MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show, "connecting your neighborhood with the world. Howard Ross is here. Hierarchy and seniority, they're a given in most workplaces. Managers set the agenda and junior employees follow orders. If lucky young employees may find someone above them to help them learn about the company. A mentor who can guide them a bit, teach them skills needed to do their job well.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIToday a growing number of workplaces are reversing the mentor - mentee dynamic, finding that younger workers also have a lot to offer their senior colleagues. Certainly today's tech savvy graduates bring new skills to a job that some managers may not have. But there's more to these relationships than teaching your boss to tweet.

MR. KOJO NNAMDITo explore the promise and pitfalls of the new relationships, what baby boomers are learning from millennials and vice versa, we invited Howard Ross. He's a business coach and diversity consultant. His firm is Cook Ross. He's also the author of "Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance." Howard, good to see you again.

MR. HOWARD ROSSAlways good to be here, Kojo.

NNAMDIThe former CEO of General Motors, Jack Welch, is sometimes credited with introducing reverse mentoring to the Fortune 500. What did he do?

ROSSWell, I mean, I think that what Jack Welch did is he started a whole movement within GE, what they called their workout program, and the workout program was basically based on the notion that everybody in the team had something to contribute. And so rather than sort of the classical hierarchical system of the leader determining what needs to be done and everybody else stepping into plan, most of which came from a military approach, and that was the early management theory that came out of people like Frederick Winslow Taylor and others, which is a lot of it based on military.

ROSSThat's why we have, in our vernacular in businesses, things like line level employees and things like that. And what Welch discovered -- and, of course, as in anything else in our culture, it wasn't Welch really, but it was the people in GE who then, you know, convinced Welch of it, discovered there was something really valuable in getting teams of people together to look and consider the possibility of reinventing the way that they were doing things. And that included everybody in the team.

ROSSAnd, in fact, what they found in the early days of doing work like that was that the people who were much more likely to change were people at lower levels, early people into the system because people who had been in the system for a long time, presumably people at higher levels who had been rewarded for doing things in a way the system had always operated, were much more likely to be rooted in old ways of doing things and much more likely to be attached to those ways that had gotten to them to the top. Whereas people who were younger and newer are much more open to whatever, you know, looking for a solution without being rooted to those.

NNAMDIJoin the conversation by calling us at 800-433-8850. Have you benefited from a great workplace mentor or how have you suffered as a result of a catastrophic one? 800-433-8850. What generational misunderstandings happen most in your workplace? You can also go to our website, kojoshow.org, send us an email to kojo@wamu.org. Are there common mistakes members of one generation make when talking to or talking about the other generation? You can also send us a tweet at kojoshow.

NNAMDIHoward, most businesses are built, as you mentioned, on hierarchy and seniority. While reverse mentoring doesn't necessarily do away with that foundation, you're kind of shaking it up. Are there a few rules to start with when you're thinking of creating a reverse mentoring relationship?

ROSSWell, I think you speak to something that's a really important distinction for people to get, which is that mentoring and really, for that matter, engagement at any level is a distinct conversation from hierarchy organizations. One of the challenges we have is the old model of leadership that most of us have grown up with, particularly people in our generation, Kojo, was that the person at the top was unassailable. They were expected to know everything, to know how to do everything, to have the ultimate answer for everything and then anybody who worked for that person, no matter what age, really turned to that person for the final answer and that's a pretty limited structure.

ROSSIt worked pretty well over a period of time when there wasn't a lot of change over generations. You know, if we go back 20 years ago, it's not -- there wasn't any ever change, but the pace of change was a lot slower. I mean, it's somewhat clichéd to say that because we talk about it so often now. But now we're living in an environment which is quite different and not just for technology, but even if you just look at technology, what we know is the young people coming out of school, I mean, even my son, Jake, who's 17, knows things about technology that I don't know.

ROSSAnd technology has been sort of one of the early pushes in this and it requires us to as leaders say, yes, I may make the decision, but that doesn't mean I can't learn from people around me. It doesn't mean that they can't contribute to the conversation and that they can't give feedback, which is really valuable in order to do that.

NNAMDII imagine you can expect pushback from some more seasoned professions. You pointed out that people higher up in the order are generally the ones more resistant to change. Do you have specific suggestions for dealing with fear and reticence among older employees?

ROSSWell, I think that one of the things that we need to recognize is that in any feedback system, any engagement system in any organization, is the antithesis of fear. And so to the degree that fears lives in the organization at any level, you have less engagement by employees, whoever they are, and to the degree that those differences are manifested more broadly and that is that if somebody's two or three levels down from you in the organization or if they're much younger than you or much more inexperienced or much newer to the organization, it's understandable that they would have any greater reticence on one level.

