What happens when employees raised with completely different expectations enter the same workplace? In this episode of Bridge the Gap, Cara Silletto explores how generational dynamics influence communication, leadership, employee retention, workload expectations, and the employee experience. Drawing from her experience as an early generational expert and her work in employee retention, Cara explains why generational differences are less about someone's birth year and more about how they were raised and the experiences that shaped their mindset.

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Key Topics Covered

Why generational differences are about more than birth year

The changing expectations surrounding work-life balance

How stagnant wages and heavier workloads have influenced turnover

Why today's employees are pushing back against chronic understaffing

The differences between “latchkey kid” and newer workforce experiences

Why companies need to rethink leadership development

Adapting communication styles instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach

Balancing empathy with accountability

The evolution of mental-health conversations in the workplace

Setting boundaries around professionalism while still supporting the whole person

Why employees need both guidance and support

How showing employees you care can strengthen retention

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Meet Our Contributor

Cara Silletto

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Learn more about the Employee Retention Ecosystem

employeeretentionecosystem.com 

magnetvault.com 

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Watch More BTG

https://www.btgvoice.com/shows

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00:09 - 05:22

Cara Silletto

The bridge, the gap. I'm your contributor, host, Cara Silletto. And if we haven't met yet, I'm the president and chief retention officer at Magnet Culture, a firm dedicated to reducing unnecessary employee turnover. And I'm the creator of the employee retention ecosystem. Today, we're going to go back to my roots. Some of you still have my little purple book.

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I have a little mini book that might be in your desk or at the end of your bookshelf called The Millennial Mindset. Now I've gotten calls. Years after a person saw me speak at a conference and they said, I still have your little purple book in my desk. My team was just complaining about the new hires and the new generation, and I thought of you.

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And maybe they said, you know, we're seeing a growing disconnect between our season staff and our younger team members. Can you help, please? What is going on? They just are not on the same page. So for those of you who don't know, I began my speaking and training career 14 years ago as a generational expert before I dove into all things retention.

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Now, I happen to be one of the oldest millennials, born in 1981. So I was kind of uniquely positioned to bridge the widening generational gap back in 2012. And as it got worse and worse and worse in 2014. 16. 18. All the way up until the pandemic. So at 31 years old at the time when I started my business, I had worked for Boomers and Gen Xers for about ten years, and I had really figured out how to play the game.

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I was doing what they wanted me to do, you know, stay till the job gets done and keep your head down. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Come in early. Be the last to leave all of those. But I did that. Even though deep down I had a completely different way that I wanted to work.

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But I was able to kind of see both sides and really coming into the work world. I only did what my bosses told me because I didn't know that I was allowed to, for example, bring my whole self to work, which we'll talk about a little bit later. Now, I think it's pretty cool the timing of my early professional career, because I worked for those Boomers and Xers for years, this different mindset that I didn't realize I had been raised very differently as a millennial from my boomer and or counterparts.

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And so I sat in this sweet spot for about ten years. I could see both sides. I could really understand where the older generations were coming from, where the younger generations were coming from. And that catapulted me into this space of bridging generational gaps. So I do have my MBA as well, and I understand the operational and financial needs of the business, how we provide care and how we need to hit our numbers.

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Yet I could also see the work world had slowly demanded more and more and more and more from staff and leaders over time to hit all these metrics and financials and outcomes they were looking for. So over time, many companies stopped listening to their people. I saw it right before my eyes. They stopped listening to their people. They assumed that new hires wanted what they wanted when they were a new hire, and they just kept pushing people to do more with less, do more with less.

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Well, sorry, but we have to do more with less than that has become quite a struggle, right? I was one of the earliest people in the work world that announced to others that I wanted life and family first and not work first, because the folks ahead of me were so dedicated, so committed. They were absolutely selfless and sacrificed all kinds of things at home.

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And I remember starting, you know, around age 30 to push back and say, you know, I'm, I'm not going to give my 30s and 40s and 50s to these businesses and, and for other people who came before me, that looked very selfish, I get that. It totally looked selfish. Like, who does this chick thinks she is? Doesn't she know she needs a paycheck to pay her bills?

