Most schools now have several generations of adults working side by side, and when the friction between them never gets named, it gets filed as a personality conflict. It usually isn’t one.
In a recent episode of The Table, the podcast from The Deans’ Roundtable, I sat down with Dr. Unnatti Jain, a speaker, coach, and behavioral change specialist whose work is generational differences at work. I opened with the skeptical question: how much of what we call a generational difference is actually generational, and how much is age, career stage, personality, or circumstance?
Her answer was all of the above, which is precisely why the label is the wrong tool. Generational identity, she said, “should not be used as a lens to view or judge people.” Once a leader reaches for the label, they’ve stopped diagnosing. The presenting problem is rarely the actual problem, and generational differences in schools may be the most convenient presenting problem we have.
Key takeaways
- Dr. Unnatti Jain says the large reviews find generational differences in job satisfaction, commitment, turnover intentions, and work values to be small and inconsistent.
- Four lenses are required before you name anything: generation, age, career stage, and culture.
- Inside a school the tension surfaces as frustration, and what looks generational is often a role clarity, workload, leadership-consistency, or communication-norms problem.
- Belonging is the one thread across every cohort: to be heard, seen, accepted, and validated.
What the research actually supports
It matters that the person tempering this is the one who studies it. Real differences exist, Dr. Jain said: people were socialized differently, encountered different technology, entered different economies, and were shaped by different events. But in the large reviews and the meta-analytic work, she said, the differences between generations in job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, and work values come back small, and inconsistent from study to study.
Part of the reason is that age, historical period, and birth cohort are intertwined, so isolating any one of them is genuinely hard.
Which is why she insists on four lenses rather than one: generation, age, career stage, and culture.
Her example is one every dean has watched play out. A newer teacher asks for frequent feedback and we file it under Gen Z. Through the career-stage lens you see someone new to the profession, still building confidence, still working out what’s expected. A veteran teacher pushes back on an initiative and we call that generational too, when we may be watching someone who has seen five initiatives come and go and is answering from institutional memory.
What generational differences in schools actually look like
“I don’t think generational tension in schools shows up as generational tension,” Dr. Jain said. “It appears as frustration.”
It sounds like why do they question everything, or why won’t leadership explain the reasoning. An experienced teacher feels newer colleagues don’t respect tradition. A newer teacher feels experience is being used to shut down ideas. It attaches itself to dress, meeting etiquette, response times, classroom autonomy, work hours, parent communication, and who turns up for school events.
Underneath the shorthand (they have no work ethic, they’re stuck in the past, they’re too sensitive) sit unmet needs: respect, clarity, recognition, voice, trust, belonging.
So the useful question is not which generation is being difficult. It’s what’s actually happening here.
When you look for patterns instead of culprits, Dr. Jain said, the apparent generational conflict is often a role clarity problem, a workload problem, an inconsistent leadership problem, or a lack of agreed communication norms. Every one of those is something a school can fix. “Generational” is not.
Belonging is the thread that runs across every generation
“We may be completely different and unique in our own ways,” she said, “but the one common thread that runs across all generations is belonging.” She defines it in four layers: to be heard, to be seen, to be accepted, and to be validated.
I’ve said for years that we can’t talk seriously about student belonging without talking about the adults responsible for building it. Dr. Jain’s description of adult belonging is the most usable one I’ve heard. Teachers need to know that they matter, that they are known, and that their contribution counts. They need to be able to say something honest, or offer a new idea, and have it genuinely considered. And they shouldn’t have to erase an important part of their lives to be accepted.
Notice that none of that sorts by birth year. People experience being valued in different ways, she said: one colleague feels valued when leadership trusts her and stays out of the way, another when leadership checks in and asks what she thinks. One wants recognition in front of the faculty; another would rather have a private note.
That’s not a cohort difference. That’s a person, and the only way to find out is to ask.
Where to begin when the tension is already there
Start by listening, before diagnosing. Do not announce that the team has a generational problem, because Dr. Jain is blunt that this makes people defensive and hardens the very stereotypes you were trying to soften.
From there, a sequence that fits inside a normal week:
- Ask for specifics. Where is communication breaking down? Which expectations are unclear? When do people feel dismissed or misunderstood? A short survey works if one-on-ones aren’t realistic.
- Look for patterns, not people. Acknowledge the tension without assigning blame, then name what the pattern actually is.
- Build norms with the team, not for it. She suggests small focus groups that surface what people need, then agreeing the norms together so they don’t land as another mandate.
- Recognize people in ways meaningful to them, not to you, and explain the reasoning behind decisions wherever you can.
- Put people on shared work across cohorts. A project team spanning several generations gets you every perspective at once.
There’s also a stop list. Stop treating silence as agreement. Stop rewarding visibility over contribution, because as she put it, the first person in the building and the last one to leave are not automatically the most effective employees. Stop the generational jokes, which shape a school’s culture more than leaders think.
“Stop managing categories,” she said, “and begin leading people.”
One caution she was clear about: trust gets rebuilt through clarity, accountability, and consistency. An excellent conversation will not repair it if nothing about the behavior changes afterward.
Replace judgment with curiosity
Asked what she has learned from a generation other than her own, Dr. Jain didn’t hedge: replace judgment with curiosity.
Fair leadership, she said, does not mean treating everyone identically. It means holding consistent standards while giving people what they actually need.
So the next time something in your building reads as a generational problem, treat the label as the start of a question rather than the end of one. And if you’re the one carrying that tension for a team right now, you don’t have to do this alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are generational differences at work real, or just stereotypes? Both, according to Dr. Unnatti Jain on The Table. People really were socialized differently, met different technology, entered different economies, and were shaped by different events. But she says the large reviews and meta-analyses generally find the differences in job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, and work values to be small and inconsistent, partly because age, historical period, and birth cohort are intertwined. Her position is that generational identity should not be used as a lens to view or judge people.
What does generational tension look like inside a school? It rarely announces itself. Dr. Jain says it appears as frustration, and it attaches to dress, meeting etiquette, response times, classroom autonomy, work hours, parent communication, and participation in school events. Underneath the language sit unmet needs: respect, clarity, recognition, voice, trust, and belonging.
Where should a school leader begin when a team is already experiencing generational tension? Listen before diagnosing, and do not announce that the team has a generational problem. Ask for specific examples of where communication breaks down and which expectations are unclear, look for patterns rather than culprits, and build communication norms with the team rather than for it. What looks generational is often a role clarity, workload, leadership-consistency, or norms problem.