ROSSBut on another level, what's happening, I think, with a lot of older employees today is that there's a real concern if I lose this job, will I be able to get a new one. Whereas, you know, when somebody's 23, 24 years old, they have that concern, but reality teaches them that, you know, the world teaches them that they've got some time to work that out.

NNAMDIWhen I was that age, I had a quitting line even before I got the job.

ROSSThat's exactly right. And it's one of the things that's really interesting. You know, what we're seeing is research that shows that people actually make that determination within the first three months that they're in a job, whether or not they have their quitting line ready. And so the early stages of bringing people in is really important in this. You know, how do we welcome people into the organization, how do we make them feel comfortable right at the start?

ROSSBut ultimately, we need to figure out ways to drive fear out of our organizations in order to get the best full engagement from our employees. And it's especially hard when you've got so many organizations who are doing things like cutting back. And over the last couple years, we've had layoffs which disrupt that sense of loyalty on the part of employees. I mean, if you're going to be laying off people next to me, you hardly have a right to ask me to be completely loyal to you. So that makes it particularly challenging in this environment.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Howard Ross. He's a business coach and diversity consultant. His firm is Cook Ross. He's also the author of "Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance." Today we are talking about the phenomenon of reverse mentoring. Do you work with people significantly younger or for that matter, older than yourself? What specific skills do they have that you'd like to pick up?

NNAMDICall us at 800-433-8850 or send email to kojo@wamu.org. Mentorships and reverse mentorships act, in some ways, as an equalizer, allowing someone lower in the hierarchy to interact with a senior person in a more intimate way than most corporate culture dictates. But it's not the same thing as equality is it?

ROSSNo. I think it's, I mean, well, there's equality. There's equity in organizations and then as we said before, there's hierarchy. I think you can have equality or equity in terms of the way people are treated and the sense of the respect that they're given and a certain human interactive respect that that exists and the valuing of somebody for the role that they play. That doesn't mean that somebody who's new to an organization, only been there six months in a very lower level position, has the same impact on the organization as somebody who is the CEO or a higher level position. And so there's oftentimes what we've seen in organizations is the amount of respect or valuing of people is determined by their rank.

ROSSAnd I think that's where we get into these really status driven organizations. But I think one of the things when we look at reverse mentoring is it requires a real mindset change on part of both people. I mean, if we first look, particularly this newest generation into the workforces, there folks who people are referring to as the millennials or generation Y, who I think are defined as people between the ages of, say, roughly 18 and 30 or 18 and 28. I mean, these, you know, these things are defined differently by different folks because what constitutes a generations is shrinking, too. It used to be when, you know, 20 years was a generation. Now, it's more like five when you look at the difference it brings a different perspective.

ROSSBut I think if you look at what we see characterized by this generation, first of all, there's a lot of judgment about -- you hear people talking about, you know, kids these days and workers these days. I frankly love this generation. I find them to be, you know, really bright, really capable and very willing to jump into the fire. They've grown up in a time when they've seen people of their own age create Google, create Facebook, create these mega companies.

ROSSThe voice on the internet that people have in terms of blogs and things like this gives people an opportunity to have impact at a much younger age than most of us when we were growing up. And what that, for a lot of people, does is give them a sense of assertiveness of their point of view, which is off-putting to people who are expecting people to just shut up and do what they're told at that age. And so often what you hear is people who, you know, challenge that or judge folk of this generation for not sort of being willing to put in to pay their dues and the like. And of course, you do have some people who are legends in their own mind a bit, too.

NNAMDII was about to say, let's turn that on its head for a second. How do you communicate the very important differences to young people who might already have an overblown sense of importance and self-importance?

ROSSWell, I think that my experience has been -- and I can't say that, you know, that my experience is universal obviously, but I do get around and see people in organizations, not just my own. And one of the things that we've found is that when people's voices are heard, they don't necessarily expect that everything will be done the way that they want it to be done. The challenge for people is usually when they feel like their voice is not respected.

ROSSWhen they feel diminished because what could this kid possibly say that could -- I'm saying this in quotes, obviously, "possibly say that could be a value to me." And people feel diminished by that and then often what happens is they try to fight their way in to prove, and we know that this true, you know, what you resist persists. And so the more you resist somebody's voice, the more that they'll push their voice in.

ROSSOn the other hand, if you look at folks who are in the more higher age groups, you know, whether it's the baby boomers or whoever in that age, who grew up in the environment that was I talking about before when we saw it as much more of a hierarchical age, an age sort of dependent conversation, there might be an internal conversation, either conscious or unconscious, that if I'm taking advice from this young person, this somehow diminishes me. You know, I should be able to know more than them, and that can play with the mind in lots of ways.

ROSSOne way is by the person who's younger, who's got this information occurring, is a threat to me because, oh my god, they know more than me. And the other is in trying to justify why I know more and sometimes that shows up as turning away ideas that are good ideas simply because I don't want their idea to win because I'll look bad if it does.

