Generational Divides - Tim Elmore Rerun Part 1
Hi. This is Kim Bastable. And as Simon and I plan and record season four of Racquet Fuel, you will be enjoying replayed episodes from seasons one through three. There's incredible content from our previous episodes, and we want to inspire leaders and really help any tennis player or rackets player to consider a career path in the rackets profession. The content from our previous episodes should not sit on the shelf, so we're happy to provide it for you.
Kim Bastable:Please enjoy this episode recorded last year.
Episode Narration:Welcome to Racquet Fuel, where we launch into great conversations and share powerful tools to help you become a stronger rackets leader. Your hosts are Kim Bastable, a former all American tennis player and now the director of tennis management at the University of Florida, and Simon Gale, the USTA National Campus Director of Racquet Sports. In this episode, we focus on managing our multigenerational workplaces where Racquet staff can span from age 65 to 16. We'll learn how to manage that challenge with doctor Tim Elmore, a best selling author and expert in the field of generational study. Now here's Kim and Simon.
Kim Bastable:Welcome to Racquet Fuel, where we have powerful conversations to inspire strong leaders in the rackets industry. I'm Kim Bastable, director of professional tennis management at the University of Florida, where I run the director of Racquet Sports specialization and certificate program. And my cohost is Simon Gale, director of Racquet Sports at the USTA's National Campus in Lake Nona, Florida. Today, we are very, very honored to have a thought leader, author, and researcher, Tim Elmore, who is founder and CEO of Growing Leaders, a nonprofit organization created to developing emerging leaders. Tim has been in leadership education since 1983, and in just the last ten years, He's spoken to more than half a million leaders of corporations and universities from companies like Chick fil A, Home Depot, Coca Cola, Delta, and he's authored 35 books.
Kim Bastable:He has a wealth of knowledge that we in the Racquet's industry need on leadership and today we're going to discuss the important content of his new book, A New Kind of Diversity. Everyone talks about diversity as gender or race specific, but there are more things to consider and Tim will explain. He does a deep dive into the challenges of age diversity in the workplace, which he says are a challenge that only 8% of the businesses even address. But it's very real, and it's very, very real in the Racquet's world where we have many entry level teaching professionals in their twenties and their leaders, directors of Racquet Sports above them are often 50 or even 60. So we welcome Tim, and, we're looking forward to letting him, share his wealth of knowledge on this diversity challenge.
Kim Bastable:Thank you, Tim, for being with us today. We look forward to this.
Tim Elmore:Thanks, Kim. Great to be with you.
Kim Bastable:So, Simon, let's hear. You've read this book. You've started things out. You've you've put this to to to work on your canvas. What's your takeaway?
Simon Gale:Tim, I have to tell you, I'll be a 100% honest, I don't read enough books but this is one that I think the pressure of having to speak to you today, it forced me to read it. But I really enjoyed it because it really resonated on a lot of levels and I think the ability to read and stop and make notes and think about how this applies to what I do currently, what my fellow directors and leaders are dealing with on a day to day basis as well as on a personal level, I have a millennial so I feel like I'm a little more equipped to be able to have a decent conversation with her and understand where she's coming from as she is about to graduate and enter the workforce. So I think it's a great read, it's an easy read, and I think, you leave with with a lot of great information. So thank you for your contribution.
Tim Elmore:My pleasure. You know, Simon and Kim, I would say, I've gotten into more organizations who have an epiphany, and not it's it's not because I have some great information, but I think most of us don't realize for the first time in modern history, there are seven distinct generations alive right now because people are living longer and actually working longer, and moms are still having babies. We have, you know, the senior generation, the builders, the boomers, the xers, the millennials, gen z, and then the alpha generation. So these are the younger children that we're just now beginning to measure, and I feel like we could be so much better if instead of colliding with each other, we were collaborating and learning and bringing out the best. And so that's the goal of the book is how do we really pull out the strengths of each of these generations?
Tim Elmore:And and here's a phrase I'm using now. We need to turn frustration into fascination with each other. So that's my goal.
Simon Gale:So, Tim, in in you know, you may have already just touched on it, but could you just summarize maybe a little more detail what this new book's about and and kind of where it came from from an inspirational point of view?
