv and eating. The children raised themselves. Any time the children asked for help the parents would either ignore them or make the situation worse while calling their children horrible names. The children left the house young because they knew that their parents were killing them in a very real way. Some found their footing and others didn't but they all tried their best to just get on with their lives as best they could and find a little bit of peace in life. Time passed and the mother and father began to feel the grip of age on their bones. They went to their now grown children and said "Now it's your turn to take care of us the way we once took care of you." And the children did just that.
While I am quite capable of coaching people by setting goals and explaining clearly (because I know what it was like to not have things to explained at all, and the inefficiency it created), they don't want me. They want someone to faff about with and I don't do that. I get my work done, and then I go home, and I answer my messages when I feel like it, not like my phone is attached to my ear. And they just can't deal with being put on read even when that just means I've decided to consider my answer or that I'll deal with it in person. And so I'm now self employed. I miss having an employer sometimes. And I miss coaching other people because I was good at it. But I don't miss pretending to be friends with people. I feel it was insulting to them and to me. And I don't like lying to people as a standard part of the job. But you can't get anywhere if you don't lie to them and pretend to be someone you're not. Also, I've worked with people who made me literally flinch at the sound of my own name because they couldn't do things on their own and make judgement calls on the spur of the moment, and just called me over perpetually to tell them what to do, even about things that we'd already discussed. And I'm not kidding. I really had a PTSD response to my own name in some work environments because they would not leave me the F alone.
You have hit the nail on the head. I work in a large organization and I am one of only 3 gen Xers in my team of about 30 people. The boomers are my bosses and there are only six of them. They're pretty busy so they mostly leave me alone. I have a good relationship with my boomer bosses because I am productive, reliable and able to accomplish tasks with very little direction. The problem lies in my relationship with the group of Gen Yers I am tasked to mentor, train and supervise. I work in a highly technical field which entails sitting in front of a bay of computers, taking a lot of measurements and writing technical reports about my findings. I went to great effort to choose and qualify myself for a career that encourages ingenuity and independence. I thoroughly enjoy my work. I enjoy training and mentoring the newer employees. What makes me crazy is the Gen Yers lack of independence and willingness to try things out on their own. They seem to require constant direction and feedback through every step of the process which can be quite lengthy. They are tasked with the less complex aspects of the work, though it is still very challenging. The personnel that have been at it longer work on the more complex projects, and the boomers are the project managers. The problem I have is I find myself explaining the same concepts and procedures multiple times which digs into my time to work on my own projects. What I do requires a good deal of concentration and constant interruptions really mess up my work flow. The Gen Yers are all bright and capable people but I am frustrated by their lack of independence and initiative. I am at a loss as to how best meet their training and supervisory needs, meet my own work needs and foster a more independent work initiative, which is a necessary attribute for what we do.
I am a Gen X trainer too. I create training manuals to which trainees refer to independent of me after I go through process and procedures a couple of times sitting with them. Creating step by step written procedures frees up my time and diminishes frustration with trainees and forces their own Independence and self motivation in learning their new role. More than once I have been told thank you for the manual could not have learned without it to refer to the way I did. I do not have time to baby sit at work. My training manuals include screen prints which I copy and paste into MS Publisher and add arrows and notes to for visual and verbal references. It is time consuming to initially create but it is a huge time saver when able to use over and over again. You may find this approach advantageous. But make sure the company logos are used and copy write symbols are incorporated.
What has happened also, and is not talked about much, the Millennials have been mentored by their parents. In the corporate world if a many lineal has a parent that tells them how to be a good employee, they are some stiff competition. I have met some very humble, vulnerable, team building, Millennials. And because of their aggressiveness and self-assurance and confidence they can ask for and get the mentoring that they desperately want and need that they've been taught from their parents to go after. And if a Generation X or does not show the same receptiveness to these traits the managers which is look over you. They've been taught how to compete in the corporate world by their corporate Boomer parents
Yes, everything cost much less then, but we also had the Vietnam war hanging over our heads (there was a mandatory draft then) as it hung over mine all through my high school years. Luckily for me the war ended 6 months before my 18th birthday.
Steve Walther my boomer doc just told me I “needed to go out & have some fun. You work too damn much”. I shot back - “Maybe if livable wages were like during YOUR younger days I COULD.”.
Karen McCullough I’m sure you boomers AND the millennials can both learn how to do without us. If not - NOT GenXer’s problem. See, we’re TIRED of being y’all’s generations’ janitors, TYVM, WE QUIT!
I just came across this video, and while the title says it's about Gen X, it's really about the Boomers and Millennials and their needs. Ms. McCullough says that Gen X is the most creative & innovative, but her not so subtle and not so sub subtext is that Gen X is supposed to use these talents to "manage", aka serve the other two generations, which she accurately calls self-absorbed. Here's a question for you Ms. McCullough, what can the Boomers & Millennials (aka Gen Y) do for Gen X? What can you do for Gen X that might relieve some of the burdens and stresses which that generation faces? You say that the Boomers & Millennials want relationships, and your implication is that Gen X should oblige. Why should Gen X do that if the other two generations aren't willing to accept and respect the needs and character of Gen X. What are the Boomers and Millennials willing to do for Gen X??????