NNAMDIOn to the telephones. Here is Debbie at NASA. Debbie, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DEBBIEHello, thank you for my call. I just wanted to say that I've been working for the government for over 30 years and during the past several years, I've had this type of relationships, mentoring students can be (unintelligible) symbiotic a lot of times. And it is really a benefit for them to actually teach us about new technology and on the other hand, I can teach them about the history of where I work and I find very rewarding.

NNAMDIYou find it both rewarding to them and you're pretty sure it's rewarding to you and you're pretty sure to them also?

DEBBIEI'm sorry?

NNAMDIHow do you get from the young people that you're working with that the kind of institutional knowledge you're providing is rewarding to them?

DEBBIEWell, I think they have a keen interest in space and so I work for the space agency and I think they're really interested in that and I can share my information that I know about that with them.

NNAMDIAnd what do they share with you?

DEBBIEAnd they share new technologies with me and new ideas and ways of doing things that could benefit us as well.

NNAMDIWhat do you say to that Howard?

ROSSWell, I think it's, you know, I think it's true. And one of the things that Debbie's pointing to when she's says, well, they're interested in space, I mean, we obviously have an advantage when we're working in organizations where the work that we're doing draws people who are particularly interested in that work. In Debbie's case, she's talking about young people who might come in who are particularly interested in space and the science that's involved. In our case, for example, we have a lot of folks come in who are really fascinated with diversity work and have a particular passion for social justice and what that means. I think it's -- when you have folks like that who were coming in and, you know, there's a whole world of information for them to learn, it's a lot easier to create these kinds of symbiotic relationships, where they're contributing something.

ROSSThey're also getting something and it works well for both people. There's no question, and it's a lot more challenging when you've got people who were in much more, say, left brain kind of jobs or they just have to, you know, shut up and do 87 of this today or, you know, pick up this or drop this off or something like that. You know, it's much easier to categorize people who are in those kinds of just do it jobs as not having something particularly to contribute to the content that we're talking about.

ROSSBut when you've got young people who are coming in who are very bright and talented and been studying the field itself, they bring in new insights about the field that they may have learned, new research that they may have learned, new ways of looking at things, not to mention the whole technological piece.

NNAMDIAnd, of course, the staff of this show spans from the baby boom generation to the millennials. And I could go into great detail about just who contributes how much. But that's for another occasion. We're going to take a short break right now. If you'd like to join the conversation, call us at 800-433-8850. If you've picked up tech skills or other work-related tips from someone young enough to be your child or grandchild or old enough to be your parent, give us a call and tell us about it, 800-433-8850. How can subordinates make suggestions or behavior less threatening to senior employees? You can also go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there or send us a tweet @kojoshow. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. We're talking about reverse mentoring, whether people who have had more experience in the workplace can learn from younger people coming to the workplace, 800-433-8850. Has an influx of millennials resulted in a change to your workplace? Share your observations with us at kojoshow.org or by email to kojo@wamu.org. We got this -- we're talking with Howard Ross, business coach and diversity consultant. His firm is Cook Ross.

NNAMDIWe got this email from Mary Jo. "It seems to me mentoring is about giving up yourself. And sometimes giving up yourself takes more time than you want it to take. While I hate to generalize, I found that most young people, my two college-age children included, have an incredibly short attention span. They don't have much patience for explaining and re-explaining that may be second nature for them. One simple example, the difference between a right click and the left click is clear to them. It took me a while to figure it out." How do you handle that?

ROSSWell, I think there are two questions here. Let's take on the first one when Mary Jo says that mentoring is about giving up yourself. Yes, at some level that's true. It does require you to take some time to be with somebody. But I think that it's very important for people to remember, and often it's not remember, that giving up yourself for the greater good of the organization. And so, we're asking people -- when we're asking people to mentor in organizations, we're asking them to help the organization rise in its capability of doing work by working with these folks to do that, by investing in developing people.

ROSSAnd similarly, by allowing yourself to be developed by them. So I think that -- and what happens often, unfortunately in organizations, is people are asked to mentor and they're not given the time set aside to do that. You know, for example, as you know, Kojo, I do a lot of work with law firms. And what happens often in law firms is that they're encouraged to mentor young lawyers but they're still held accountable to the same billable hours that they have.

ROSSSo, in effect, any hour that they take to mentor a young lawyer is one less hour that they have to devote to the thing that they're held accountable for. And so more and more law firms are now putting in distinctions of non-billable time. That is time that you get to credit for reasonable and agreed upon reasons like mentoring that goes into your end-of-the-year billing. So, if it's 2,400 hours you're supposed to bill and, you know, 100 of those are mentoring hours, then it still counts to your 2,400 hours rather than it being a detriment to you.

