Out of Respect: Generational Differences Captured in One Sentence

I love my students. Almost without exception, they are smart, energetic, and endlessly fascinating. The work world they are getting ready to enter is changing faster than we can prepare them for it. It's mind-boggling: AI is altering how they apply for jobs, the jobs that will exist, and how work is done; the post-pandemic workplace is still entirely up in arms about where we should work and why. No one has any idea what is ahead, and these young people are being dropped headfirst, ready or not.

Last year, I received an email from one of these students. I allow students to miss three regular classes during the semester without penalty, as long as they stay up to date with their work and are accountable for the content they miss. This particular student was simply letting me know she would be missing our next class, but it was the phrasing of one part of her message that stopped me in my tracks:

"I've really been struggling with my mental health lately, my stress level is too high and my anxiety is awful right now. So out of respect for you and my classmates, I will not be coming to class tomorrow."

Read that again. She was struggling, and I have found that my Gen Z students are more open about these struggles than prior generations of students have been (we are currently writing up a fascinating research project about this; more on that soon), but that was not the notable part.

Out of respect...she was staying home.

As a Gen Xer, I had to read that sentence twice. Later that day, I had a meeting with my research team (composed of a Gen Z, myself, and two Baby Boomers), and I read it to them (without a name attached, of course). I asked for their initial reaction to the message.

My Gen Z colleague nodded. "That tracks. You wouldn't go to class or work if you were physically not feeling well, the same holds if mentally you aren't doing well. You don't want to bring that around other people and expose them to it."

My Baby Boomer colleagues simply looked a bit...confused. "Read that again?" I did: "Out of respect for you and my classmates, I will be staying home from class tomorrow."

"But...out of respect for others, you GO to work. You don't stay home!" one of them replied.

"Well, actually, it appears that out of respect, you go to work. Out of respect, she stays home..." I replied.

This, folks, is IT. This is the crux of Gentelligence, wrapped up in one amazing sentence.

This is FASCINATING.

Let's dissect this a bit further. Gentelligence is, at its core, all about understanding why we see generational shifts in these kinds of norms. 

In this example, the person in question wants to be respectful. This flies in the face of those shallow and awful presumptions that entire generations are lazy or entitled or have no work ethic. The value or need being expressed is a desire to be Respectful. Where the generational difference (and tension) lies is that we have learned very different norms about what that means and how best to fulfill that need.

My example above could be an anomaly. I only asked 4 other people for their reaction. But since then, our research team has surveyed almost 800 participants across generations to get their reaction to this statement (If you are struggling with your mental health, the respectful thing to do is to stay home), and while I don't want to give away the punchline, the pattern holds in a statistically significant way. That study is in progress, and I promise to share it once it's published!

When Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials entered the workplace, the norm was very clear: you are expected to show up. Physically. Your presence is expected at your desk to do The Work. Have the sniffles? Too bad. Feeling feverish? Suck it up. Nauseous? Mind over matter!

And that was the mentality when it came to physical health, something we could clearly capture on a thermometer, strep, or flu test. Rest on your own time, buttercup! Even we slacker Gen Xers, the first to push for more work-life balance, understood the assignment and the clear norms around what is now trendily called "presenteeism". 

The idea that one would stay home because of mental health was, quite honestly, an alien concept. (That's not to say people didn't do it, but if they did, that was not going to be the reported reason).

Enter a global pandemic. I won't take us all through that journey again, but think about the seismic shift that occurred around the norm of showing up at work when you were ill. It simply was not DONE. Our responsibility to be aware of our own health and to protect others' was paramount. In the blink of an eye, the well-entrenched norm that it was fine (or expected) to show up when you were not feeling well made a 180-degree turn.

Gen Z was anywhere from age 8 to 23 when the pandemic occurred. No one wanted to be Typhoid Mary, exposing others knowingly or unknowingly--whether that was being the kid at school who ended up having to name their friends they sat by at lunch when they tested positive for COVID a few days later, or the newest hire who was the reason the office staff had to do contact tracing.  Yes, we all had that experience, but for Gen Z, it happened clearly during their most formative stage of life (roughly ages 5-25). Events that occur during this window tend to have a disproportionate effect on our attitudes and behaviors, often setting the stage for the norms we take with us for the rest of our lives.

Layer onto this the increased importance of mental health during the pandemic, with employers regularly checking in on how their employees were doing, providing mental health days, and focusing efforts on more ways to support well-being. For Gen Z (a cohort already speaking more openly about mental health, likely due in part to increased accommodations in schools and greater awareness due to social media), this only further emphasized the logic of prioritizing one's mental health needs at the same level as one's physical health needs. While employer concern about mental health was a relatively new development for those of us in older generations, it was for many Gen Zs their initial experience with how such a topic was handled in the workplace. In other words, for this generation, it wasn't a "new normal", it was just...normal.

Fast forward five years. This past fall, I came down with some kind of bug. I tested negative for COVID and the flu, but still felt pretty awful. Off I went to teach my classes, despite a nasty cough, ringing ears, and exhaustion. The entrenched generational norm of sucking it up ran deep, so much so I didn't even think about the optics (or reality) of showing up to class being so obviously sick until I started teaching. I could almost feel my students' eyebrows raising with the unspoken question: what was I DOING there if I was sick? Wasn't Zoom invented for such things? Or (shudder the thought) couldn't I have canceled class and stayed in bed? 

The memory of that email from my student came rushing back to me that day. I wanted to be respectful of my students, my employer, and my job, and to me, that meant forgoing my own need for rest and recovery and showing up to teach. To not do so seemed selfish.

Yet that day, through their eyes, I could absolutely see how the reverse could also be true: wasn't it selfish to show up and risk getting them sick? What was more important: the work, or our health?

From there, it's not such a stretch to think about how a generation that has grown up understanding the importance of mental health on the same level as (and connected to) physical health would also see a need to stay home to recover from burnout and stress. Isn't it better to do that once than to keep pushing ahead and risk greater fallout?

Last summer, I spent the day at a top medical school, talking with physicians, residents, and medical students about these exact same questions. This program has developed a "call out program" which allows doctors to call in to have colleagues replace them on shifts if needed. The challenge they were experiencing? Older doctors would use it only as a last resort, waiting until they were literally bleeding on the side of the road. It felt like an imposition on their colleagues: disrespectful and irresponsible, a shirking of their duty. Younger doctors, in contrast, were more regularly using the program, often taking all of the call-out days they were allowed. When asked why, the response was that they saw that as a way to prevent themselves from bleeding out on the side of the road; that taking time to recover or rest when needed was their responsibility, and that coming in to work when they were not fully healthy would be irresponsible.

And therein lies what I believe to be the most fascinating paradox: the same behavior can be seen by different generations in an entirely different way.  Research shows we all share similar intrinsic needs. I want to be respectful and respected, but I may believe that is accomplished in a way that is entirely different from how you do. Neither of us is right or wrong, but a lack of understanding of these different ways of viewing the world is at the heart of the problem we need to solve.

I'd love for you to think more about this: where are you seeing different norms, rooted in the same values? How might improved communication and understanding help us navigate these generational pitfalls in a smarter way?