Tools for Intergenerational Communication: Welcome to the 3rd Conversation

Megan Gerhardt • July 11, 2024

Need a practical way to improve your generational communication in the workplace? Let me introduce one of my favorite tools: The 3rd Conversation.

Here is how to use my 3rd Conversation tool to improve intergenerational communications. This involves using some of the Gentelligence® Power Questions (if you don’t have these, you can add your email here and they will automatically be sent to you) and the 4 Gentelligence ®Practices as well (here’s a quick clip from one of my webinars if you need a refresher on those practices):

Let’s take a recent example from my own leadership experience. I sent my team (composed of primarily twenty-somethings, mainly Gen Z) what I felt was a clear and direct email sharing information and asking for a response. After several days, very few of my team members responded with what I needed.

Gentelligence® Practice #1: Identifying Assumptions and #2: Adjusting the Lens were critical to use here.

My initial assumption was that my team hadn’t prioritized my request and was being disrespectful, leading to resentment and frustration on my part.

1st Conversation (taking place in our team group text as I know they respond to that): “

Hello, team–I sent an important email several days ago, and very few people have responded with the information I needed. Can you please send what was requested by the end of today, and can you also please help me understand why there were so few responses?”

In this case, I did receive the info I needed by the end of that day. One or two people responded to the text, apologizing and saying, “I’m sorry, I haven’t checked my email in several days; I’ll do it now!” This alone was eye-opening. As someone who has a norm of checking my work email at least once an hour, it was unthinkable to me that someone could go several DAYS without checking it.

Were they maliciously avoiding their email in an effort to thwart our productivity? Most likely not; that goes against everything I know about my team members. Instead, as digital natives, they have many communication channels they use. In our case, my team didn’t view email as a priority or a preferred way to communicate, preferring faster and more informal channels. When they did check their email, there were so many messages stacked up that some fell through the cracks. Using that Gentelligence® Power Question (can you help me understand?) resulted in some meaningful learning for me about their communication norms and habits.

2nd Conversation:

“Fascinating, I check my email so often (at least once an hour) that it seems unthinkable to me that others could go days without doing so. I assumed you all checked email regularly, and I tend to use it for more formal and important requests. When I don’t get a response, I get pretty frustrated, and in this case, it ended up almost causing us to miss an important deadline because I didn’t have the information I needed from all of you.”

The second conversation is such an important one, mainly because there is often a presumption that improving generational dynamics means one generation is somehow forced to adjust to the norm of another, whether that is older people feeling pressure to forgo existing ways of working or communicating to placate the youngest generations, or younger generations submitting to the way things have always been done due to organizational policies or norms that may or may not still be effective. Neither of these is Gentelligent. This is why we need the Third Conversation.

3rd Conversation:

This is where we bring in Gentelligence® Practices #3 (Strengthen Trust) and #4 (Expanding the Pie). Now that we have learned more about where all generations involved are coming from in this communication dilemma, we can move forward with a smarter intergenerational conversation about where to go next. The key element of the 3rd conversation is to remember (or reinforce) that everyone is on the same “side”, working toward the same mission as a team. Center that as the beginning of the third conversation.

Here’s a script to start with:

Me (age 47, avid email user, would like everyone to respond to my requests in a timely manner): “I think we’ve uncovered some important insights on the way we use different communication channels. Can we agree that we need to come up with a clear strategy for our future communications that ensures we all see the messages and are responding in a timeframe that allows us to meet our mission?”

Team: “Yes!” (let’s just pretend the team is amazingly agreeable and rationale)

Me: “Great. Given that is our shared goal, I’d love to hear how you think we should approach this. I have some thoughts, but I am open to your suggestions. You all seem to prefer channels other than email. Can you help me understand why you prefer those?”

(Note: “How would you approach this?” is a Gentelligence® Power Question designed to help Expand the Pie, and then we see that ever-handy “Can you help me understand…? surface again).

Team: Shares the benefits of Slack or GroupMe over email (e.g. speed).

Me: “Interesting. I’ve struggled using Slack, it’s not intuitive to me. Would one of you be willing to sit down with me for 20 minutes and walk me through some of the things I’m not enjoying? Maybe I just need more practice with it.” (Note: this takes some confidence as a leader to be vulnerable about places we may need to learn or upskill)

Team: (feels respected and valued for their unique expertise, happy to be heard and allowed input) “Yes, of course.”

Me: “Okay, how about this: after I have some additional training, our team will exclusively use Slack for 30 days for all communications. Let’s meet in a month to debrief and see how it’s going. If I still have concerns, I will ask that you then be willing to try a different approach until we find one that works for all of us.”

Give it a Try

That’s just an example, but there are all kinds of important team and leadership dynamics taking place under that simple conversation: mutual respect, vulnerability, increasing engagement, and openness to a learning/growth mindset. Slack might be a disaster and I might still really hate it (I do hate Slack), but I’m willing to admit I may just not be used to it or have taken the time to explore it’s features (note: this is not suggesting a lack of tech-savvy from older generations, see my CNN article on how different ages rely on different kinds of intelligence).

