The Intergenerational Advantage — Four Articles on Culture, Communication, and the Future
For four weeks in August, we are handing Liam Polonijo the microphone. Adapted from his recent presentation, The Intergenerational Advantage explores how different generations learned to think about work, communication, leadership, and success. Across four short articles, Liam invites us to move beyond generational stereotypes and become more curious about the experiences, strengths, and growing edges each generation brings to the workplace. Each article stands on its own. Together, they offer a practical and hopeful look at how generations can work, lead, and grow together.
Generations Are Cultures
Article 1 of 4
By Liam Polonijo
How the worlds we inherit shape the way we work
As the son of an anthropologist, I have spent a lot of time around conversations about culture.
We usually think of culture in relation to countries, regions, religions, or communities. But generations develop cultures too.
Each generation comes of age inside a particular combination of technology, economics, politics, education, family life, and major world events. Those conditions influence what people learn to expect from work, authority, communication, and success.
A quick note: the snapshot below reflects the American experience. The specific events differ elsewhere, but the underlying pattern — a generation shaped by the world it grew up in — holds true everywhere.
Baby Boomers entered adulthood during a period shaped by postwar optimism and economic expansion. Many learned that commitment, loyalty, and career advancement were closely connected.
Gen X came of age amid corporate restructuring, economic uncertainty, and the transition into the internet era. Independence, pragmatism, and self-reliance became valuable ways of navigating the world.
Millennials grew up alongside globalization, the expansion of the internet, social media, and significant economic disruption. Many became comfortable with collaboration, rapid adaptation, and continuous feedback.
Gen Z entered adulthood in a world of constant connectivity, political polarization, artificial intelligence, climate concerns, housing uncertainty, pandemic disruption, and more passwords than any reasonable person should have to remember.
Today, four generations are sharing the workforce at once: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. That means four distinct generational cultures are meeting in offices, organizations, Zoom rooms, Slack channels, and group chats every day. This can lead to some, shall we say, cultural friction — four different workplace dialects, often mistaken for four different attitudes.
These broad descriptions cannot explain every person. No generation is a single personality type, and age alone cannot tell us what someone values or how they will behave. But generational context can help explain why people sometimes approach the same workplace very differently. One employee may see staying late as a sign of dedication, while another may believe results matter more than the number of hours spent at a desk. One person may view frequent feedback as unnecessary supervision. Another may experience it as clarity, support, and an opportunity to improve. One boss may believe younger employees should wait, observe, and earn the right to contribute ideas. Someone else may wonder why an organization hired them for their perspective but does not want to hear it yet.
These differences can easily be interpreted as personal shortcomings.
We often label each other as: Lazy. Rigid. Entitled. Out of touch. Too sensitive. Too demanding.
The goal is not to excuse every behavior or avoid accountability. But let's become more curious about the assumptions underneath it. When we understand the worlds people inherited, behaviors that once seemed strange often begin to make more sense.
Before generations become workplace categories, they are communities of people who learned how to survive, contribute, connect, and build lives inside very different conditions. Understanding those conditions gives us a better place to begin.
The world you came of age in is still with you at your desk every day — and so is everyone else's. That's where working well together starts.
In the next article, we will look at what happens when we do not begin with curiosity, and instead start filling in the blanks about one another.