Morra sits down with Nihar Chhaya and speaks about ways to reframe intergenerational conflict at the office

Morra Aarons Mele: Hi, it's Morra Aarons Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever. Today I bring you, I get this question a lot where my friend and colleague and leading executive coach Nihar Chhaya and I hash out a question that we hear a lot from the people that we work with. 

As Gen Z comes into the workforce, there's confusion and some resistance on finding among the powers that be in older generations about how to manage a generation that is more depressed and more Anxious than previous, but also more comfortable talking about it because of long held stigma, there are some managers, and even some pretty enlightened ones whose impression of Gen Z's embrace of mental health can be summed up as “they're all up in their feelings. They're Anxious, I get it, but I just want them to do their work and maybe be quiet too.” 

There is a tension here and it's something that we have to examine because having these kinds of biases and ingrained, anchored attitudes on all sides does nothing for anyone's mental health and our harmony and performance at work. So this week in our LinkedIn Live, Nihar Chhaya and I tackled the question of managing intergenerational conversations and biases around mental health at work. Along the way, I think we came up with some really useful tools for anyone who finds themselves jumping in with an ingrained bias or anchor or judgment in a conversation at work. We talk about empathy, about listening and about managing multi-generations in the workforce. I think it's instructive for leaders and people of any age. I'd love to hear what you think. So send me a note on LinkedIn.

Morra: Hello! How hot is it where you are? 

Nihar: Hey, Morra. Oh my goodness. It's like a heat wave over here in Dallas. It's about a hundred degrees. We're going away to San Diego though in a few days, which would be nice. 

Morra: Some beach weather!  Everyone out there, if you're listening, tell us where you are and how, how hot it is where you are. I'm in Boston, Massachusetts, which is not known for its heat and it's gotta be over 90 today.

Nihar: Hot. Yeah. It's so uncharacteristic, right? But climate change is a real thing. 

Morra:  It is a real thing!  I wish someone would listen!  So today we have kind of a needy spicy topic, and I know you've done some research, so I'm, I'm excited that you've done some because I have not done the research I wanted to do. So listen, I don’t know about you but I get this question a lot. The younger people on my staff are talking too much about mental health. Are they using it as an excuse? 

Nihar: Excuse is such a loaded word. It's like, wow, where's the empathy? I did actually do some digging around the idea of anxiety in the workplace, and particularly with the generational gaps. And I did pull some things that I thought I'd with you and the audience. Hartford, the insurance provider, and actually leading provider of workers' comp and, and employee benefits, they did a study and they actually found that Gen Z workers are the most in need of mental health support compared to other generations. 

In fact, 53% are highly stressed and 44% feel depressed or Anxious at least a few times per week. But they're less likely to believe that their employers care about their health/their mental health.  51% believe that the employers don't care. What's also interesting is that  while the younger generations in the workplace, like Gen Z and, and millennials say their mental health affects their productivity, the older generation in the workplace are less likely to report. So work baby boomers was 8% would be likely to report they're struggling. So it just shows you a big gap, I think, in terms of just the acceptance. I mean, let alone whether they're experiencing it, but even the acceptance that I'm dealing with this and I'm gonna report it. 

Morra: I interviewed Dennis Olley from the American Psychological Association. I said, is it that Gen Z and younger millennials are more depressed and Anxious than previous generations? Or are we just talking about it and reporting it more? He said, it's probably both.  And audience, tell us what you think. Tell us what you're hearing. Tell us your questions. This is something no one has the answers to. 

Nihar: And, and let us know also if you're a Gen Z or Gen X or Millennial  and by the way also please feel free to hit the like button, the share button if you see anything that you like. I definitely want to have more people in your network also listening.  Feel free to participate.

The other thing that I found in terms of this particular topic was that there's a movement now I think around mental health awareness that is much more than when I was growing up. But also there's a lot of people that are not mental health practitioners offering advice on these things. So there was interesting data on this. People are going to TikTok. People are going to videos from folks who are just their friends and getting that advice. 

Perhaps that's not even a bad thing because there's more of an openness about it, but you wonder whether it's actually good advice and really kind of evidence-based. 