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You know, all of that. And then this is what a job is. You stay till the job gets done. Right? But I had seen my older colleagues, my older family members, my older friends, working nights and weekends sacrificing time away from their family, friends and even their hobbies and things they wanted to do nights and weekends, only to be after sacrificing all that time, only to be let go, you know, when there was a downturn, or they were told year after year that there just isn't enough money in the budget for for really any raises.

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05:22 - 10:05

Cara Silletto

We're just going to give a small cost of living adjustment, right? You know, that 3%, that type of thing. So at my first big girl job, though, speaking of of raises, I worked so hard my first few years out of school because I wanted to climb the ladder quickly and, and I didn't mind working a little bit late.

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You know, I might stay till 6:00, not 9:00, but but I did work really hard. And I stood out from the crowd as one of those early millennials. So I remember getting and my first job like big girl job, I got 8% my first year because my boss was like, you're a rock star. You're not going into the PA, great job.

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And then next year I actually made some changes to the job I was doing and leveled up, and I got a 10% increase. Okay, now this was 20 plus years ago, back when managers could do that, but it was an era when your boss could decide how much value you were truly bringing to the workplace and adjust your comp accordingly.

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Now that has totally changed. Now, of course, but my millennial peers, who by the way, we are now age 30 to 45, is the millennial group, and I just turned 45 this year. We're not quite those young spring chickens that we once were. We were the group that that spotted how companies were shifting. You know, we started also to talk about money.

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And so we started to see companies shift their budgets to just that 3% across the board. And that became very normalized, very standard. When times get tough, many companies and I remember me and my friends experiencing this, two companies would do a pay freeze. We didn't even get a cost of living adjustment. Right. And at that time those companies would say, well, staff should be happy.

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They still have a job. And it was always kind of, you should be happy that at least we're giving you this, even though in 20 1415 or so is when it truly switched from being an employer's market to an employee's market back in the day. All right. And it has still been. Except for the blip of Covid, we have primarily remained in an employee market where they have the ability to walk because so many people are hiring.

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Even in a more challenging economy like today, where some of the upper level jobs they may be may take longer to get a new job. But the frontline, lower wage, hourly workers, it is absolutely still an employees market where they can pretty much go get a new job tomorrow if they want it. So we have to keep that dynamic in mind as well.

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But speaking of pay freezes and layoffs and things, which we don't do, a lot of layoffs and senior care, but we saw our parents who were in all different industries, get laid off during those formative years. So my mom was laid off multiple times even before I graduated high school and college. And I saw her entire accounting department would get eliminated or move to a different city because of a merger or acquisition or downsizing all these different things.

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So my mom raised me very differently in regards to this employer employee relationship. Believe it or not, she actually told me at a very young age. She preached to me that once I switched to salary, I should consider any hour that I work over 40 to be a donation back to the company. All right. She said, do not expect any return on those hours because the companies have budgeted the same 3% for everybody.

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And so that really shifted my mindset about how much I was willing to sacrifice for the companies, how I worked for them. Now, mind you, I still gave 100% because I want to do a good job. And I did believe in the mission for each of the companies I worked for, but I really became unwilling to be pushed to do more, do more, do more, and to work much beyond that 40 hours.

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I also saw those older mentors of mine and friends and family, you know, they they had health crises that were caused. In fact, my cousin had a stroke because of the stress that she had from years, decades of being a nurse and being constantly pushed and pushed and pushed and having to be understaffed and pick up shifts and all of those things.

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10:05 - 15:14

Cara Silletto

And she also being ten years older than me, said, don't do it, Cara. Like, enough is enough, right? Pull back on on that and don't give everything to the company. So I bring this up. Some of you might be rolling your eyes, and I hope you haven't turned off the podcast yet, but but I bring this up because it's important for us to see both sides here, both both directions of what the work world was like, what it shifted to, what people wish it was.

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You know, how people were raised differently. Some people were taught you stay till the job gets done and other people were taught any hour you work over 40 is a donation, so don't bother, you know, if you've got other things to do. So we need to just reduce that judgment of how other people are showing up and understand what what's important to us.

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And then when you're in a leadership position, what's important to my team and my people. And chances are it's not the same thing as what's important to you or what was important to you when you were their age. Because our world has changed, our work world has changed. The economy has changed. All things around us have changed. So we really have to think differently about that.