Tim Elmore:Yeah. Well, you all, if you're on social media listeners, you probably remember, it was five or six, maybe seven years ago, we started seeing a little war break out on social media. So the boomers, I think, started it with hashtag how to confuse a millennial, and we were making fun of millennials that didn't know how to look up something in a phone book as if they needed to look up something in a phone book. You know? But then the millennials struck back with hashtag okay boomer.
Tim Elmore:Remember this when this made it made its way around the world, really? And then, I mean, we started seeing millennials and Gen Z go after each other. We started seeing hashtag okay Karen, which is big right now. Gen Z's making fun of their Gen X mom who, you know, always asks for the manager at the restaurant and is always intruding on the high school principal to tell him how to run to school. It's actually hilarious if it wasn't so sad.
Tim Elmore:So I began to think, okay, is this something that's real in the workplace, whether whether it's tennis or football or restaurants or whatever? And it is. So age discrimination lawsuits are going up, Simon. I mean, at at WeWork and IBM and Marriott and other places. So anyway, I began to see that when we meet someone that's older or younger, it's easier to build a wall than a bridge.
Tim Elmore:We just say, oh, you're different. I don't wanna work at this. I don't even understand your language, Sunny, you know, kids today, you know. And so I really, really wanna help readers build bridges because I can learn so much from a 24 year old or a 21 year old or whatever. And that's where I'm at right now is I gotta learn from the young and hopefully I've got something to offer to them as well.
Simon Gale:No. I definitely think there's plenty to offer and if you saw my book or your book that I put my little post it notes in, I went through a lot of post it notes, there's a lot of reference to the future.
Tim Elmore:I'm honored, I'm honored. Good.
Simon Gale:Would it be fair to say given today's landscape where you talk about up to seven generations and in the workplace, maybe there's, you know, up to five of those that you're seeing in the workplace, would you would you say that this is one of the most difficult times in history to to be a manager? Yeah.
Tim Elmore:Yeah. I really do. And I and I know there's a lot of history I'm probably missing, but here's why I think so. The term generation gap actually has been around since the nineteen sixties. Life magazine editor John Poppy coined the term, there's a generation gap when the baby boomers were the young whippersnappers growing up, you know, and and those parents didn't get these kids today.
Tim Elmore:Well, back then, think about it, the screens that were in our life were were public. In other words, there was one screen. It was a TV. It was sitting in our living room. We all gathered around the TV and watched I Love Lucy or The Dick Van Dyke Show or whatever.
Tim Elmore:We talked together. We laughed together. We were together. Today, we all have our own screen in our hands, do we not? And I can be in an echo chamber of just my people, my age, with my language, who vote like me, think like me, talk like me, and that's not helping us.
Tim Elmore:We certainly don't get better. We just reaffirm our, I don't know, silo that we're in. So let me tell one quick story that I tell in the book that might be really illustrative of what I'm saying. Simon, you might remember early in the book, I tell the story of Tony. Tony was a college student at Ohio University, and he took a part time job while he was in school at a paint a paint store.
Tim Elmore:It was a major brand that everybody listening would would recognize. While he was there working, he happened to start a TikTok account, and he started videotaping himself, mixing paints, and just doing crazy things with paint. Well, he built a tribe that went viral. He got 1,400,000 followers and 37,000,000 views. And he quickly thought, even though he's just 21 years old, I could I could help this company monetize this.
Tim Elmore:We could use this for marketing. We could reach another million people we're not reaching. So Tony, as a kid, as and I shouldn't say a kid, as a student, puts the slide deck together to make a presentation to the executives. He pitches, would you guys be willing to hear this out? And Tony did not get one person interested in listening, didn't get one set of eyeballs to look at the slide deck.
Tim Elmore:Tony did get something he didn't anticipate. Tony got fired. Right. Because the leaders thought he was doing this on company time, and he was probably stealing the paint from the paint store and probably distracting to the customers. They had all the wrong assumptions, and we do this, don't we?