ROSSSo, and I think it all should be to the benefit of the organization. Now as far as the second piece of concern, there's no question that one of the things that's happening with this generation, this youngest generation, is a higher level of ADD, of attention deficit disorder. And some people speculate that that's -- some of that is because we can now diagnose them more easily. Some of the people speculate it's because of the technology, what technology is doing to kids. There are all kinds of theories about that. But one way or another, it's pretty documented that it's the case.

ROSSAnd so, from our standpoint, if we're going to be mentoring them or mentored by them, we need to recognize that this is another form of structure and communication, just like introversion and extroversion are that requires to learn how to relate to people in different ways. And in the same sense as it occurs when we're mentoring, it will happen when we're dealing with them as customers, when we're dealing with them as employees in every other way. So it's a good skill to learn in any case.

NNAMDIBefore we go back to the phones, Jason tweeted to say "It used to be that 20 years made up a generation. Now, it seems, as you mentioned, it is five years. Can you discuss the pace of generational change?

ROSSYeah. I just think that because the world is changing quickly, the norms of behavior, the means that people who learn about how to be at work, for example, are going to be more different now in five years than they would have been in five years earlier. Whereas in five years earlier, we wouldn't have thought about that as a particularly significant change. Now we know because of everything that's going on in the world around us and how much we're influenced by those kinds of things.

ROSSTechnology is another example. People who are good at something today, may be completely ignorant about five years from now. I mean, let's look at Facebook just as an example. And I'm not talking about Facebook as much as a social phenomenon as I am as a business phenomenon. We now have entire businesses who are developing social media strategies. As a matter of fact, one could say that any business who doesn't have some social media strategy is seriously missing the boat.

ROSSAnd yet five years ago, we would have looked at those same things whether it My Page in those days or Facebook or whatever else, we would have looked at those things and said, oh, that's a cute thing that our kids are doing or somebody else is doing outside. Now, we see that as a central aspect of a lot of businesses getting their message out. Tweeting is the same thing. Blogs, all of these things. And so, that's a generational shift in terms of understanding that knowledge that's happening much faster. And we will see more of that occurring as it changed, of course, faster and faster.

NNAMDIOn to the telephones. Here is Toni is Southwest Washington. Toni, you're on the air, go ahead please.

TONIThank you, Kojo. I really like your show. I was just calling to ask a question about who the people are who are rejecting the information that younger people can give us, because I'm a boomer. I guess you can call me a boomer, I'm 1950. And, you know, we were the original talk-back young generation. And I can imagine that we wouldn't want to be talk back to. And, well, in my case, I'm in school right now.

TONIAnd of course, I'm in school with a lot of people who are young enough to be my grandchildren. And it's a good thing I can learn from them, and I notice they learn from me too, because they often lack the context to put things in. But I -- it really shocked me to hear that people don't want to learn from young people who know so much more about the techie stuff that we do.

NNAMDIWell, a lot of times, we don't remember the way we were when we were young.

ROSSWell, there is that. And then a lot of times too that we're doing things differently, but that -- let me see if I can phrase this accurately. We're doing different things, but we're not really doing them differently. I mean, I remember, you know, going back, Toni, to when we were younger. And I'm in that generation as well. And, you know, we were all countercultural, all of us wearing torn blue jeans, our hair are the same and tie-dyed shirts or whatever it was the model of the day.

ROSSSo, we all fit in into this particular way of doing things. But more importantly, when our ego structures develop at some point into adulthood and we have fought to get to where we are in organizations and often it is fighting to get there, we fought to get the respect that we need. And in a lot of cases, what's built into us, logically or rationally, is a side -- I'm talking about the nature of the way human beings respond is, all right, now I'm at the top and it's hard to turn away that sense that I should be treated with the same kind of respect that I was expected to treat other people with.

ROSSOn a logical basis, what you're saying makes perfect sense. But, unfortunately, we're not always logical in the way we act. And often there's a perception of impertinence on the part of young people. You know, from the standpoint of older people, who is this kid to be telling me what to do. That gets in the way of the logic that you're suggesting and that I would agree with is true.

NNAMDIToni, thank you very much for your call. You too can call us, 800-433-8850. If you happen to be our younger listeners, can you tell us about a time you had to school your bosses about something? 800-433-8850. You mentioned law firms in the work you do with law firms earlier, Howard. You know, it seems to me that the hierarchical system is especially true in law firms, where people are grouped by their class year and thought of as first year associates, second year associates.

NNAMDIAnd we know, no one is considered for partner until their seventh or eighth year. A lot of that is also true on Capitol Hill. There's a whole lot of, you've got to pay your dues before we respect your opinion going on. Given the way how rapidly societal and business norms are changing, shouldn't that also have to change?

ROSSOh, absolutely. And this is, you know, this is one of the things that's really important for us to recognize is that the structure of our business and social institutions reflect the particular generational focus or a particular normative focus, we might say. And so, you can convince people that a new way of operating makes sense. But if the structural systems that they're in still continue to reward the same old behavior, then they're going to fall back there.