Wow!!! That's a hell of a point! I get that all the time. Disrespectful and unappreciative Boomers and Millenials just don't ever show that same respect back. I got tired of it and just do ME now. I don't need them.
@@erikah534 Boomers pretty much expect it from us and Millenials just don't care at all. Also, anytime I try to explain the right way to do something, they like to give what I like to call the 'fluoride stare'. Like they have NO idea at all how to respond and literally stare at me with a blank look on their face. It's maddening.
Mohaine seems like neither of the “big” generations wants to do their OWN work & dump it on ours, doesn’t it? Considering it’s going to take me approximately 50 years of working (in comparison to boomers average 30 - & I own my own successful business now, ffs) to even get to retirement I feel they’ve had more that enough help! “God helps those who help THEMSELVES”.
So us Generation Xers 1984 according to George Masnick of Harvard University. Have to take care of a manipulative and narcissistic personality disorder of a generation baby boomers aka the New England Patriots of the generations, and then take a bunch of whiners and narcissistic in the millennial generation aka the San Francisco 49whiners or 49ers of the generations. And which my generation the Dallas Cowboys of the generations go genx let's take care of a cheating baby and a whining I mommy baby lol.
Motivational Speaker Karen McCullough's blog, Lessons from the Road presents a humorous, insightful entertaining videos that share relevant and humorous lesson that Karen has learned while on the road -- inside the life of a professional speaker. karenmccullough.com In this Lessons from the Road, Karen proclaims that Gen X is the bridge between The Boomers and Gen Y. Gen X has to step up and engage with both generations as they manage and empower the troops. My intention in this blog post and in my upcoming Shot of Energy Newsletter is to be part of a campaign to stop generational stero-types and get back to reality. Everyone wants to succeed.
My wife and I, both "Xers" (member that Sneaker Pimps album "Becoming X", those Malcolm X hats. Billy Idol's first band), anyway, we decided that the motto of the 50 something of today should be "sounds like fun, no thanks". How I am feeling about the responsibility of "leadership".
I know the song I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing was created in 1971 (genx era) but whenever I hear genx the music that come's to my mind are pearl jam or nirvana's music
Hi Karen. Like your Videos, which I have only discovered today. Growing up in London UK during the 70's and 80's. I did Trick or Treat once. A group of Friends knocked on someone's Door. We were given Fruit, but were told by the Parents, they were boycotting South African Products, because of the Apartheid Regime. You brought back a lot of memories recording Music on Tapes. I busted many a Tape Deck doing that. LOL
More like the mysterious bag full of dangerous candies stuck between two grabby hands. I've been in Digital Advertising as a Creative for 13+ yrs. I've managed, hired/fired, and worked with creative and programmer Gen-Yers since 2003, and they're a mixed bunch. Our agency output was high volume at a rapid pace. The diligent ones adapted and thrived. The praise dependent and entitlement types had adjustment issues and I had resumes filling my inbox.
This is me to a T. The problem with generation x like myself unfortunately we are a small generation :( That's why we get left out :( But we are the coolest and creative bunch :) Having the BEST music the 80's and movies! :) Very entertaining decade!
I'm sorry, but you get too much wrong about GenX. Firstly, Gen X was a term coined by the book of the same title by Douglas Copeland. In it, this gen is defined as being born between1963 and 1973, roughly. Second, it was never a name they coined for themselves, nor like. And 'slacker' wasn't used till the movie of the same name. The Boomers detested this generation because of the scarcity of numbers and their general unwillingness to be bossed and bullied into submission by the older Peacenik hippies who GenX, rightly, saw as THE biggest sellout generation ever, who moved from beatnik to bell bottoms to disco to BMW's like a swarm of locusts gobbling every trend possible. You're right that Gen X virtually raised themselves in a near perpetually paranoid world of assasinations, nuclear threats, and corrupt cops. Never mind the sugarpop pablum music junk on radio being proffered as 'art'. It was BOOMERS who made the idea of mainstreaming everything - from music to painting to hair styles to self-discovery to clothing to education to relationships - to 'things of consummable fashion'. Consumption itself was and is the commodity. And they sold this ethics system, so to speak, to their offspring. The 'Boomers' took Narcissism to a whole new level, globally, and have the unselfconscious audacity to condemn the kids THEY named Gen Y/Millenials for the same behavior!! Unrepentant hypocrites. And it's so typical for Boomers who, after spending the last two decades trying to convince themselves and their kids that Gen X, (often the aunts and uncles of Millenials), is the most vile group to have ever walked the planet, because they wouldn't march lockstep to the fate the Boomers tried to decree to them, are being asked by Boomers to 'take over' and 'be bridges'. Gen X is right to say, F...U'. Not only that, unlike their Boomer parents, Gen X does NOT think unkindly of Gen Y, aka the Millenials (also, ironically enough, named by the Boomers), because the X'ers see them as being manipulated, almost decisively but not quite, as the Boomers attempted to manipulate Gen X. MOST X'ers