Morra: I know that's something.  I'm not  a licensed psychologist. I try very carefully to tear, toe the line between advice that is therapeutic diagnostic, anything like that. And just my own lived experience and research. It's really hard to do. I was listening to a podcast yesterday or maybe it was a show and a person probably of our generation, Gen Xer said, younger generations are much more comfortable telling me directly how they feel about things and I like it. But it took me some time to learn. Do you think that's a factor here? 

Nihar: I think so completely. I think that there is for whatever reason, whether they're raised by parents who are our age who have kind of learned the hard way that kind of keeping things stifled or too much inward can be damaging. This generation, I think, is much more encouraged to share what they're really thinking. Sometimes I think in certain organizations where you have so many different generations all working together there's some people that might feel like that's a little bit obnoxious or a little bit like they're just complaining.  Depending on your philosophy, there might be some real value in the fact that at least they're talking about. I mean, why not just at least put it out there.

Morra: Yeah, I know it's, it's challenging. I think that I certainly came up in a world where I was taught that I had to earn the right to say certain things and coming up in a pre me too era, even earn the right to stand up for myself. So I'm really glad that things have changed, but it kind of weirds me out because I get this knee jerk reaction sometimes of like, wow, that's really entitled of you to say, considering this is your first job. 

Nihar:  Right, exactly. I think there's a balance.  It's on one hand, I was a victim of bosses that felt like you gotta pay your dues. And certainly felt many times that I wasn't being recognized for the talent that I was bringing. I had to kind of play the role of being deferential first and proving myself. But I also think that that's kind of part of society in general, wisdom from the elders is always a thing that is there. 

I think  you're a Gen Z person going into the workplace and you really don't believe in any kind of decorum or kind of waiting your turn and deferring a little bit, then you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. In that case I would say, you should just go ahead and start your own company and see what happens. But there are some rules of the road in those organizations. At the same time, I do think that if you're living an inauthentic life and you're completely holding in a lot of the feelings that you have, particularly, standing up for yourself when things are going wrong, then that's not really helping anybody. It can be quite damaging, if you just continue to perpetuate that type of work. 

Morra: I want to come back to empathy. I think probably this comes back to empathy on both sides. I was in a discussion recently in another country, and I heard everything from, since the pandemic I have people on my staff who are saying, I don't function well early in the morning, so I don't work in the morning, or my anxiety means that I can't come to the office. 

Now that you have RTO and have to return to work, I get that a lot. And then I heard comments like, well, nothing a good recession won't solve. Meaning, it's nothing like when younger people experience a bad economy. Now, I don't think that's true. I think that's a terrible thing to say. I'm just a little bit flabbergasted by what I was hearing. 

Nihar: The interesting point about the empathy piece is that people tend to, and this probably isn't anything new, but people tend to have more empathy for themselves when they're dealing with it. But when it creates a challenge for themselves as a boss of an employee who's acting like that, that empathy goes out the window. It reminds me of an interesting thing that happened this week. I have a client in Switzerland, in Basel, where in Europe, they don't really have the air conditioning everywhere like we do in America. 

And the heat waves are crazy there now because of climate change. So they're like at the 85, 90 degrees mark. And he said that it's funny how now that the heat's happening, people are coming into the office now 

Morra: Because there's AC!

Nihar: Exactly. So it's kind like your point, like a recession would solve this and actually ac will also solve 

Morra:  Maybe climate change. Oh, that's sobering.I think return to office mandates are really bringing all this stuff to a crucible! There's a lot of feelings on all sides. 

Nihar: I've often wondered, because I usually work with senior leaders, so I often wonder whether, I'm only hearing one side of it, which is that these executives are for one thing, not always in the office themselves, but they are kind of responsible for a lot more people. Generally I would say their view is that we want to have people around because it really is easier to do your job, but when you look at the broader population of most companies, it's not clear that you need to be in the office all the time to do this kind of work. 

And, yet you keep being told that  you need to come in just to make the boss feel a little bit better. That's not necessarily a great retention tool. 

Morra: Is that what people are being told? Or is it because there's a larger company mandate? 

Nihar: It's a company mandate, but I think it's almost like you shouldn't even think about having more than a couple days at home. During the pandemic there was a lot more sympathy around that because all of them were dealing with it. And now it's like if you even think about it as an individual contributor who could potentially do your job without having to be in all the time, you're almost shamed a little bit into this idea that you shouldn't even have that desire to work from home. I'm generalizing, but I do think that it's interesting the difference in level of empathy between the senior leadership and the folks that are kind of more in the frontline. 