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Now, this combination of a new mindset with new priorities of this new generation that has come in, coupled with the national kind of normalization of more stagnant wages for decades now, that has shifted the tides of turnover. All right. And now the workforce, not just young people, but various ages and mindsets. They have now pushed back to say, this is enough and I can't do two people's jobs.

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I can't work in a place that's constantly and consistently short staffed. This is exhausting. In fact, some of the staff I hear them say things like your lack of hiring enough people is not my problem to solve, right? It's not my problem. I shouldn't have to pull a double because the company isn't thinking ahead enough to hire enough people for the churn that we have on our staff right now.

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Again, goes back to the the balance or the push and pull of the financial side versus the ideal staffing situation with floaters and cushion and wiggle room and all of that. I understand that we we have to be fiscally responsible and not overspend in that area, but just understand that the staff are tired of taking the brunt of the issue that that plagues our entire industry, our profession of senior care, of being short staffed and and having such tough jobs with so many regulations and, you know, the lack of proper reimbursement, all of this complexity, they feel, especially our frontline hourly workers, that is not their problem.

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Okay. So we have to kind of think differently of how do we separate that from a business problem to being our front lines problem, and how do we better support them in that, in that situation? So, you know, I've talked quite a bit here about kind of the workloads and their mindset. I'm trying to stay more focused on the generational aspect today.

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But in April of this year, I did an entire episode on capacity, right? Workloads, job descriptions, the burden, the overburden of a lot of people's workloads and that it is causing so much turnover, pushing people away. So if you didn't catch that April 2026 episode, make sure to go back and catch that now. Also, when we talk about generational dynamics here, I need to clarify that it's less about the year you were born and more about the way you were raised.

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Right? Part of that is the era in which you were raised. There is validity in generational studies because where were you when matters and statistics show us that? But as a leader with your workforce, you really need to focus more on the upbringing and the mindset that each individual person has on your team. Okay, so in fact, our generational keynote that we do at company meetings and conferences is called It's Not About birth year, because so many people give me pushback and say you're just exacerbating the stereotypes.

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Cara, quit talking about generations. Quit putting me in a bucket. You know all of that. I totally get that. But if you understand that there are generational dynamics and yet it's more about the mindset, not the birth year, that can really help with leadership approach and better communication, building trust, that comradery, all of that on your team. Okay, so what else has changed over time from a generational standpoint?

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15:14 - 21:08

Cara Silletto

Well, during that same era of do more with less as we tried to to cut back and be more productive, more efficient companies also cut a lot of training and leadership development, especially way back in the 90s and the, you know, early 2000, kind of all the way up into that 2009, 1011 recession that we had as well.

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Now the Gen Xers, they grew up during that era. Now the Gen Xers today are about age 46 to 61, give or take. Now, these Gen Xers, they didn't need as much hand-holding. And let me share why that is and then how it shifted for today's workforce. So back in the day, if you've been around 20 plus years in the work world, you are thinking that, you know, I had common sense.

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I figured things out. My boss didn't handhold me. And good for you. Okay, but the Gen X generation was the latch key kid generation. All right. They had a chance at eight, ten, 12 years old. They had an opportunity at home to build their critical thinking and problem solving skills on their own. Because as a latchkey kid, both parents were working and they came home alone after school.

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They had to latch their key around their neck, get themselves home, make a snack, do their homework. Without the internet, they had to fix their own bike tires if they were riding around the neighborhood and something, you know, went flat, they had to take care of it. They had to figure that out. And that was back in the day when we would say, you know, go outside, don't come back till dinner, don't come back till dark.

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But there was a huge shift. I go all the way back. I know it's been a while, but I go all the way back to the 90s because in the 80s and 90s is when our society shifted from that. Go out and play. Don't come home until dark over to the stranger danger mentality. And it was because of.

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You might have heard me explain this before, that there were shows in the 80s and 90s like America's Most Wanted. These people were still out on the street and shows like True Crime. So the parents then didn't want to leave their kids. And in fact, by the 1990s, the federal government had stepped in to give funding for after school care so that we didn't have to have as many latchkey kids.