Give the 3rd Conversation a try. I’d love to hear how it goes!

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Why Generation A Might Just Be the...Analog Generation

By Megan Gerhardt • February 13, 2026

It has been said that everything old becomes new again on a long enough timeline. There's a fascinating generational trend I've been seeing among younger Gen Zs and the oldest of Gen A (Note: I am not calling that generation Gen Alpha, because that name is nonsensical and outdated already, and that generation is barely in their teens. More on that soon)--a craving for low-tech, no-tech, screen-free experiences. Gentelligence focuses primarily on generational dynamics in the workplace, and I do predict this will have implications for where and how these generations want to work. Despite the chaos surrounding back-to-office policies and experiments, our youngest members of the workplace (and our soon-to-be newest employees) are showing signs that they value time away from screens. I first noticed this last year among my own students, who were overwhelmingly setting change goals in my change management class focused on reducing screen time. Versions included "cleaning up my sleep routine" (putting the phone away at least 30 minutes before bed, eliminating blue light before bed, reading physical books), "reduce my weekly screentime", "stop doomscrolling", and "impose limits on TikTok and Instagram time". It was a sign that it was no longer just their parents or older generations who wanted them off their phones; they wanted themselves off their phones, too. For a wave of young people raised in an era of tech overload, it seems we have reached the point of maximum saturation, and they are pushing back. As one of my students astutely mentioned to me last year, "There are no boundaries now...our generation is just trying to figure out how to put some of them back." I've doubled down on the need for this in my teaching, having conversations with students about how to ethically use AI as a thought-partner while balancing protected time for our most scarce resource these days: deep thinking and connection. It was this need, coupled with the overwhelming research showing the improved retention and learning that occurs when students handwrite their notes and put away their laptops in class, that led me to declare our classroom a laptop and phone-free zone. We still use slides to guide conversations, but there are no longer 30 laptop screens popped up in front of them, distracting even those who are trying hard to focus. Surprisingly, I've had very little pushback. I was concerned they would feel like I was forcing them backwards, but collectively we seem to be exhaling. The discussions have never been better. As our younger Gen Zs reach young adulthood and our oldest Gen As become teenagers, they are emerging from a kind of social experiment they entered unwittingly — a life that has never known a world without constant screens. They are realizing how different they feel when they unplug. Gen Z and Gen A even have a term for this: touching grass. That's right, when the default is constant tech immersion, they had to come up with a phrase to represent the intentional effort it takes to step away. Whenever possible, I try to engage in some real-time generational anthropology, just to explore my hunches and (when possible) debunk stereotypes. Gentelligence is all about being curious rather than judgmental, and I am most definitely curious about these early signs that our younger generations are seeking a better balance between their tech and non-tech worlds. Last month, I was in Chicago for a keynote and found myself in a trendy food hall over lunch. There were little shops surrounding the food hall, including one of my all-time weaknesses, a stationery store . Pens! Journals! Paper! Notebooks! (I, too, love the analog. After indulging myself in a number of vital paper goods, I was tucking into a sandwich in the food hall and saw a (literally) noteworthy sight: a table of early 20-somethings, gathering on their lunch hour and...writing in their journals. Multi-colored pens, stamps, and conversation were plentiful. There was not a phone in sight. That in and of itself was remarkable. It turns out that stationary stores are experiencing a resurgence . Knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and sourdough baking are also all having a moment. Physical books ( and bookstores! ) are making a comeback. A few weeks later, I was at another event, this time a very trendy commercial interior design conference, where we were discussing ways to design spaces that promote intergenerational interactions (yes, it was as cool as you might be thinking). I saw a young designer at the cocktail hour and walked over to introduce myself. I asked if I could pick her brain on something, as I figured it was part of her JOB to be up on the latest trends. I asked her whether she was feeling a personal pull to use less tech, or if this was something she had seen among her peers. That's when she told me about Analog Bags . (I won't go down that rabbit hole here, but feel free to explore the link and know that I am absolutely creating my own Analog Bag as we speak). At that same design conference, a book was recommended to me: Megatrends by John Naisbett. The gentleman who suggested it said it changed his life. He thought I would find it interesting, given my interest in generational trends, behavioral cycles, and, of course, my classes in change management. I ordered it as soon as I got back to my hotel room (fun fact: it was published in 1982, so you'll have to find a vintage copy!). I've been devouring it, and among the many eye-opening insights was the observation that " the more 'High Tech' we become, the more we need 'High Touch.” Now, Naisbett was referring to the high-tech era of the early 1980s, when personal computers were entering the scene, but the relevance of the comment almost 45 years later, in the age of AI, was not lost on me. Those who have lived their entire lives as products of high-tech are now blazing the trail to meet their need for high touch. Let this be my formal declaration (for whatever it's worth) that I predict our youngest generations will lead us back to a balance between tech and high-touch: they are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, and their message is clear. They are living, breathing embodiments of a life flooded with endless tech, fake news, constant connectivity, dopamine hits, and input dictated by algorithms, and it appears they may have had enough.