Tim Elmore:We're us on this line, we're we're veterans here. We've been around a few years. We tend to think the worst, these kids today. And so get this, Tony gets fired. Tony moves to Florida.
Tim Elmore:He now has over 2,000,000 followers, and he started his own paint store. So this is a picture of what's happening. We don't understand the young. They wonder why we don't understand their great ideas, but don't they represent the future? In many ways, they do.
Tim Elmore:I don't like it all. I don't get it all, but so I need to be listening as well as teaching and talking. I need to be a learner and a teacher. And and, Kim, I see you nodding. I you believe this.
Tim Elmore:You're on a campus right now that's all about teaching and learning. So, anyway, I'll stop there, but I just feel like we've got to get this right. We don't have any time to waste. We've got too many people to learn from, and we need to check the stereotypes and and let them teach us.
Kim Bastable:Oh, I love that story. I totally remember that book. When I when you wrote that in the book, I I was just you know, you're just almost stunned. I mean, how could they be that shortsighted? But Yeah.
Kim Bastable:I suppose that's that's not, sadly, I guess, uncommon. They felt threat versus, you know, partnership. But, you know, I think that's what's so interesting. And what you do really well in the book is lay out the different generations. And it's been something to me that I've heard, you know, builders, boomers, x, millennial.
Kim Bastable:There's a little bit of, like, your head goes into spin mode, and you're like, this is overwhelming me. But you laid it out well, and then you explained that the the generations actually really have their tendencies based on life experiences. Maybe they lived through terrorism, or maybe they lived through Vietnam War, or maybe the World War two. And I love the way you lay that out. So, you know, I encourage the listeners to go get a copy of the book because we're not gonna go through each one of those and give it specific because we just don't have time.
Kim Bastable:But what was really telling was your story about NASA and what happened in 1969, which Yeah. I think is the lesson that I wish that we would see going forward. Can you tell that story?
Tim Elmore:Oh, I love this story. Thanks for asking. I was stunned, and I know that's a strong verb, but when I heard this story so everybody remembers that JFK, our president, early on in the sixties made a prediction that we would put a man on the moon. Well, NASA didn't even have the technology to do such a thing, but at that time, NASA was was, you know, in operations, but it it just ignited everyone. Pardon the pun.
Tim Elmore:It just ignited everybody. So they were bringing on some MIT grads who were recently, you know, out of college, but they knew technology. They knew computers. They they were at home. The older guys that had been around there, guys and gals, but mostly guys, you know, said, oh my gosh.
Tim Elmore:We don't get this. So there was the mentor generation that were 45 and older that were pouring into these young 20. But listeners, check this out. The average age of the operators in Houston that were putting a man on the moon was 27 years old. Jack Garman, the guy that actually was the final go instead of no to put Neil Armstrong on the moon, 23 years old.
Tim Elmore:That's a year out of college. But they said the young were able to handle the excitement and the terror all of it at once, and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I see this today. They've got savvy. They are very smart. And so here's what I think we need to do.
Tim Elmore:We need to combine the timeless and the timely. So I'm 63 years old. I have a lot of, well, I think I have, a lot of timeless wisdom. I'm not up on every new thing on TikTok. Sorry.
Tim Elmore:I'm not. But you can come to me for some insight and from my experience and my stories. And listen. I'll listen to a 20 that's got intuition. So there's insight and intuition.
Tim Elmore:They bring an intuition on where society's going. They are a foretaste on where culture is going. So tennis coach is listening. We need to be listening to our students as well as teaching. Let's have a time where we're hearing them out, and then we earn the right for them to hear us out.
Tim Elmore:Do we have the badge on? Of course, we got the badge on. We're the coach. But I'm telling you, I think we earn our right to share and impart our wisdom by by the listening too.
Simon Gale:And that is it's a tremendous story. But my question to you, Tim, would be, was NASA I mean, clearly, were very progressive for 1969. Was very progressive thinking. They they had somebody in leadership or management who who got this concept. But Yeah.
Simon Gale:How do you think today's leaders and managers are coping with adapting to these generational differences and and and are they adopting this Yeah. NASA model? It's a great story, but how are we really doing in in today's world?