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And while that was great in some ways and protected a lot of children. It also meant that me and my peers and those younger than me, didn't get as much of an opportunity to learn how to figure it out and and work through our own problems. Okay, so I still bring this up, even though, you know, we're really focused on Gen Z now, that group under 30 as our newest generation.

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But I've really, truly see this chasm, this huge gap between the mindset of Boomers and Xers versus Millennials and Gen Z. And I'm not saying that it's versus as in, I'm just saying compared to there was a gigantic shift in parenting and upbringing and the work world between when the Boomers and Xers were taught how to be at work versus the way that the Millennials and Gen Z folks, the younger ones, were really given more more exposure, more access, more say more, more engagement, you know, of the new work world, what was it going to look like?

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And that we also we because I'm in that millennial group, you know, we got a say in what we want our relationship with our organization to look like. Okay. So very different times of different folks growing up. And so here's where the problem snuck in. Only a few companies saw and corrected the issues as far as what people needed for training and leadership development, that sort of thing.

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Because businesses cut the leadership training thinking, well, Gen Xers can figure it out, especially as Gen Xers were not only coming into the work world, but going into management. A lot of people I talk to, they say they got very little training for their jobs, and especially when they went into management, they got even less training. It was you're the best in the department.

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So now you get to lead the rest of the department. And so they moved into these leadership roles and they'll admit, you know, I don't know how you feel about it, but a lot of people admit to me it was very uncomfortable, and they had to just muscle through it and really step in it and, and kind of figure it out on their own of how to lead others and how to figure out what their team needed and wanted.

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But they grew up in more of a sink or swim training model. I've even heard companies say that that yeah, we just throw them to the wolves. We we just let them figure it out and the, the great ones will rise to the occasion and they will stay. And the other ones we kind of weed out and they don't make it right.

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These were great people that they wanted to promote. And yet they they let them go because they didn't support their leadership development process as well. Now, today, I find a lot of people have been hired into or promoted in the leadership roles without having been given the tools to be successful. Particularly, you know, they've been successful in a lot of ways.

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21:08 - 27:53

Cara Silletto

I don't I don't mean that negatively, but but where they're struggling is they're struggling to succeed at managing the new workforce. They they have not involved with the workforce to change their leadership approach and their communication approach to really bond with and be able to retain and build trust with this younger generation. So I see all the time that there are there are great leaders out there.

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They figured it out. Some companies do provide that leadership development and have done that. But then there's also a lot of folks who kind of fell through the cracks. And many of those folks, they lack strong self-awareness. I still see that in many leaders we have. They struggle to communicate effectively when one size doesn't fit all. You know that this is my communication style and this is how I talk to my team.

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Why doesn't everybody appreciate that or understand, you know, and they haven't evolved into one size doesn't fit all, which is of course, today what we teach and and what we see that the workforce really needs. They also, some of them have not been taught how to improve their emotional intelligence and really self-regulate those emotional times when they need to make a critical decision.

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And then also sometimes I see folks who are struggling today because they haven't had the practice and the education around balancing empathy with accountability. You know, we see that we do care about our people and we want to help them, but we also need them back on the floor to do the job. And a lot of managers tell me, you know, I'm not a therapist.

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I haven't been trained on how to how to take care of folks in that way. And so they tend to lean one way too much versus the other of being too nice and caring and accommodating for folks. Or they tend to go the other direction and to to rigid. And I just need you back on the floor. We'll deal with this later, you know, get over it type of thing.

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So a lot of managers haven't yet been given those tools to balance empathy with accountability, for example, and to adjust their communication approach. That is so critical when leading today's new workforce. In fact, we created a course this past year called coach with care about that balance, because managers kept telling us we're just not sure how to how to do that.

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And so we hired a therapist and kind of partnered with her to to figure out what therapist tips and tricks and tools could we give to managers so they could be better coaches for their team and coach them through a difficult time with both empathy and accountability? So that's been really cool to watch. Speaking of empathy, that's going to take me down another generational road today.

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So when I was younger, we were taught to leave your personal drama at the door. You know, when I first started my my big girl job as early 2000, and that mentality has definitely shifted over time. Again, it's kind of an older generations versus younger generations. How were you raised? But early in my career, I remember seeing people silently suffer.