ROSSI can give you a perfect example of this. Back about a year and a half ago, we were asked to work with the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins. They have a -- they were instituting a new program, an international MBA program and they brought students in from all over the world. About 85 students literally from every place you can imagine, including some American students. And we were working with them to help them understand the need or the value in cross-culturalism and understanding the way different cultures play out.

ROSSAnd one of the things that became apparent was that students who come from schools in other parts of the world, particularly, for example, Chinese students come from school structures, educational structures in which students are expected a much more passive role than we would see here in the United States. You wouldn't interrupt a teacher. You wouldn't raise your hand. You would wait to be called on.

ROSSAnd being assertive, even showing up to the teacher's office would not necessarily be part of the normative practice that they're used to. And so we talked a lot about how that might mean then for the students -- American students who had grown up in a much more assertive kind of environment. They might need to back up a little bit to let some of these students get more involved.

ROSSAnd at the end of these sessions, there was a young man, American student, who said, you know, I really believe in all this stuff, but there's something I have to ask you. And you, of course, said, what? And he says, well, you know, I get that this would be important to create a real community of learning and I get it would get everybody else in there, he says. But we're still graded partially on how much we participate in class.

ROSSAnd so, what you're asking us to do is essentially to sacrifice our grade to do that. And if feels, you know, it puts me in an awkward position. And I think that same thing happens a lot of times in business. We say to people, go ahead and say what's on your mind. Go ahead and give that feedback. But then what they get is an emotional reaction, which is a rolling of the eyes or whatever that who the heck does this person think they are to tell me that.

ROSSAnd so we have to be sure that as much as possible that we align our words with our actions. And it's not always an easy thing to do, because we don't always see those emotional reactions in ourselves.

NNAMDII'll get back to that on millennials in a second. But let's go to the phones again and talk with Sarah in Reston, VA. Sarah, your turn.

SARAHHi, Kojo. Thanks for taking my call.

NNAMDIYou're welcome.

SARAHI am a teacher and I often end up mentoring my instructional assistant because they are often out of an older generation than I am. I'm a pretty young teacher and have consistently been put with 40 or 50-year-old women who have been my assistants in having to mentor them and show them how we're going to do things in the classroom. And the integration of technology in the classroom has really made that -- added in an extra layer out of having to not to teach the kids stuff on technology, but also teach my assistant. And sometimes it can be a difficult relationship. And sometimes with really receptive people, it can be really fun piece of dynamic.

NNAMDIWhat is it that makes it most difficult when it's difficult?

SARAHI'm sorry?

NNAMDIWhat is it that makes it most difficult when it's difficult?

SARAHI think that reluctance to change and I also just think the reluctance to try the new technology and sticking to some of those older teaching methods that maybe are not in practice so much. Whereas there's a lot of more student-centered learning these days versus teacher-centered learning where some of that might have grown up in the classroom.

NNAMDISarah, I'm going to put you on hold, because I'd like also to have Megan in Fairfax, Va. join this conversation because I think you have a shared experience. Megan, you're on the air, go ahead please.

MEGANHi. I have been teaching for five years. And I'm in the same boat where I helped my administration start to integrate technology into the classroom and older teachers as well, whether it be from iPad technology to just how to write an email or a PowerPoint presentation.

NNAMDIAnd how is that working out for you?

MEGANI'm sorry. I wasn't able to hear you.

NNAMDIHow is that working out for you?

MEGANThings are great. Administration and my faculty have been receptive to, you know, starting to integrate because it's the 21st century. It's, you know, the 21st learner and everything. So technology is a big part of it.

NNAMDIOkay, Megan, I'll put you back on hold and I'll get back with both of you and Sarah after I've heard from Howard Ross.

ROSSWell, I think that, you know, this is what's happening. I mean, this is the world that we're living in and what both Sarah and Megan are talking about are things that we're seeing every day. And getting back to what I was saying earlier, what we can see is the resistance doesn't come from somebody saying, I don't want to learn that. The resistance comes from, all of a sudden, I go from feeling myself to somebody who was pretty competent to all of a sudden feeling incompetent when you're introducing things to me.

ROSSAnd it's a combination of not just what you're introducing to me, but also the context of an entire domain of learning that may be different from me, particularly technology. When I look at Jake, my 17-year-old, for example, who's grown up on computers. He sat behind the computer for the first time probably before he was two years old and just intuitively understands computers. If we get a new, you know, anything technological in the house, it's not that he has the capacity to learn it more than I do, it just that he thinks from the standpoint of how computers work more than I do.

ROSSAnd so even though I'm somebody who's probably, you know, sort of ahead of the curve in terms of my interest in these things for people of my generation, as a rule, I still can never keep up with his intuitive sense of that. And I think that's one of the things that creates that impatience that, you know, Sarah was talking about, this sense that, you know, we're trying to teach people, but they seem to be impatient.