Morra: Do you think about the empathy thing coming back to mental health? I know a lot of your work is helping senior leaders live authentically and improving their leadership by living authentically. Is there a risk that if mental health at work becomes over-identified with say, younger people, that older people who may tend to be in more senior leadership don't get to feel that authentic sense of self? 

Nihar: Yes, it's a great question. If there's one mental health kind of related issue that I think comes up for the senior leaders that I work with is the idea of what's going to happen after I retire or should I retire? Because, they're not necessarily at the door but they're definitely further along in their career than let's say the people that are coming in behind them. Many organizations I work with might have a reorganization and all of a sudden they're flooded by early career folks who just seem to have a lot more in front of them to deal with, a lot of more optimism. 

And so there are these folks who are at the Twilight. And I think if you're not, if you're kind of conditioned to not share those honest stories about feeling a little bit nervous and scared about your future, there's a lot of different ways it can show up in a very negative way. You could take it out on your team, you could end up playing favorites, you could potentially stick around for too long. I see that a lot too. A lot of leaders will not move on to let the next generation come in because they're just so concerned about holding onto their legacy. 

So I do think that we're learning from Gen Z around opening ourselves up to this idea of anxiety and talking about it. It could be very beneficial, I think for senior leaders and older folks to be able to, to embrace that as well. 

Morra: Absolutely. I feel that every generation needs to be able to embrace whatever emotions they're feeling at work so that they don't act them out. I have just recently seen someone who was on the brink of retirement just act out very intensely in meetings. It was very interesting and I had empathy for that person because they're having a lot of feelings. Giving away an identity/roll shift has gotta be so intense. 

Nihar: It's really fascinating when you think about it. I think the newer generations also aren't working at companies for so long. So many of the people who are the boomers or even Gen Xers, these are the folks that actually have been with one company for 25 years. When I was growing up, I remember thinking, wow, if you got a gold watch at your retirement ceremony, you were really old. And now I'm not that far from that age where people are. I was at this company for my 30th year anniversary. Also we're living longer. We actually have more, we're healthier, we're doing more things with our life past retirement. And so that can be also daunting to say, I'm only 55. What am I gonna do for the next 20, 30 years? It's not enough to live just on the pension and a lot of pensions aren't even available anymore. I think in the past you could say, I'm going to hang up and I'm going to hang out for the next twilight of my life. Now half of your life is still there and you've retired. What are you going to do? 

Morra: Yes. And that, that brings anxiety. How do we start talking about this in a more productive way?  That is inclusive of every generation of different experiences. Another angle I want to lay onto this, Chip Conley who runs the Modern Elder Institute and this is his sweet spot is helping mostly fortunate, privileged people figure out what the next half of their life looks like in a meaningful way. 

Part of it's that  data supports this, that Gen Z and younger millennials don't want what we may have wanted. And also know that a lot of what we fell for is a lie coming back to climate change, coming back to social inequities, coming back to capitalism for God's sake. So I think there's an element also of younger people saying, you know what…work is bad for my mental health because work is bad for mental health. 

Nihar: Yeah. Well, I completely agree with that sentiment around they want different things than what we wanted. One thing I definitely think is true is the idea of moving up to the corporate ladder is just not as appealing. I think what happens for a lot of leaders when they think about motivating their teams, their toolkit is very limited. They might be able to give them a gift card or hey, we'll take the team out on a happy hour. 

The promotion isn't really the thing that they can dole out as much anymore. And it might not even be the thing that people want. It's not clear if somebody actually wants to rise to the CEO level at a lot of companies if they're starting out now, maybe they do as they grow. What I think happens is if you have senior leaders who kind of grew up in Gen X and boomer generations, they're thinking that, well, “hey, why wouldn't you be excited about me giving you this opportunity?” 

Then it's like a little bit of a slap in the face to say, you don't really want this. You want to have less time in the office. You want more vacation time and more perks and things like that. It doesn't make a lot of sense to people. So I think part of it also is being able to, to step back and say, we might be thinking about fulfillment in life very differently and work is just a part of that. Work plays a certain part in that Venn diagram in a different way for different generations. 

And then how do you actually have the conversation about how can I help you make that more fulfilling for you? 

