I have found myself, way too often it seems, telling the Sailors who I lead about the "old days". I am one of those guys that I thought I would never be. The other day I was talking with a group at work that was discussing the repeal of the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy. They were talking about how big of a change it was going to be and I said, "Yeah, we all were having the same conversation in 1992 when they started putting women on combat ships, and now nobody thinks twice about it." I've seen a lot of changes since I've been in, and the things that seemed like a big deal didn't turn out that way.
All that to say that when I look at the generations in the Navy, I'm close to being in the "oldest" group. There are still some very senior enlisted and officers that are "late boomers", but give it another 5-6 years and I'll be THE old guy.
I'm not sure that I can break out four distinct generations, but I can see a lot of differences between the generation that is joining the military now and my generation. The trick in this discussion is in figuring out whether or not it's appropriate to make value judgments on the differences.
When I jointed the Navy, we all wanted to go overseas. Most all of us joined to "see the world". Not today. The Sailors that are joining the Navy now fight tooth and nail to NOT go overseas, to NOT deploy at all. They want to be stationed somewhere, buy a house, and do an entire 20-year career in one place.
Is that good, bad, or just different? I don't know. Just recently I needed two people to do a ONE month deployment on a ship that was going to a very desirable part of the world with some great port visits. I have SIXTY people in my division… FOUR people volunteered to go. Only four. In the early 90's, we would have been clobbering each other for the chance to do a deployment like that. Everyone says that we are a global society now, but the new generation of Sailors just want to be homebodies. I don't understand it.
So from a leadership perspective, the challenge is finding ways to optimize and motivate the different generations. If we truly value diversity (the Navy is big on that) then we should welcome the differences and find ways to benefit from the broad spectrum of people that we have, including generations. One of my favorite leadership theories is Vroom's Expectancy theory of motivation. Simply put, a person has to feel that they will be rewarded for their work, and the reward has to be something that they want. That part is what I find the most challenging but most beneficial as a leader: figuring out what people WANT. Referring to my previous example, in "my day" people wanted to be rewarded with good deployments, but these days most Sailors want to be rewarded by avoiding deployments. Some people like time off from work, some people want more work because they love it, and some people want some kind of certificate that they can hang on their wall. There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to motivating people.
So from an HR perspective, how do you get the generations to respect each other, understand each other, rather than disdain each other? How do you keep the different generations motivated, while at the same time helping them understand that the other generations aren't "wrong"? Would you make a value judgment on which generation is "better" than another?
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