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Right. You know what I mean? They were silently suffering through health problems that they didn't want to tell their boss about. They were going through a divorce, didn't want anybody at work to know about it. They had other personal challenges, and they did not tell a soul because they were taught, well, that's not your boss's problem. You need to just focus at work, get back to work and deal with that at night.

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Right? But this pendulum has swung so far the other direction. Okay. So if we if we were to have a, a spectrum or a pendulum here that swings from one end to the other, we have leave it at the door. Not my problem. Suck it up, buttercup. Okay, that's one end. And then we've swung all the way to the other end, which is much more of the bring your whole self to work, and that I should be able to tell my boss anything that's going on, you know, even things that make other people uncomfortable, whether it is like health struggles or divorce or, you know, I told you, I'm 45, so now I'm being a lot of my friends are talking about perimenopause, which makes a lot of people at work cringe because they don't think they should talk about that at work. Right? That's again, a lot of women silently suffered through that process without talking to people about, you know, how it impacts us with with sleep, with emotions, all kinds of different things, right?

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Physically, mentally, emotionally, all of that stuff. And so now you're seeing not just the young folks coming in and talking about their anxiety, their depression, neurodivergent, different things like that. They're bringing that in, but also even older generations, particularly the millennials as well. But I see some Boomers and Xers doing it where they are bringing those issues to work as well and saying, I'm struggling with this, whether it's, you know, mental or physical challenges, personal challenges, all of those different things.

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Right. In fact, at the very far end of this spectrum is even people talking about done, done, done the big three. You know what I'm talking about religion, politics and money. So that is very uncomfortable for a lot of people who were raised not to talk about those things, not only at work, but even in personal relationships or with your friends.

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And now the staff wants to talk about it, and they want to share with you how they feel and what they believe and what they stand for, which can certainly cause discomfort. If managers are not prepared to handle those conversations and to be able to balance that personal and professional line as well. Right? And while I want my staff and staff everywhere to feel comfortable in their own skin and be able to be who they truly are, right, I would love to see that.

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27:53 - 33:08

Cara Silletto

I do believe, and some of you will feel a sense of relief here. I do believe that there is still a professional filter that is needed in most workplaces. The problem is everyone has their own opinion about where that filter is. How thick is that filter? You know, what can get through that filter and what shouldn't. So some say keep your personal life and challenges to yourself.

They want a real thick filter between the front door and into the workplace. Some say bring your whole self to work. I want you to truly be you and I'm here for your whole self, right? That would be a very, very thin if no filter at all. And then some people say we support you, yet we need you to maintain a level of professionalism expected here.

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So a simple example is don't go drop an F bombs in the hallway. Right? It's fine if you say those words in your personal life. If that's you know, you so choose to do so. Please don't bring that language into the work world because it is deemed unprofessional. And as long as we are communicating that expectation very clearly, I think that's very appropriate.

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So we can decide as an organization and even as individual leaders, where do we want that line to be? What level of filter do we need to have on our teams and in our organization as well? And once we decide that level of filtering, then we have to define what professionalism looks like, which is very subjective. It is your opinion what is professional or is not.

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And we have to clearly communicate those expectations. And we also still need to show staff that we do still care about them as people. So just keep in mind, if you are the type of leader or organization that chooses to have a much thicker filter and expects people to act a certain way and work a certain way and show up a certain way, then you may have to work even harder to show that you truly do care about people, about the their self right there, their lives, what's important to them as well.

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So let's dive into that for a moment about really caring for our people. Because every class I teach, every retreat that I facilitate, all these things that we do, I always ask the group, and I like for them to say it out loud. So feel free if you can answer me out loud right now. Do you care about your people?

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Do you care really care about your people? Because I think the answer is yes. And I like to hear people say yes out loud, yes, yes I do, Cara. I do care about my people because we are all very busy managers and leaders, and sometimes we we don't prioritize showing that we care to our people even though we do.

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And then when they leave, we're so distraught, like, but I really cared about her. Why did she leave? But that person who left is thinking, I think they cared about me, but I just couldn't tell. I didn't know for sure. They never even talked to me or acknowledged or recognized my work. So we we definitely want to make sure that we are truly showing the care that is in our hearts that that we want our people to know exists.