I know, never erased or covered up their tattoos like a Boomer would to get 'the big paying job'. They see Millenials as being the, almost literal, wet dream of the Boomer advertising and marketing corps wanted them to be. And, if anything, most X'ers don't condescend to or baby Millenials because they think MORE highly of Millenials than Boomers do, who see them as just one big moving cash cow. The Millenials were helicopter parented right into submission,,being afraid to even make the choice of opting out of 'the system'. TheBoomers first raised them to be happy consumers who didn't dare walk outside the herd to complaining that they're terrible employees who are afraid to make decisions. The 'Boomers' are the most superficial, Me centered, spineless, greedy cretins I've met, in general, and after being horrible parents who make their kids weak THEN have the gaul to blame those kids for their percieved weaknesses. And now that the Boomers are feeling the backlash affect they, as usual, want to dump the burden of their kids off on someone else and who else to ask? Why...good ol' GenX, right? Of course. Sorry dear, the flattery of a Boomer calling Gen X'ers 'the most creative blah blah blah' doesn't show up on their radar because they see right through it. I mean, ONLY a Boomer could sink to the level of using Halloween candy threats as the stand out identifier for Gen X. "Gee, we're real sorry how we used all the media possible during your young adulthood to snark, mock, and insult you GenX but see, we're getting ready to retire and we really need our Botox and special vacations and SS, so if you could just lead our kids to work themselves to death to do that for us? OK? Oh, you're SO creative and independent and, um, do you think you could also convince them that our music and our fashions were the best EVER because we reallyyyy like how they fell for that one! Thanks, bye! And, also...remember: be a bridge. Just, be a bridge." No sale. Millenials and X'ers actually LIKE each other. We know that drives you Boomers nuts, but you can drop the whole labeling entire groups of people any time and trying to divide and manipulate them against each other. Tell ya what, we'll stop calling you 'Boomers' if you stop labeling us after the last letters of the alphabet, but we understand how you guys always want to put everybody else last. Oh boy do we! How's about you clean up your own mess this time?
I know it's probably not delivered in the most ideal way, nor what some folks want to hear, however I think any emphasis on 'generations' isn't helpful in a professional setting. People of any background can have similar and dissimilar professional goals, and trying to make them distinct from each other for any reason other than organizational seniority doesn't lend itself well to the creative, idea-driven process. Thanks for replying and I wish you success!
I'm totally down with us being a bridge. I'll be happy to help. But it's a toll bridge, payable on demand, and closed when I'm off the clock Don't like it, build your own damn bridge
+Karen McCullough Lady,you are NUTS! You are a bb right? Right there says it all.Selfish,analizing,exasperating.You'll probably ban me,but oh well,it won't be the first time.
+AllGuts NoGlory According to George Masnick of Harvard University the years of the generations Gen X is 1965- 1984 and the Millennial generation is 1985 - 2004 sorry not a whining sack of garbage of a generation.
It's easy to count on someone else for everything... so the up coming generations is always based on the one that was before. If the generation was before CREATORSs and BUILDERs, then the next generation tend to "eat up" all things the previous one created.... until nothing is left. Then they claim that it's not there fault, shouting everybody must save up etc. It's easy... DESTRUCTION goes fast and easy. Until nothing is left. Best: The next generation does not know or remember was was lost...
The ones that make it are the ones that make it. We need to train generation A and B not to be weasels or week. We can push to the grater good, but the others need to grow up.
I’ve got it! We make a bunch of AI bots. Like Max Headroom. Give them all the knowledge on the Internet to access and deep fake their appearance to look like us. Then we just left the AI text us if there’s a problem.
Sorry but NO. My generation was ignored nobody gave us instructions on how to do things we had to practically raise ourselves. Gen X do not cuddle or bridge for shit.
I'm gen X that took care of my parents before they passed away. One parent passed away when I was 18 years old, then I had to take care of my sister after that until she got married at 20 years old. My dad died when I was 37 years old. My parents were from the babybommers and my sister is a millinal and they saw me do creative things that wernt not on tv and there wasnt a course on how to be the bridge between two clueless generations that really did depend on my being generation X. When I was born. My mom once told me that I was born with knowledge and I adapted to my surroundings faster then her as aityle infant. Today I found her observation to be true. Also I was taking about I was from the universe in 1983 why before the year 2018, i was born in 1980. And i event told her i was born and brought into the world to help and protect her and I did that until her mysterious death that was calmed a God acts. So I feel generation X we have knowledge that goes past technology we saw the future and I was made I had to wait. Also in gen X only a few of us know we are chosen.
A VERY NO !!!!! YOU LEARN HOW TO MANAGED YOUR OWN SELF CREATED PROBLEMS !!! BOTH BOO MERS AND ME LIE NIHILSM. WE HAVE TO HELP OURSELVES AND FAMILY FUNDAMENTALLY FIRST !