ROSSAnd when we add to that the notion of how -- of not being afraid of how I look in the organization for being sort of a boo picking this stuff up, then that young person becomes the person who's making me feel bad about myself in my internal wiring. And so, they become a threat to me. And that's where the tension occurs.

NNAMDIMegan, when you have to teach older teachers these things, does it make you respect the older teachers any less?

MEGANNo, not at all. I enjoy helping them. So they help me on different levels there. I've never respect them less because I'm helping them learn technology. And I've had students in a while show me things that I don't know about that I'm able to use in the classroom as well.

NNAMDIBecause they are even younger than you are. Megan, thank you very much for your call. And, Sarah, how do you ensure that you are still respecting a colleague who may be older than you are while you're actually teaching them something new?

SARAHI think just finding the places where they're strong as well and allowing them to have that option as, maybe I'm showing you how to use the SMART Board this day or I'm showing you a fun, interactive activity that I've learned this day. But then the next day asking you for help on how to relate with the parents or how to do some sort of student discipline, where they might be stronger.

ROSSYeah. And, of course, Sarah, first you have to teach them what the SMART Board is.

NNAMDIExactly. That's where you start. Sarah, thank you very much for your call and for sharing that experience with us. We move on to Lee in Washington, D.C. Lee, you're on the air, go ahead please.

LEEThank you for taking my call, Kojo. I am a former journalist and public relations writer who now teaches English and writing. And a large segment of my clientele is young professionals in their late 20s, oh, I would say, to their mid-30s who's been very successful in IT and have been promoted to management and find that they have to communicate. And I love these young people and I always -- almost all the time, we've become great friends.

LEEBut I wanted to share a comment that got all the time that I think reflects some of the tensions between the generations here.

LEEAt some point in the course of their study, these young people will typically turn to me and say, Lee, I have to tell you this. I never realized that people who are good at language and writing are actually intelligent.

NNAMDIAnd you say -- and you say in response?

LEEI smile and give them a cookie. My point is that while I certainly think that older folks and everybody should learn from everyone, including younger folks, many young people have been educated, not only by our schools, but by the culture that technical skills are really the only skills -- the only valuable skills, because they are...

NNAMDII'm glad you raised that, Lee, because it's a significant issue that I'd like Howard Ross to weigh in on, and that is if you happen to be in a culture that is moving more and more in the direction of technological development, that more and more it is possible to think that in order for somebody to be smart, to be considered a really intelligent person, that that person has to be able to have a grasp of technology, and it results in an under appreciation for the smartness associated with the mastery and crafting of language.

ROSSYeah. Well, I think that -- I mean, first of all, let's put this in context. We know that every generation has things that were important to some of us when we were younger that lose their importance. I mean, I remember being very excited because I won a contest in my physics class when I was in high school. I was the fastest person with the slide rule, you know.

ROSSA lot of good that does me now, you know. Now, really, that's kind of a limited -- but there are things that change over time. Having said that, you know, we're in an interesting time because we're seeing on one hand the development of what we might call more of the sort of left brain skills, the technology skills, the use of technology, the sort of figuring out how to do this through that technology, but at the same time, we're also seeing a growth enormously on the right brain side, the -- for example, the fact that emotional intelligence has now become so mainstream, that people in leadership are being taught the important of inter relational dialogue and the diversity work that's become part of what we're doing, and all of those things.

ROSSAnd so the challenge is that we tend to be sort of like windshield wipers. We go back and forth between the two, and so we feel like if there's a big push in one direction that we forget the others, and ultimately our lives are created through language. I mean, language, there's some amazing work being going on right now in neural linguistics that shows that the language we choose, the words that we choose, the way we speak those words, the intonation of those words, actually creates the world around us.

ROSSAnd science is teaching that, you know, really in ways that can be now tested. And so the importance of both is what's there, and that's where I think a lot of times we get into challenges when we're dealing with people of different -- particularly of different generations who have more of a -- sort of an inclination towards one versus another, is that rather than coming together and saying what can we learn from each other, we try to convince each other that ours is more important, and that's where the breakdown can occur.

NNAMDILee, thank you very much for your call. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'd like you to join the conversation. What would you like to learn how to do? Can you identify someone in your organization or another who can help you? Someone from maybe another generation? 800-433-8850, or go to our website kojoshow.org, join the conversation there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Howard Ross about reverse mentoring. Howard Ross is a business coach and diversity consultant at the firm Cook Ross. He's also the author of "Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance." Many American companies place a premium on hiring diversity. They want their workforce to look and think like their customer base. So it would make sense that they would look at age diversity along with other forums. Is that how you approach the...