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Okay, so another generational swing in this space that we're that we're sitting in right now has been around the increased awareness, understanding, acceptance and even accommodations to some extent regarding mental health challenges right over the last ten years and especially the last five years post pandemic. Right? I have seen with my own eyes a shift in our entire work world, where more people now are talking about and addressing mental health challenges in the workplace, with their boss, with their colleagues.

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Okay. And if you think about it, this was kind of surprising to me when I when I came to the forefront. Anybody on your team that's under 25 or even 30 years old doesn't know an adult world where you're supposed to hide those things, right? They can't even fathom that. You would say, oh, don't tell anybody. You have anxiety.

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You know, don't tell anybody. You're struggling with depression. You know, you you can keep your neurodivergent to yourself. That's really nobody's business, right? They just can't even fathom being told to to hide that or keep that or again, suffer in silence. Right. They believe that anything that they're feeling and and experiencing and going through, that they should be able to talk to their boss about that.

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33:08 - 38:54

Cara Silletto

Right. So remember, I was taught, you know, being one of the earliest millennials, I was taught, like, play the game, fall in line, be who your boss wants you to be. And the new workforce is saying, nope, you get the whole me whether you like it or not. In fact, I've got a story of my own here with this pendulum kind of swinging as a manager of my own team several years back, I hired a 20 something.

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She was Gen Z through and through, and about six months into the job, she she was doing a great job. And I really loved having her on my team. And six months in, I get an email from her. It was midday, about lunchtime. I get this email, not a phone call, just an email that said, Hey Cara, I'm struggling today.

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I've got some personal things weighing on me, so I'm going to take the afternoon off for my mental health and I don't have any deadlines today. I'll. I hope to see you tomorrow. Right. I'll try to be back tomorrow. And I gotta tell you, all my knee jerk reaction to that email was not positive. Okay, this was back in the day, several years ago, when I had never really experienced a mental health day.

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And even still today in some of my classes, people kind of chuckle at that term if they haven't had these conversations. Right? Oh, a mental health day where other people have embraced more of this. But it took me time to get there. And so I wanted to share a little bit about my journey, because my first gut reaction was, what does she think?

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She is just telling me that she's taking the afternoon off like she didn't ask me, can I take the afternoon off? She just told me and there was no time to to, you know, get back to her. She was like, I'm closing my laptop now, you know, I'll see you tomorrow. So there wasn't really a way to to come back at that.

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But when I felt my, my blood boiling, you know, getting getting warmer, my cheeks getting flush, I said, Cara, stop it. Practice what you preach, cry to understand, reduce judgment and think of the positive here. So what has just happened? I have an employee who guess what? She trusts me. She trusted me enough, only six months into the job to tell me that she was struggling and that she had some personal issues.

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You know, she didn't give details but to tell me what was going on. So that was good that I have built enough trust for that. Second of all, she probably could have gotten away with working very minimally that afternoon and no one would have noticed. So she could have just wasted my dollars by working. But thankfully she took PTO, right?

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She took time off and clocked out. So that was really great. And then it also allowed me to show that I care. It allowed me to support her in a way that I wouldn't have known to do otherwise. Right back in the day, I remember finding out after people had a divorce that they were going through a tough time, and I thought to myself, oh, I wish I would have known.

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I would have been more supportive. I would have given you more grace or tolerance or wiggle room on deadlines or whatever. Right? So I thought, now she's giving me an opportunity to truly support her in a more effective way. So I just sat on it, I slept on it, I let her sleep on it. And the next morning I sent her a message bright and early, an email that said, you don't have to tell me what's going on, but I've been sending good vibes.

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I hope today is a better day. I'm here. If you need me for anything, please let me know if there's any support I can provide to make this easier for you. Right? So she thanked me. She came back the next day. Everything was fine. Well, years later, remember, this was several years, years later, only maybe 18 months ago, I was doing a keynote about generational dynamics and talking about this shift of bring your whole self to work and how do managers shift to that model.

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So I'm telling this story about the Mental Health Day email, and I recorded the keynote. So the next week I sent it to my marketing director. And the day after I get an email from my marketing director and it says, Cara, I watched the recording of your keynote last week, and I'm going to assume that that Mental Health Day story was about me.

