Starting a Mentoring-Gentoring ™ System: Transforming the Generational-Digital Divide into a Mutual Knowledge and Skill-Building Partnership

Starting a Mentoring-Gentoring ™ System: Transforming the Generational-Digital Divide into a Mutual Knowledge and Skill-Building Partnership (across the Age-Experience Spectrum)
or
Enabling the Young Mail Clerk to Teach Even the Senior Executive or Partner about the Marketing Magic of Facebook (while helping the clerk learn some Boomer Basics)

Many workforces today face generational challenges. The Traditionals and Baby Boomers and even some Gen Xers have different experiences, especially when it comes to technology and communication. This is leading to increased levels of workplace stress and frustration across the age-knowledge-experience spectrum.  Have no fear...the Stress Doc ™ is here!

Call Webster's (or Dictionary.com), a New Concept is Born

In response to a "Bridging Generational Communication" workshop with a major DC Public Utility, the Stress Doc recently invented the concepts of Gentor ™and Gentoring ™.  (Email for essay.)  When a younger employee ("Internet Native" to quote NY Times blogger, Nick Bilton) helps a computer or social media averse member of an earlier generation ("Internet Immigrant") improve their techno-literacy and comfort-level, the former is playing the role of “Gentor.” (Naturally, a play on “mentor.”)  And while "Gentoring" may invert authority-status roles and sound original, challenging and hip, it's in the footsteps of a time-honored tradition of role-status socialization, knowledge sharing, identity formation and facilitating a vital rite of passage.

Ready for Yin-Yang Synergy in Your Workplace?

And building on this idea, let the Stress Doc help you "Start a Mentoring-Gentoring System:  Transform the Generational-Digital Divide into a Knowledge and Skill-Building Partnership across the Age-Experience Spectrum."  Productive cross-fertilization requires mutual learning and sharing.  Learn to loosen role-status barriers while building two-way communicational bridges.  Discover emotional and interpersonal skills for helping the more senior generation "Mentor" their younger colleagues in areas such as institutional wisdom, career progress and office politics, and workplace values/norms.  With mutual coaching and Stress Doc orchestration, Traditionals and Boomers will find it easier to accept digital/social-media skill-building lessons from their juniors and may even better appreciate some of the idiosyncratic Gen X and Gen Y values and ways.
 
There's a new "Team Motivational Mantra": There's No "I" in Team...But there Are Two "I"s in Winning!  And these two "I"s definitely "C":  blending "Individual Creativity" and "Interactive Community."

Do You Need a “Gentoring Program” in Your Workplace?

What generational-communicational gaps or challenges do you face in your place of business?  Are you now required to Tweet, blog, or use a mobile device with apps to do your job?  Do your eyes glaze over as the younger workforcre texts you requests from the home office using acronyms and abbreviations that would have given your high school English teacher Anaphylactic shock?  And how frustrating is it to be the fresh-out-of-college worker trying to crack the code of the experienced team members.  Are you tired of the phrases, “This is how we’ve always done it" or "They just don't get it”?

The younger generation likes being consultants, and hopefully this collaborative relationship will also increase their sense of responsibility and commitment to their colleagues and to the company. Senior workers can give their younger co-workers some of the recognition and affirmation that provides motivational meaning.  Sounds like a win-win generational-communicational bridge that will help one and all.  If you'd like to Practice Safe Stress and strengthen workplace motivation and morale, the Stress Doc can organize a generation bridge-team building workshop or retreat that will span the generational-digital and team-agency-company divide.

Discover the Stress Doc’s acclaimed interactive and inspiring “playshop” experience:

1) supplement the younger employee’s digital facility with upgraded and FUN psychological, communicational-empathic and interpersonal-interactive tools along with "hands on," real world exercises,
2) reduce anxiety and lower resistance to new learning,
3) help computer or social/multimedia averse members of earlier generations improve their techno-literacy and comfort, 
4) reduce generational-cultural power struggles by enabling seniors to vent playfully their frustration with their generational juniors while facilitating Gentoring and Mentoring experiences across the divide.

Finally, remember, people are more open to a serious message that’s gift wrapped with humor…So, "Don't Be Afraid to Pet the Dinosaur" and build a Gentoring Network to “partner” with the employee who is more techno-lizard than wizard and bridge the "dino-digital divide."

Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, is an acclaimed keynote and kickoff speaker as well as "Motivational Humorist & Team Communication Catalyst" known for his interactive, inspiring and FUN programs for both government agencies and major corporations. In addition, the "Doc" is a team building and organizational development consultant. He is providing "Stress and Communication, as well as Managing Change, Leadership and Team Building" programs for the 1st Cavalry Division and 13th Expeditionary Support Command, Ft. Hood, Texas and for Army Community Services and Family Advocacy Programs at Ft. Meade, MD and Ft. Belvoir, VA as well as Andrews Air Force Base/Behavioral Medicine Services. Mark has also had a rotation as Military & Family Life Consultant (MFLC) at Ft. Campbell, KY. A former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, The Stress Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress and of The Four Faces of Anger. See his award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" -- www.stressdoc.com -- called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR). For more info on the Doc's "Practice Safe Stress" programs or to receive his free e-newsletter, email stressdoc@aol.com or call 301-875-2567.