Morra: Okay. So that's my question. And listeners, if you're there, chime in, send a, like, send a question. Okay. Here's my question. So there's a misalignment maybe on values, a misalignment on perspective taking of empathy. Where do we start? 

Nihar: Well, you know, the first thing that I think about is observing where the misalignments are and recognizing whether  people are even feeling comfortable enough to share that there's a misalignment. So again, if I'm gonna feel very ashamed for wanting more time off and for taking my PTO, I know that's a big thing that people talk about recently. You’re  given PTO and you're feeling guilty to take the PTO, that has to change.

And, and so that taking out the whole thing about, I'm judging you for taking time off, I feel like that is a big part of this. And I suspect maybe the first step is that you actually have leaders that would have that open discussion and to say, how can I make sure that people do take their time off? And some companies are doing this, I think, but I think there's still an underlying concern about how this looks in terms of my career? Is this going to ding me in the long run? So I think that's like an aspect and, and vacation is just one aspect. But there might be lots of themes here. It's very clear that the things that motivate me as a 50 year old leader are just not the things that are going to drive a 25 year old early career person in my company. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

Morra: That's the other cool thing, maybe you're both aligned, maybe you're both there because you want to create the robot that does X or you, but I love the idea of actually having and I would recommend bringing in a skilled person to have this conversation. Not having it ever over email or Slack. Not a good idea. 

Have I told you about my own big “aha moment?” I was in a meeting in a sort of comfortable retreat-ish meeting and the idea of ambition came up and I was talking about my wonderful client who was almost 80 and would always joke, I said, she was post ambition, right? 

She'd done it all. She had an incredible career. And she was like, “I'm just here to make a big difference, I'm post ambition.”

A younger person in the room said, I think I'm post ambition, I was like, what? My years of conditioning came into play. At first I was judgmental, how can you even say that? Then it was like, oh my God, tell me more. Tell me why, and it was revelatory. I cannot overstate the impact that that conversation had on me. 

I had to really in the moment though, deal with my own bias. And that's hard to do, and it was a safe space. 

Nihar: Amazing. So, what kind of changed for you after you took that in, what, what happened after that for you?  

Morra: This person explained why they felt like they just wanted a good life and it wasn't all about work. American models of never taking your vacation and giving it all up for work just weren't a value that this person had. And, and then someone else chimed in and said, you know what? I don't think you're post ambition. I think you have ambition for other things in life besides just your career. And that became a super rich discussion. It reframed how I was thinking about ambition. There's a lot of people thinking about ambition, you know, multiple, we have multiple intelligences, maybe we have multiple ambitions, which I think is true, right? 

We're ambitious for our family, we're ambitious to help fight climate change. We're ambitious for our tennis game and we're ambitious for our career.

Nihar: Absolutely. So based on what you just said was like, in a post ambition world, I wonder whether if some of Dan Pink's work on the book, DRIVE where he talks about the three things that really motivate people aren't, is not money, it's not necessarily you're gonna give you more comp and stuff, but it's autonomy, mastery, and purpose. 

So the idea that you might not get driven by the promotion, or maybe you, you are, but the idea really is how do I provide you the autonomy you need the chance to develop a mastery of something and also a sense of purpose that aligns with those values as we're talking about. I think if we could have those kinds of discussions, it could be really helpful. The challenge, I think, is that a lot of leaders who are not necessarily evolved or enlightened themselves are also thinking about the short term needs. So they're thinking, well, okay, go get that somewhere else. Right now I need you to perform because I need to hit this quarter, you know, or whatever. And I can't, I can't be responsible whether that aligns with your master or your purpose yet. But I think ultimately it's the idea that if you play the longer game, if you coach them on, on these kinds of ideas, they're gonna be more performance based and definitely have much more potential to develop those skills later. 

Morra: I'm laughing because in my experience that's just evolving, working with people who are neurodivergent, motivation is a big piece of it and part of it is you can't make me be motivated by the things that usually you think motivate people. I'm motivated by very different things, and we need you to know that as my manager. I think that's true for everyone. And we know that autonomy and agency are the values that people want at work, they want that. So I love that idea of stripping down to values, what drives us, but then also we have to define short-term objectives. 