ROSSOh, absolutely, and this is one of the things that we try to say to people. It's not just -- you're not just getting reverse mentoring from the standpoint of technology. Yes, that's important. And technology is huge right now in terms of how we get our message out and how we brand ourselves in the marketplace and how we communicate with the marketplace. But we also have a huge number of people out there who are customers who are getting served by our organizations in whatever service we provide, whatever products we provide, people are buying that.

ROSSAnd so how to get our messaging out in ways that speak to the customer is another way that that can happen, and of course, how we provide service for those customers, how we read the customer, and what the customer is looking for. So in every way, if we've got any kind of segmentation of the market, and of course we know now that marketing is being done in more segmented ways all the time, rather than the way it used to be which is you send one message out to the entire marketplace.

ROSSWe've now got most organizations who are kind of ahead of that who are saying well, here, we're sending out one message that these folks can resonate with, and another one that these folks can resonate with, whether that's multicultural marketing, or marketing in various formats. And so there's no question that's a place where folks of all different generations can contribute.

NNAMDIYou and I, we talk a good game about these things, but do we actually practice it in our own professional lives. Give me an example of somebody, say a millennial who works for you, who actually called you out on something.

ROSSI can give you one really clearly. We had a staff meeting last week, and we have a terrific person on our staff, a young woman named Kaitlyn Saunders who is of that generation, and Kaitlyn is trained in project management and has taken on as project manager in our team, and our staff has been growing, and so we're instituting more structures than we've ever had in the past. And we were at a staff meeting and Kaitlyn says, well, you know, we're talking about some of these structures we're putting in place, and she says, well, something I have to say, and she says -- she says, we're putting these structures in place, but it feels like you kind of do them when you feel like it, but don't do them when you don't.

NNAMDIYes.

ROSSAnd she was absolutely a hundred percent right because I'm sort of used to running all the time and doing -- and it was -- and what it allowed me to see is how much my doing that impacts the staff and impacts everybody else, and more importantly, impacts how the things that I'm doing make those things important or not important. If I cast something out, then it becomes inherently less important if I don't do it as the founder of the company.

ROSSAnd so I was so proud of her for doing it, and so happy that she was able to give the feedback, but I think that more importantly there's a real value in being able to have those relationships, and she did is completely respectfully. She did it in a way that didn't in any way dishonor me or dismiss me or disrespect me. She was just giving me clean feedback about something that impacted her and other people, and I think that's the kind of relationship we want to have with anybody on our staff.

ROSSBut particularly sometimes the newer people and the younger people on staff are people who see things from a different point of view that we may not be seeing.

NNAMDIIndeed. Sometimes I will request a specific guest for a topic on this broadcast and then one of the younger producers will come up with a completely different guest, and I'll say, but what happened to the guest that I recommended, and then they will provide me with evidence that the guest that they found was indeed better than the guest that I had thought of myself. It's something that I admit to only reluctantly of course. Here is Allison in Vienna, Va. Allison, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

ALLISONHello. Thank you for taking my call. I am also 60 years old, but I started out in business in the technology field back in the early '70s, and I took technology and computing in college. So I always felt that I was in on a very, very new sort of development as it affected the business world. And I progressed through a career and just retired as a senior manager, and I saw all the changes and how it affected the workplace, including as women, I think that the area of technology and computer sciences really was the first industry that allowed women to really develop.

ALLISONIt was sort of gender blind, color blind, if you knew what you were doing, that's all that mattered. You didn't have that same sort of political aspect of, you know, you have to be from the right schools, or you have to have certain informal structures and contacts already to get ahead in the business. In technology it's sort of what you see is what you get, and they praised and they rewarded people with an ability that they really needed at the time. And business has now changed, and I think for the better, as a result of the technology, and the young people who have grown up in that have, you know, such a wonderful array of tools at their disposal in order to really make it in the world today.

ALLISONOne of the things that I found as a senior manager, however, was that we often would have young people with wonderful ideas, but they wouldn't follow through with them, and that's an area where I felt if you have a great idea, you're going to have to do some homework. You're going to have to present it to me in terms of why we should do it and what it's going get us. And I would -- I would feel as though, oh, well, wait a minute, you know. I think it's a great idea, but I don't want to have to, you know, spend three months trying to prove it.

NNAMDIInteresting question, do millennials get a bad rap, Howard? This is a generation that was reared to crave affirmation and compliments, the generation where everyone got a trophy in little league, and what Allison seems to be suggesting is that sometimes young people from that generation feel -- well, simply coming up with an idea is enough. Praise me for that, don't ask me to develop it any farther.

ROSSWell, I think that -- first of all, I think that almost all new young generations get a bad rap. I mean, you know, we were accused of things in the '60s, and before that, the beat generation was accused of things. I mean, we could generation after generation, usually those new young newfangled kids are a problem. I think that there's -- that's sort of the mindset of change that occurs. I do think though that there's another piece to this that Allison's speaking to, and that is that this is not a one-way learning curve. I think that there are ways that people in the millennial generation can learn to be more effective in getting their ideas across.