Tim Elmore:It's a mixture. Some are getting it and some are not. Here's what I think I see happening globally, and I know you just asked my opinion. I'm just one guy. But as I get around to different countries and then different states, I'm noticing an older generation that would be me, so I'm a baby boomer, having a very difficult time letting go of the controls.
Tim Elmore:I think they don't know as much as I do, and they probably don't. I'm afraid of losing power, because I've been in power now for quite some time. I feel a little threatened. Kim used that word before. I feel a little threatened.
Tim Elmore:In fact, I feel threatened that they won't succeed. I also feel threatened that they will succeed, and I'm gonna look bad. So I was just talking to a great young leader in Egypt earlier today, and he said, yeah, they're about to turn this over to me, but some of them are afraid to because I'm younger, and what if I don't get it right? So you know what we decided? He needs to they need to practice at this organization reverse mentoring.
Tim Elmore:I love reverse mentoring. So listeners, if you haven't heard this term, this actually came from Jack Welch way back in the nineties when he was the CEO of General Electric. Reverse mentoring is when you get an older veteran, maybe in their fifties or sixties, and a younger rookie, let's say, in their twenties, and you put them together, and they each swap stories. So you always find something in common, don't you, when you swap stories? But then the older obviously has something to share about how to succeed in this place, but then they switch hats.
Tim Elmore:The mentor hands over the mentor hat to the mentee, and he puts the mentee at it. And he says, tell me how we could, you know, use the latest app on your phone for marketing, or how we could do this or that or the other with how could we use TikTok better? So I think there's something to this reverse mentoring concept that can happen on a tennis court, on a college campus, in a workplace, in a health care system, dare I say in the federal government. Thank you very much. The oldest do you guys know that the the average age in Washington DC, this is gonna blow you away, is late seventies?
Tim Elmore:I mean, our president, this is all in all due respect, is 80 years old. When are we gonna turn it over and get them ready? If we feel like they're not ready, we need to get them ready. I'm sorry. I'm on a stump I'm making a stump speech right now, and I need to quiet down.
Tim Elmore:But I have got to get this right, and my peers have to get this right. The future is in our young, and we've just gotta get them ready. So
Kim Bastable:I like that. Get them ready. I think that's exactly what our program's all about at at
Tim Elmore:Florida. Is.
Kim Bastable:That we are getting that next gen, and then it is about letting go. I think Yeah. Yeah. There's a certain amount of control and
Simon Gale:Yeah.
Kim Bastable:For whatever reason that's occurring. Yeah. I I totally get that. So so what would you you know, we are trying to build leader tiers. So what are those questions that leaders need to ask to be better at closing that generation gap?
Kim Bastable:Are there you know, what are or what are what can leaders do? Like, what's an act of I like your reverse mentoring. Are there other suggestions?
Tim Elmore:Yeah. Absolutely. I'll share a couple of things, and then I think, Sam, and you I'll let you jump in with your thoughts as well. So the the simple acronym that I follow in my head, and I've done this for years, is a leg we have to stand on. So we've always heard that.
Tim Elmore:Here's the leg you have to stand on. So it's a l e g. Okay? So the letter a reminds me I need to lead with asking. I need to ask questions, and I'll talk, Kim, in just a minute about how do we better ask the right questions that lead to a bridge rather than a wall.
Tim Elmore:But I often wanna start with telling or teaching or instructing because that's what I do. I need to I need to wait for my turn. And so if I ask a generation z young person or an alpha generation kid something, oh my gosh. They're they're blown away. So ask is the letter a.
Tim Elmore:The letter l, listen well. So if I ask, I need to listen. Sometimes I think we ask only to wait for our turn to say something ourself, and so if I listen, they feel heard. I heard a psychologist say one time, this is a great quote, being heard is so close to feeling loved that for some people, there's it's almost indistinguishable. When I hear out a young person, they feel loved.
Tim Elmore:And I know that's not our we're not their parents, we're not their poppy or mama, but boy, does that go a long way when they feel heard. The letter e is empathy or empathize. So I ask, then I listen. If I empathize, now they feel not only heard, they feel understood. Even if I can't say, oh, I went through the same thing, I can say, oh, I bet that made you feel awful, didn't it?