Nihar: I think that, where leaders sometimes get stuck is that they define autonomy as they just want to be left alone. That's not really what autonomy has to mean. Autonomy is about respecting their talent, respecting that they have a point of view, telling them, helping them come to you with an answer and a solution as opposed to you telling them. It's not just about the absence of being around people, autonomy is that I want to work in my own little cubicle. 

If you think about parenting or as you mentioned, it's everywhere and human, the human condition is such that none of us really want to be controlled. If you can give somebody the sense of agency and self, and they can control how their outcomes are happening, you're going to help them be more resilient and you're going to give them a little bit more respect. In other words, it's going to make them more motivated to actually stick around and not look elsewhere. 

Morra: Where does mental health layer into this? If you have someone on the team who is struggling with anxiety and feeling very anxious when they come into work, is mapping these values and motivation, is that going to help? Or is it much more clinical, I wonder? 

Nihar: I don't know. As you're talking, the more I think about it, because I love your comment about bringing a skilled facilitator into these conversations. It reminds me of a lot of these diversity and inclusion conversations that companies are having where it also seems to be something that you don't want to do the wrong way. You don't want to create more misunderstanding and faux pause in some respects. That will diminish trust even more because you tried to help, but you didn't really actually know the right advice to give.

I would say even with anxiety, you start with some compassion. I think that's all something all of us can do, whether we're licensed or not in this area, is compassion, listening, asking questions, and also helping them kind of remove the stigma of it. And then I think it's really about helping them have resources around to say, okay, here's what you could potentially look at in terms of anxiety. Because I think the other piece of it is, and I see this a lot with my coaching clients, because everything is confidential and we create that, that trusted relationship. 

There's degrees to which people are willing to be open about these things and certainly with their employer too. So, I would say as a leader, if you want to help, certainly show that compassion and then be a trusted partner along the journey without necessarily having to tell them what to do or this is a bad idea. 

Morra: Dixy. Oja Dominguez has a great approach for this. She says, with people who are struggling a little, she'll say, do you want me to witness, help or distract, or listen, help distract. And I love that. I love that so much. My husband and I have been using it with each other because it's not controlling behavior, it's respecting agency. And it's saying, look, I'm here to help you if you want that. And maybe that's just calling up HR and getting you what you need. 

I'm here just to listen and not offer advice, if you want that. And if you want to just go out for a cup of coffee or  look at TikTok, we could do that too. 

Nihar: This is a great technique because I've been in situations also where I really care for my client and they might have an emotional moment where we're getting the Kleenex out. I don't know what to say in the sense that to really show, because I care for her or him, but I don't want to be in a situation where I'm making it worse,  just by talking or being silent. You could be misunderstood and I love that question. So you're actually helping you're asking them to help you help them.

Morra: Yes. Or not, or to just be there or not.  I want to actually close out here with a quote that is really beautiful. I'm actually writing an article about this. So aren't I lucky that I get to talk this out with you. I was recently at the Mental Health America Conference and they had youth ambassadors.  One of the things that the youth ambassadors were talking about is that, a lot of what we think is helping in older generations actually enforces intergenerational trauma. 

And this was a beautiful quote, MHA youth advocate said “it's wrong to characterize Gen Z as a fragile generation. Adults think we're being lazy for getting help, but we're not.” I could not applaud that more. This was from a teenager, not a person in the workforce.

Nihar: What do you think we, as we're leaving the audience today, what, what do you think is a call to action that we could recommend to the audience based on that? 

Morra: Listen, before we judge. Just literally approach more with a listening mode. 

Nihar:  The whole idea of being non-judgmental is such a powerful thing. Not just in terms of, because we talk about this with anxiety, not judging our own emotions and feeling anxiety, but like you said, also not judging the other person. Just imagine the amount of support you can give somebody when you're not judging them. 

Morra:  Right. We as humans, especially when we're successful, our way is the right way, because it works for us and so that's right. When someone else is expressing  that's uncomfortable for us, that's triggering for us, we don't like it. We think they're being lazy, indulgent, whatever the word is, of course. Our way is the right way. We have to take a beat and just listen and that's really hard. My kids tell me I need to do that all the time. 

That's it for today. To hear more LinkedIn lives, head over to my profile on LinkedIn, where they're all indexed. You can subscribe to my newsletter too, and be sure to subscribe or follow The Anxious Achiever feed for more of these conversations as well as my regular podcast episodes.