Are the younger and older able to come together?
Cats: This Week's Guests and Topics|There are quite a few matters of diversity and, as we know, not all center around race.
One of the big battles of the day centers around age. We hear many stories of the ongoing conflict between the younger and older generations. On job sites, many older supervisors talk about the difficulty in getting younger employees to be diligent and, otherwise, trustworthy. Many younger employees talk about the difficulty in communicating with older adults. In the classrooms, instructors have a tough time getting younger students to stay away from the cell phones during class and many of us have heard and/or read about the conflict that exists between the younger and older generations within our nation’s great NAACP.
Yet, with all of this facing us, we can look at some success stories, some ongoing and one that is recent, and may be continuous in nature. First, the ongoing. What about the many school bands (on all grade levels) across the country wherein older band instructors and younger students develop beautiful relationships despite the age differences? How about the many sports teams (again, on all grade levels) that involve relationships between older and younger generations where mutual respect and admiration are typical? Secondly, consider the awesome victory that President Barack Obama won November 4, 2008, partly because people of various age groups had similar hopes, saw the same person as embodying the traits needed to have the hopes fulfilled and worked together to get him elected.
These instances, some of which are in front of us year in and year out, the latter, the presidential campaign, possibly being another example of people working together for years to come despite differences, in this case, age, show clearly that we can come together and embrace one another despite age differences. What are the keys to repeating these successes in the work place…?