Tim Elmore:Or something like that. And then when I've asked, listened, and empathized, gee is guide. Now I've earned my right to guide them, but I don't feel like I'm inserting myself or imposing myself. They're saying, coach, talk to me. What do I need to know?
Tim Elmore:You know? Because I've certainly heard them out. So this is hard for me because I love to talk. Have you noticed? But I need I need to ask and listen and empathize three steps before you get to my step.
Kim Bastable:Very, very good. Yeah. I mean, I think that's exactly what we we definitely need to learn to do more of.
Tim Elmore:And Yeah.
Kim Bastable:I don't know about you, Simon, but it feels like it's a struggle for people. We do have no shortage of talk when we're in leadership.
Simon Gale:I'm still recovering from Tim's earlier comment where he said at 50, you're a veteran. I I just turned 50, so I've I've now got to put sorry. To my name. I wasn't ready for that today, Tim. But I do pick up on something is you read constantly about and see quotes on Instagram and places like that about surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you and then allow them to thrive.
Simon Gale:And it doesn't sound like we do that as well as we should and is that harder to do across these multiple generations and allow them to thrive versus the one size fits all management style and I'm the boss type mentality. So interesting to hear that, but you know, really yeah, I'm still recovering from calling myself a veteran, I've got to be honest.
Tim Elmore:That's okay. I'm so sorry, Simon. I just put you in an older
Simon Gale:That's okay. Realize it's happening, but I just wasn't
Tim Elmore:really That's right. Ready or not. So, Kim, back to your question on questions, specific questions. Let me give you one. I've learned over the years, especially with college students, undergrads and grad students, and then my own children who are both millennials, Bethany is 34, Jonathan is 30, I've learned that this question it's not a rocket science question.
Tim Elmore:It's not a Racquet science question. I love your terms. But if I would just ask, what's your take on what just happened? So let's say there was a well, remember the remember the Black Lives Matters protest we all saw three years ago in the 2020? So we all had an opinion, did we not?
Tim Elmore:All 300,000,000 Americans had an opinion on what that should have been and what that could have been and whatever. So there were marches going on, and I watched and I participated, but I wrote a blog that I thought was a pretty good blog, if I do say so myself, on how to protest in a redemptive way, meaning in a way that's gonna actually get something done. Do we break windows and shoot? No. We don't.
Tim Elmore:You know? So I wrote the blog, but instead of posting it right away, I shared it with my daughter, Bethany, who always has an opinion on everything. And I said, would you read this? And so I basically Kim, I was asking her, what's your take on what just happened? What's your take on what I said as your dad?
Tim Elmore:She came back, and I loved how respectful she worked to be. My kids we have a good relationship, but I could tell she was working to be respectful to this old man. And she eventually said, well, dad, it's a good article, but I'm just not sure we need to hear from another older white male. Interesting. And I decided not to post it.
Tim Elmore:So it was not I think what I said was stupid or bad. I still think it's good, but I knew there was a whole bunch of kids well, I shouldn't say kids, younger people than me that might go, why don't you listen for a while, Tim? Why don't you just listen for a while? And maybe you don't need to give a commentary or an encyclopedia on what you've learned, you know, that sort of thing. So, again, I'm in my learning mode myself, but I was writing to myself when I wrote that book.
Tim Elmore:I'm telling you, as I talked about the builders and the Xers, and I'm thinking, oh, I need to do this. I need to do this. So the assignment I gave myself this year is this, when I'm in a meeting, I wanna speak as if I believe I'm right, but I wanna listen as if I believe I'm wrong. It's a game changer. Yeah.
Kim Bastable:Wow. That's powerful. Your story is powerful as well, just the idea that it wasn't what you were going to say that had any offense, but it was just Yeah. Maybe not the right time and place for Yeah. Voice.
Tim Elmore:For me to say.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. It just makes me think. Here, I'm about to ask Simon. You know? What do you think about all this that Tim has just shared with you?
