What Career Professionals Can Learn from iGen
A mid-career analyst gets paired with a new colleague fresh out of a master's program. The younger colleague prefers written updates over spontaneous calls, seems uneasy about a last-minute in-person meeting, and mentions she moved home for a year after graduation before taking this job. The analyst, who left home at eighteen and answered every unplanned call without a second thought, isn't offended, just puzzled. Over lunch, they swap stories about their first jobs and realize how differently their twenties unfolded, leaving him wondering how much of what he assumes about "normal" career development is just his own generation's habits.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The colleagues joining after you started differently than you did
Twenge's research documents this generation reaching independence milestones like driving, dating, and steady work later than earlier generations, with more adolescent time spent at home and connected to a phone than gaining early, unsupervised experience. Professionally, this can show up as a colleague who takes longer to feel comfortable making unilateral calls or who prefers detailed guidance over open-ended instructions. That isn't necessarily lower capability; it may reflect fewer earlier chances to practice the independent decision-making your generation built through different formative experiences.
Assuming a colleague's need for more explicit direction reflects weaker skill rather than a different amount of prior practice.
Pair a newer colleague with clearer initial scope on a project, then deliberately widen their decision-making room as the working relationship builds.
More caution, more reported anxiety, in the same rising cohort
Twenge's data shows this generation taking fewer physical risks than earlier ones, alongside more reported loneliness and anxiety at the same life stage. This combination can appear as a colleague who is careful and well-prepared but visibly anxious about ambiguous feedback. Recognizing both sides together, rather than praising the caution while dismissing the anxiety as oversensitivity, helps you give feedback that actually lands instead of triggering unnecessary defensiveness.
Treating a careful, well-prepared colleague's visible anxiety as a performance issue rather than a pattern worth naming directly and supporting.
Pair critical feedback with a specific, concrete next step, rather than leaving room and interpretation open to worst-case reading.
Office friendships and communication norms shifted along with everything else
Twenge's four everyday contexts, school, family, work, and friendship, don't stay neatly separated for this generation; habits built through adolescence, texting over calling, group chats over hallway talk, carry directly into how colleagues prefer to coordinate at work. A colleague who seems distant in the break room but highly responsive in chat isn't antisocial; they may simply have built their strongest communication muscle in a different medium than the one your generation defaults to for rapport.
Assuming quiet in shared physical space signals disengagement rather than a genuine preference for a different communication channel.
Offer both an in-person and written option for status updates, and notice which channel actually gets a fuller response.
Working well across generations means adapting, not ranking
Twenge's broader recommendation, understanding this shift rather than judging it, applies directly to cross-generational teams. Adapting communication style, feedback delivery, and expectations around independence to fit how colleagues actually work, rather than how your generation worked at the same age, builds stronger collaboration than treating one generation's habits as the professional default. It also means remembering plenty of individual colleagues, at every age, won't match their generation's broad pattern at all.
Sometimes the clearer, more structured communication that helps an anxious colleague feel supported can also slow the independent decision-making a senior role eventually requires. There's real tension between meeting people where they are and pushing enough growth that careers advance. Twenge's generational description is drawn from broad survey averages, not a fixed trait of every professional; some colleagues need far less structure than the pattern suggests, others more, and reading the individual matters more than applying a generational label.
Name one thing, honestly
- Where might you be reading a colleague's need for structure as a skill gap rather than a different starting point? - Whose visible anxiety at work might deserve a more concrete, specific kind of support from you? - Are your team's communication norms actually stated out loud, or just assumed to be obvious to everyone?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Offer both an in-person and written option for status updates, and notice which channel actually gets a fuller response.