Which Generation Killed Pantyhose? The Evolution of Professionalism

Megan Gerhardt • May 19, 2026

And where do we say thank you?

I'm doing the opening keynote address at a big conference in Georgia, and not a single woman here is wearing pantyhose. This is a joyous observation. Twenty years ago, this would not have been the case. Despite the sweltering southern heat, many of us would have conformed to the nylon norm, fearing judgment if we dared show up to a professional event with bare legs. This morning, Very Professional People are walking around in business casual, and as far as I can tell, everyone is still able to do their jobs at the highest level, even without nylons.

All of this raises a timely and important generational question: who decides what passes as "professionalism", and what happens when this evolves? I've had this question come up multiple times in the last few months:

It's the focus of an upcoming workshop series I was asked to do for a major insurance company: helping Gen Zs navigate professionalism and etiquette "from campus to career".
At a national interior designer conference, where it was the opening question on a multigenerational panel ("Are shorts ever acceptable in the office? Who decides?")
In a conversation with my teenage niece, who asked where her phone should go on the table during a job interview.
At my bookclub, where a friend lamented that her otherwise great intern had worn a hoodie to a client site visit

It's the subject of much concern for managers, struggling to onboard their new hires and broach the subject of what it means to be professional. Here's our generational conversation for today: what does it mean, and who gets to decide?

Professionalism is not only subjective, but it's also ever evolving. If we were to pull out an Emily Post from 50 years ago, none of us would likely please Emily (Ms. Post! I should be calling her Ms. Post! See? ) with our current workplace decorum. My dad is a BIG Emily Post fan, so much so that he gifted all of his grandchildren with the newest edition for Christmas last year. (Have they been opened? Does Ms. Post have a YouTube channel? That might have been a better strategy).

Out of curiosity, I decided to go searching for the norms of professional etiquette not from the days of yore, but from the 1980s. The 80s were arguably a fascinating time. I spanned age 3 to age 13 during that decade, so my primary frame of reference for 80s office etiquette was rooted primarily in movies (Working Girl! 9 to 5!). However, Ebay did not disappoint, and I snagged a vintage copy of a professional etiquette book from 1986. This proved to be a goldmine glimpse into what used to be FAQs around office decorum:

Our office manager is unwed and pregnant. What should we do?
If your client offers you hard drugs at a work party, is it rude to say no? (Is there a more 80s question than this? I think not)

I could go on, but I believe I have made my point.

Our generational norms come with us into the workplace. Whether it's the practice of calling those in authority by their formal names (one of my first Gentelligence workshops 15 years ago occurred at a credit union where the manager was beside himself because his youngest employees kept calling him by his first name, which he had never invited them to do), having your phone out at a meeting, wearing headphones at your desk, or any number of other possible actions that can be perceived as "unprofessional", the question of who decides is one for the ages.

Realistically, the power structure of any organization will determine the formal rules, the ones that show up in the employee handbook. Whether we can wear jeans to the office (are yoga pants really pants? Discuss...) or take personal calls during work hours is usually up to those officially in charge. But informal norms usually evolve faster, shifting what we all understand we can actually do here, rather than what is written in the rules. Those kinds of norms are formed by our peers and co-workers, and it is these people who have the strongest impact on our behavior. But what happens when our colleagues span four (or five!) generations? We all have differing yet valid points of view of what professionalism means, and they all can show up in the same office.

This is where we need to Adjust our Lens (Gentelligence practice #2) to shift from my norms or your norms and instead widen our frame to consider what our organizational norms need to be, given the work we are doing and the time we are living in. When a professionalism standard is being questioned, consider whether its a load-bearing wall in your house. (Sidenote: This metaphor is at the center of my new book, so I currently cannot get enough of it). Your "walls" are your current practices and processes. Some need to stay because they are holding the place up. Others may be ready for disruption. To explore whether your professional standards are load-bearing by asking the following questions:

Is it still central to accomplishing your mission? If so, why?
What problem was this standard designed to solve? Does that problem still exist?
Have alternative approaches emerged that might address the challenge equally well?
Is this standard being followed by the majority of people, or have most people found a way around it?
What would happen if we took that wall down? Do people have different opinions on this depending on their age, generation, or career stage?

I can't tell you what the load-bearing walls are in your organization, but it's something you need to explore, and the conversation needs to include all voices. Even if ultimately the final decision is made by those with formal power, just including everyone in the conversation can help people across ages and careers stages better understand why we hold certain practices as important, and can reveal walls that are really no longer serving anyone and are ready to come down.

Take the hoodie example. In that case, my friend asked her intern why he thought a hoodie was an appropriate wardrobe choice for the client site visit. He explained that the employees at the site all dressed casually, and he thought it made sense to dress for that environment to make the client more comfortable with his presence. His supervisor (my friend) had a different take: the client hired them for professional advising services, and they needed to dress like they knew what they were doing. The sharing of perspectives allowed them both to Identify their Assumptions (Gentelligence practice # 1) and Adjust their Lens (Gentelligence practice #2) and see the validity of both points of view. The intern had not equated his dress with perceptions of his competence. The manager had assumed her intern hadn't been thinking at all, rather than seeing his concern about connecting with the client and making them feel comfortable. Regardless of the outcome (in this case, she told him the company currently required formal dress, even at site visits, but that she would raise the issue with her management team), the conversation and perspective taking was key for Strengthening Trust (Gentelligence practice #3). Her intern learned that the professionalism standards were rooted in important organizational outcomes, and his manager realized that their insistence on formal dress might be perceived even by their clients as too stuffy and non-relatable.

Tell me--what are the professionalism issues sparking the most debate across generations in your workplace?

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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.