Kim Bastable:What did you you know? I you know, what do you think about what's just happened here in the last twenty minutes? But the reality is, you know, I mean, maybe, you know, the older person in the room needs to not say much. So anyway, Simon, well, what do you think? I mean, that's a that's a pretty that's an impressive idea.
Simon Gale:Absolutely. I mean, I think for me transitioning to working at the National Campus and having a team of 35 to 40, it's still a true representation of the generational gaps. There's just more of them here. And I think all tennis clubs are very similar that way, there's generational gaps and we're an industry that employs all of these generations. Yeah, And the older coach or leader has a lot of wealth of knowledge.
Simon Gale:It's an industry where you accumulate a lot of knowledge as a teacher and we're in the relationship business, we just happen to teach tennis. Yeah. At some point during your career, I recall times where one of my great old friends, coach Pat, who's no longer with us, he used to grab me and say, you're my leader but just stop and listen to me for a minute. And he would tell me things about and handling a situation and think of it this way and and at the time, it was more well, I'm the director, I'm supposed to be making and those without him forcing himself on me, he found a way to connect with me and teach me some insight from his twenty or thirty years more experience and I still use a lot of that today. So it was incredibly powerful and impactful but I didn't even realize it was happening.
Simon Gale:That ability mentor and develop and find constructive ways to do it versus come here, I need to tell you how to do this, you're Yeah. Doing it Finding that communication style is something that I work on every day and you're always trying to get better at it. But I look at my team and I look at things like building a future leaders program that we have. But even I think about how I delivered that and I talk too much because I think we want to give so much information and help them but I'm working on less talking more questions and more Yeah. Collaborative projects and things where they can shine.
Simon Gale:Mhmm. But that's an evolution of myself. So I think It is. Yeah. We just have so much we can do and how, as listened and I read the book, I just sat there and said, I'm doing some good things, see, have a lot more I could do and I'm excited about what the future holds with evolving as a leader and then really giving these young pros a chance to shine.
Simon Gale:And the beauty of this facility is that we have ample opportunity for them to shine in small leadership roles. And the goal has to be at the end of this, they're moving on and they're the next director at this club or that club and they've got a stamp that says, somebody help me along the way, kind of like Coach Pant did for me twenty years ago. So yeah, it's a lot. I had all these notes written that I was going to say but then I've listened for twenty minutes and it's like, okay, this is resonating slightly differently and even more than I thought. So it's great conversation.
Tim Elmore:Good. Well, I'm enjoying it too. Everybody listening to this podcast understands the terms serve and volley. And really, Simon, as you were talking, our serving up is a question, not a teaching or a lecture. But then and we all know volley.
Tim Elmore:If I serve up a question, any human being knows the volley back is, well, tell me about your You asked me about me. Tell me about so it's gonna we'll go both ways. Volleys keep going back and forth. But if we'll start the volley with a question, I bet they have a question to volley back. That's what we gotta do, and and it's it is about relationships.
Tim Elmore:You're right. Tennis happens to be the platform, but this is about building good people and building good relationships. I love it.
Kim Bastable:Wow. I think you just served up some some good transition there. We are super thankful that Tim has agreed to come back and talk a little bit more specifically about the rackets industry in our next episode. So we will unpack the specifics to our challenge in rackets with with Tim Moore. So we encourage the listeners to go get a copy of A New Kind of Diversity by doctor Tim Elmore before you listen to the next episode and bone up on it like Simon and I have both done.
Kim Bastable:We are excited for you to tune in next time. So thank you for starting the conversation, Tim, and we'll get back to this on our next episode.
Episode Narration:That's all for today, but we're not out of fuel. You can find more information and resources in our show notes and by visiting racquetfuelpodcast.com. If you like what you just heard, please subscribe. And also leave a review, which helps other people join the mission to become stronger Racquet's leaders.
Conclusion:This podcast is a production of Athlete Plus, the people, stories, science behind elite athletes and teams. Athlete Plus is the official podcast network of the Institute for Coaching Excellence, a research, education, and outreach center in the College of Health and Human Performance at the University of Florida. The Institute for Coaching Excellence offers various online certificate programs and degrees in partnership with the Department of Sport Management. Learn more today at coaching.hhp.ufl.edu.
