How to Get Along When Every Generation Thinks Differently

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:00)
For the first time in history, we are living in a society with seven different generations who don't seem to see eye to eye who here has experienced the Gen Z stare.

**Demetrius** (0:11)
It takes us a second to kind of maybe buffer and kind of...

**Jean Twenge** (0:16)
Like, your brain is doing this. It's the little circle.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:18)
Like loading, literally loading.

**Melani Sanders** (0:20)
We call it brain fold.

**Demetrius** (0:22)
Yeah.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:23)
On the flip side of Gen Z, I hear that the boomers are partying. They're having sex. They're smoking a lot of pot.

**Jean Twenge** (0:31)
The boomers had free love in the 1960s, and now they have free love in their 60s.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:37)
We, as the older generation, aren't prepared for a generation that actually grew up in this technological age of being on their phones. They don't know how to connect.

**Jean Twenge** (0:48)
They're not out playing with their friends. They're not solving problems on their own, developing that resilience and toughness.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:55)
I had one of my girls who started working as an architect. She's calling me about work-life balance. And I'm like, what the hell?

**Jean Twenge** (1:03)
This is by far the biggest generational difference in work attitudes.

**Oprah Winfrey** (1:06)
If one generation has expectations, the other generation doesn't care. How do we ever find middle ground?
Hi, everyone. I am delighted to be here with you on the Oprah Podcast. For the first time in history, did you all know this? We are living in a society with seven different generations. Generations who don't seem to see eye to eye or even speak the same language sometimes. And how is that showing up in our workplace, in your school or within your own family? I wanted to ask the audience, what do you all think are the stereotypes about your own generation or other generations? So Tanya, you're a millennial, which is ages 30 to 45 now. Y'all are getting older.
Y'all are getting older. What do you want to say?

**Tanya** (2:02)
It frustrates me with Gen Z. I think their communication style is just a completely different style. It kind of lacks respect sometimes, whereas I feel like, millennials, we take a bit more care and respect in how we communicate.

**Oprah Winfrey** (2:17)
Okay. So you think millennials are more careful in their respect? Okay. Thank you. I need a boomer now.
Ages 62 to 80, that's my group, Brenda.

**Brenda** (2:30)
Hi. I'm an educator, and one thing that I see or several things that I see that are missing from generations because I've been doing this for a while, is work ethic, accountability, and toughness.
So the type of toughness that I grew up with or accountability that led to toughness, I don't see it. I have a lot of students who don't meet timelines and...

**Oprah Winfrey** (2:59)
Don't respect timelines.

**Brenda** (3:00)
They don't respect timelines. Yeah. And they have a lot of excuses for why they can't get things done.
And they show up whenever they want to to class. And that's a problem. And so... and the work ethic, they don't always give their best work when I know that they can do better. So, definitely.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:23)
Okay. I see a lot of Gen Zers here. Hello. Thank you all. Ages... that's ages 14 to 29 Madeline, your thoughts.

**Madeline** (3:31)
With Gen Z personally, I think that there was two events that really impacted how we kind of changed our behavior and kind of influenced how we moved forward. And I think a lot of technology advancements and COVID really impacted the majority of people of my generation. And we kind of got left in this space where we weren't getting a lot of guidance from other generations, because I don't think the older generations knew how to teach us how to navigate these things, because it was the first time anyone was experiencing it. But I really think it did impact and change my generation, because I think we are associated with a lot of negative stereotypes. But I think we were kind of expected to go through these things without knowing anything, and we're expected to know everything.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:11)
Okay, so there's a lack of leadership, you say. What about what Tanya said earlier? Do you think that there is a problem in the level of respect?

**Madeline** (4:18)
I think there's a divide in Gen Z. I think there's a lot of people who do lack respect, but I think there's also a big part of my generation who does have that respect. I think that kind of comes down to a lot of external factors, but I do notice that there is a big divide in my generation with how we act and how we speak and how we behave. Okay.