ROSSAs a matter of fact, Kaitlyn, along with Bobby Joe Smith and (unintelligible) and a couple of other folks on our team are working right now on a millennial leadership project where they're developing a training program to help millennials get ahead by learning how to be more efficacious in how they work through organizations, how they sell their ideas, and how they can relate to people.

ROSSI mean, I think we need to do that work as well. But it's, you know, it's all about meeting people where they are and understanding each other across this bridge, as is the case in any difference. I mean, I think the key is for those of us from different generations to be able to before we start judging each other, to start and really understand where people are coming from, to listen to them, to ask questions, to find out what's important to them, and from that place we can have a better understanding of a way to work together.

NNAMDIAllison, thank you very much for your call. You may have described Terrance in Northeast Washington. Terrance, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

TERRANCEYeah, hi. I guess you could call me a millennial in the architecture field, where I'm kind of a new employee who's focusing a lot in helping out the firm with a new building technology software that really is like streamlining the whole building process. I think a really interesting dynamic with the whole tech help and generational aid is coming in where I am such an important tool to the firm with my knowledge of this program, but at the same, time, I would never, with my experience, be able to put a building together with all I know in the program, simply because I don't know about the field.

TERRANCESo what I'm finding is that there's this really neat kind of trade of information going where I can help someone do something that in the field I'm not really certain how to do, but since I know how to do it in the program, I'm able to get that information, use it to my advantage to kind of gain this experience, and at the same time help them to streamline their building process.

NNAMDIAre you also teaching people older than yourself the program?

TERRANCERight. That's the thing. It's basically me who is kind of bopping around desk to desk giving, you know, tips and pointers and shortcuts everywhere, you know, with this older generation who is still kind of moving over to the new program, you know, really...

NNAMDIWell, I get you. Allow me to ask Howard. These different kinds of expertises can also be extremely intimidating, and a lot of professionals are very reluctant to admit that they either don't know something or need help.

ROSSWell, yeah. I mean, you look at what Terrance is talking about, you look at -- take architecture for example. You've got somebody who's made it a career because they were a brilliant, you know, designer, you know, and they could do graphic design really beautifully, and, you know, they got good grades when they were in high school in graphic design, and, you know, moved up and...

NNAMDIDid all those difficult design classes in college.

ROSSThey do it -- they lay the paper out on the table and all that's beautiful and we're there. It's like John Henry, you know, the story of John Henry, you know..

NNAMDIMm-hmm.

ROSS...where he's at the machine or the hammer. I think that -- and so this, on one hand, offers huge possibilities, but once again, if we're not aware of ourselves, and where our reaction is coming from, if we're not watching our conscious decision versus our unconscious decisions, what can happen is, I look at this machine that Terrance is using over there and it looks kind of cool, but I don't have a clue how it works, and so what the mind says is, oh, I don't need that anyway.

ROSSI made it this way using my stuff, and so then, once again, Terrance in this case, having that expertise, if I'm in that place of insecurity about it, becomes a threat to me rather than a help to me. On the other hand, if the relationship is built strongly so that there's an honoring of both, as he's expressing, you know, yes, I may know this technology, but you can help me actually use it effectively, then what you see is that synergy that happens when the two come together.

NNAMDITerrance, it seems like you're experiencing that synergy. Are you getting any pushback at all from some of the older employees?

TERRANCESorry, are you saying am I getting any...

NNAMDIPushback, any resistance?

TERRANCEAny what? Sorry.

NNAMDIAny resistance to teaching them the program.

TERRANCENo. I think with the -- what's happening is that it's an industry-wide shift. So we really get the advantage coming out of school with the knowledge of this technology, whereas it's the older employees who are kind of, you know, there is a little bit of resistance because the whole field is kind of starting to shift to this more streamlined technique, and, you know, you got a lot of people saying, you know, I could just trace this, draw it out, you know.

ROSSRight.

TERRANCEYou don't have to really take the time to put the information in correctly. We can eyeball it. But at the same time, when we take the time to, you know, use these little techniques that I can bring to the table, it really helps the field a lot, and...

NNAMDIThank you so much -- thank you so much, Terrance. We're running out of time. You only have about 30 seconds.

ROSSOkay, great. Just a quick comment. I think what Terrance is also pointing to is that a lot of this happens -- it's where are we in the process. So when we're early adopters when we have new technology, for example, coming in, it looks like something that kid over there can do. I don't need to worry about it. When we've reached a point, what he's talking about is happening in architecture where we've passed the tipping point and now that becomes mainstream technology, then you have a very different kind of resistance to it. Usually that means people need to get up to speed if they're going to stick around.

NNAMDIHoward Ross is a business coach and diversity consultant. His firm is Cook Ross. He's author of the book "Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose, and Performance." Howard, always a pleasure.

ROSSYes, indeed Kojo. Thank you.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.