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My heart sunk, y'all. My heart like I felt so bad because I didn't get her permission after even after all those years. I didn't get her permission to tell that story. I thought, well, it's okay for me to tell it because it's about Cara's journey as a leader, right? My initial gut reaction of who does she thinks she is to.

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Wait a minute. This is a good thing that she was so open with me, right? I was telling that journey and trying to get leaders to understand that they could do the same. So I immediately thought, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm never going to tell the story again. And my bad, right? But my marketing director went on to say, I want to tell you the rest of the story what you didn't know that was going on back then.

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38:54 - 45:53

Cara Silletto

Cara and you all. She went on to tell me that that had been the darkest puffs time in her life, that she had been struggling with many mental health challenges. And she even explained that twice that month, she had taken steps for taking her own life. But it was her family, her friends, her faith and her team at work that helped her get through it.

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And today, I'm excited to tell you that she is thriving. She has since had some little ones. She's an amazing mother. She's doing great and she still works for me. So it has been the the privilege of a lifetime to help her, to find her true self and help her both professionally and personally, to get through those dark times.

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Now, I thought I would never tell that story again. But at the bottom of her email and in subsequent conversations that she and I had, she said, Cara, we have to tell this story. We have to make sure that leaders understand the true influence they have on people, both professionally and personally. We have to let them know that if they show they care, it will make a difference.

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It will make a difference in the lives of their team, and it will keep their teams intact. It will keep them on board and reduce that turnover, that churn that so many folks are struggling with today. So listen up. Today's new workforce really needs just two things from leaders. Two things more effectively. We need to support and guide our people.

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So if I were to rate you on those, if you had to give yourself a grade on how much guidance are you giving your team, especially your new hires, where would you fall? Right, 1 to 10 and how would you grade yourself on support? Are you truly supporting your team in the way they need the organization and their leader who support them?

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All right. The new the new generation today, not just the under 30, but, you know, even even those outside of that bucket as well, the new generation that we're trying to attract and retain. They are not latch key. Figure it out kids. So they need more guidance. They need better onboarding, clearer expectations, less judgment of she should know better, right?

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They need mentors and they also need recognition and appreciation when they hit the mark. And make sure that they know we know they're doing well, all right. They need that guidance. They also are not the suck it up buttercup generation. Okay, that is not how most of our youngest, newer hires were raised, so they need more support throughout their entire career with you.

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They want to know that you truly care about them as a person and as an employee. They want you to listen and even provide advice. When they hit a fork in the road. They are looking for another mentor, another guide in their life. In many cases. Now many of our frontline staff just keep in mind they do not come from homes with stellar professional role models.

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Some do, but many do not. Okay, they may or may not be getting the guidance and support they need in life from others around them. And if we can create a great place to work, we are going to have to get more comfortable and ready to lead the whole person that is showing up on each of these shifts, right?

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We have got to equip ourselves and equip our leaders across the organization with those tools to have those difficult conversations and be able to guide and support our people. So. I hope today's discussion on generational dynamics has been helpful to broaden your lens and your understanding of others. Hopefully, it reduces some judgment to understand where other folks are coming from, and hopefully it's going to help you bond faster with our newest hires, the younger folks that are coming into our team. So if you don't already have it, you know, I stopped publishing the Millennial Mindset book a few years ago, and we upgraded it with more Generation Z stories about this youngest generation in our work world.

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So if you don't already have it from an event that you've done with us, you can get a downloadable copy of the mini book it's called It's Not About Birth Year, and that is at Magnet Vault. The Magnet Vault is where we put all of our treasure trove of downloadable resources. The cost of turnover calculator, check in checklist, how to revamp your on ramp for new hires.

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But the one I want you to look for today is the Little Purple Book, the new version of It's Not About Birth here, and go check out some of the newest stories and examples and strategies that we share about bridging those generational gaps in today's work world. All right, so stick with me for future episodes. Heck, out the Bridge the Gap page to check out the previous episodes that we've talked about this year, covering all different topics about employee retention and the strategies to reduce employee turnover.

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Now, if you want to learn more. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and subscribe to my YouTube page at youtube.com. I'm Cara and thanks for listening to this week's Bridge the Gap contributor Wednesday.

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