We Don’t Need No Education: How the Boomers Can Pass On What They’ve Learned

Megan Gerhardt • April 23, 2023

How the Boomers Can Pass On What They’ve Learned

As retirement approaches, many older employees may feel that their knowledge and insights are not valued by younger generations. However, in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing work environment, it is crucial to embrace the transfer knowledge across generations to avoid losing valuable organizational experience

“I’m 67 and I’m going to retire soon. I have so much to teach, but I don’t think anyone wants to learn from me.”

Last month I was doing a webinar for over 300 people. The moderator encouraged the audience to use the chat function, and the comments and questions were flying by throughout the session. I’m usually sharing slides so I don’t always see all the conversations, but on this day I happened to stop sharing in time to see the above quote pop up in the window.

I stopped the presentation.

He brought up an important point: are we interested in learning from those older than us, or is generational tension standing in our way?

What Will They Take When They Leave?

If all of our Baby Boomer employees retired tomorrow, does anyone know what they know? Have they/ will they transfer their knowledge across generations, or will they leave a big gap in our organizational knowledge & wisdom when they go? Chances are, most of our Boomers haven’t passed down their experience or insights to those who will succeed them. According to a recent survey shared by PBS,

57 percent of boomers have shared half or less of the knowledge needed to perform their job responsibilities to a younger generation with those who will assume them after they retire
21 percent have shared none of their knowledge
Only 18 percent have shared all of their knowledge

As we wrote in Gentelligence:

“Baby Boomers are now eligible to retire at a rate of ten thousand employees per day. This means vast

amounts of organizational experience stands to be lost if leaders do not encourage the passing down and transfer of certain kinds of vital

knowledge. Once it is gone, it cannot be replaced. Recognizing the need for generationally positive atmospheres in the workplace is also

needed for younger workers to be willing and interested in transferring their unique knowledge, as well as for them to be open to learning

what older generations have to teach.”

Gentelligence: The Revolutionary Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce

41 Million Strong: (That’s Why They’re Called The Baby Boomers).

As of 2022, one in four employees were members of the Baby Boomer generation. That’s 41 million people, ranging from 59 to 77 years old this year, still very capable of transferring knowledge across generations. By 2031, every Baby Boomer will be age 66, eligible for full retirement (Fun fact: Age 66 is the full retirement age for most Baby Boomers, other than the very youngest. According to the SSA.gov: “the full retirement age is 66 if you were born from 1943 to 1954. The full retirement age increases gradually if you were born from 1955 to 1960 until it reaches 67. For anyone born 1960 or later, full retirement benefits are payable at age 67”).

That means at any moment, significant parts of your workforce might choose to retire, most likely without sharing all the insights they’ve spent the last four to five decades accumulating.

Many Boomers aren’t interested in retiring at 66 or for many years after, as people are both living longer and needing to financially remain in the workplace longer than prior generations. This means that thankfully, we might still have time to do better when it comes to transferring knowledge from many employees in this generation.

That brings us back to where we started. That being the 67-year-old man dropping his comment in the chat: “But no one is interested in learning from me.”

We can change that with a little Gentelligence. When I stopped the presentation to address that comment, I asked the gentleman how often he shows interest in learning from those younger than he is. It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s really a core tenant of any effective leadership: to get respect, you must give respect. To teach someone else, you must also be willing to learn from them.

Collaboration Over Competition.

And for today’s younger generations, the need for a voice is stronger than ever before.

Rapid change means that younger generations do possess unique expertise and different perspectives than older ones. However, it is often overlooked or discounted.

It’s hard to let go of the notion that those that have been at the organization the longest always know best.

It’s even harder to embrace that unique knowledge from one generation that doesn’t threaten the unique knowledge and wisdom of another. But Gentelligence tells us that generations need to stop viewing themselves in competition, and instead embrace mutual learning. Younger generations having valuable input doesn’t threaten the importance of what older generations know or vice versa. This will foster the ability to transfer knowledge across generations.

No One Wants a Lecture.

I hear a common theme from younger employees. The lessons being passed down to them from their older colleagues tend to sound like a lecture. Oftentimes, one that lacks understanding of the context and environment that young people are having to navigate today.

At a recent Gentelligence workshop, a participant shared that the person who had been assigned as his mentor seemed well-intentioned. However, the advice he was giving lacked relevance to the challenges the participant was experiencing on a daily basis.

He expressed frustration that the “wisdom” being passed on was one-way. His mentor didn’t seem interested in whether his advice resonated. Nor did he show interest in how to adapt it to the way the world of work had evolved and changed. As a result, he wasn’t interested in listening to that guidance.

You Go First.

I had some advice for that gentleman. It was to be proactive in seeking the perspectives of his younger colleagues. What I mean by that is to first ask what they thought and what they believed about the topic they are hoping to teach others about. That alone is valuable, as I have done it a hundred times myself with my students (age 18-22). I always learn something new and interesting.

For example, some wisdom and advice about building a meaningful career is timeless.

But other pieces of insight may no longer work so well in a post-pandemic world of work.

Asking your younger colleagues what their biggest challenges are in building their career, or what is harder than they anticipated can be a great segway into sharing valuable advice. This can also reveal that some strategies that worked for you might not work so well for someone today. My research on this topic shows that younger generations don’t simply want information. They have more of that than they can process.

They want to understand how that information is relevant to them today. Or how to use it in service of what is most important to them personally.

The simple act of reaching out and first asking those younger for their input will pay great returns. Once you’ve asked someone to share what they know, they are much more interested in learning what you know. And that is how you transfer knowledge across generations.

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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.