Managing Across the Generational Gap with Mark Fisher

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend on today’s episode, I’m back with Mr. Fisher. And we’re talking about a topic that affects all of you out there who manage a team, specifically all of you who may be in your thirties and forties, and maybe you manage a team of trainers who is maybe often in their twenties. And you get the sense that there’s a real generational divide between you and the people you manage.

We hear this a lot in gym owners that we work with. And so today we talk about that. We talk about is a generational divide real and what do you do when you get the sense that you’re working from a different center. Sense of values or worldview as the people that you work with on your team. So if that’s you and you’ve experienced a little bit of that generational gap in the people, you manage this, it’s a great episode for you.

So keep on listening.

Welcome to the Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners unleash the full potential of their [00:01:00] business. I’m your host, Michael Kehler. Join me each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym. Get ready to unlock your potential.

And become a real unicorn in the fitness industry. Let’s begin.

Hello, fitness, business nerds. What’s up. Welcome to another episode of the business for unicorns podcast. Before we jump into today’s episode, I just want to talk to all of you out there who really want your trainers at your gym to continue leveling up and getting better and better. We want to make a strong recommendation that you work with our friends at CFSC Fishery.

You want to say a little more about what they do and why it’s such an important resource for trainers? Totally. So it’s no secret that what the thing we’re offering is training and you might be gym owner and you might be amazing at training yourself and hopefully you are, but not only can we always sharpen our own saws, but ultimately sometimes it’s helpful to [00:02:00] have outside people help train our teams and certified functional strength coach has done an incredible job to my mind of distilling me.

the work and systems and thinking of industry legend, Mike Boyle. It’s run also by some of the absolute banger, sharpest young minds in the whole industry, amazing coaches. And there’s a lot I love about it. One of them being that it is a practical hands on type of certification. There’s certainly a place for book learning and training.

I think that can be very much a part of what happens, but we all know that the act of actually looking at a person moving and coaching them. is the whole game. And this particular certification, I think, does an amazing job of actually helping coaches get better at in person coaching. For what it’s worth, we have hired certified functional strength coach and Kev Carr to come into Mark Fisher Fitness and do First, train the entire team to level one.

A couple months ago, we had him come back training the entire team in level two. So we very much believe in this. And I think it’s amazing resource if [00:03:00] you are looking to really get your team to become high caliber trainers and create amazing experiences for your clients. 100%. If you want to know more about working with CFSC, click the link in the show notes, find out more about what they’re offering and get your team to level up.

It’s important because it’s what we’re selling and they are world class at helping you improve. Awesome. Let’s switch gears and talk about today’s topic, which was actually inspired by a bunch of my coaching calls recently with unicorn signing members. And I, whenever I, whenever I, Talk about them. I always know that many of them are going to be listening.

So I have to preface this with saying, I’m glad you all brought up this topic, right? I’m not bringing it on the podcast to shame anyone or judge anyone. But I will say about, about four times in the last two weeks, I’ve had calls with gym owners who are primarily there. The big issue they bring to our call is that they’re really frustrated with what they describe as managing this new generation of people entering the workforce, right?

There’s like a real generational. Gap between people who [00:04:00] own gyms and are managing gyms right now and often the young 20 something trainers and other workers that are being hired at our gyms and this is a tale as old as time, right? Let’s start by saying this. Like, I want to normalize the fact that every generation had trouble.

Communicating with the next generation, both in work and beyond. And so I wanted to say that this is a very normal complaint, but I thought we’d talk a little bit today about our experience because certainly we’ve felt this from time to time about us being such old men in our mid forties. Now managing people who are two decades younger in some cases.

So I thought we’d talk a little bit about our experience and just share any tips that we have about what to do or not do in this area. So let’s just start with Fisher. What are some experiences that come to mind when you think about managing across generations? Yeah, I have to say this, and I’m curious for your both hot take on this and if this is anything that’s come up in your academic career.

Um, I think I’ve always been a little bit of a generation skeptic. I’ve always [00:05:00] had a little bit of a hard time buying into, Oh, there’s these very different values. I don’t know. I don’t want to say that I’m discounting it completely because certainly it does make sense that being socialized in a different era, you’re going to value different things.

And each generation arguably is Part of who they are is literally a rebellion and an attempt to create their own sense of themselves in relation and in contrast to the generation that came before or their perception about society. But I would say this in practice, working with young people, I haven’t necessarily felt so much, ah, these, these new kids don’t care as much.

I would say the two things that for me have been true is that one, I’m better than I was 10 years ago, so I am just so much better at what I do that I’m capable of having higher level of expectations. But I try to remember that they’re not because in some situations when I started managing people, they were nine.

[00:06:00] So because of that, they don’t have the history of being in jobs. And there’s a lot of things I have to teach them, not necessarily because there’s some I think disposition to not want to work hard or any of that per se. And again, I’m sounding like I’m being cranky about generational stuff, but my experience is at least the way I’ve viewed it.

And maybe this is like a naivete that serves me is they’re just young. They don’t, they just don’t have a lot of experience. They need me to train them and I need to be patient and I did need to help make sure the systems are really dialed in and I need to actually manage them. And I can’t trust that they’re going to.

necessarily be able to be managed by objective. It’s not, I can’t be like, you’ll do great, go figure it out. Which by the way, I did a ton. That was a source of a lot of, I think, frustration with me when I was younger was I over trusted people and sometimes they wanted to do a good job and they felt like they weren’t getting enough clarity on me for really what I want to happen.

Uh, I think the second thing I’ll say Very briefly about managing another generation is, [00:07:00] Oh, it’s escaping me. Oh, I had a second one. I’m so good. I’ll pull up there. It’ll, it’ll come back, but yeah, I actually think our opinions here are very similar, though. I might say it using slightly different words. So first I will say, as you pointed out, there are real differences to our value set, our worldview.

The way we think about ourselves in context of work. And it’s very clear that this generation is miles away from our grandparents generation, right? My grand, my house, my grandparents, I can tell you exactly how my grandfather thought about work, which was always fucking work. Yeah, it’s a fucking work.

It’s not my grandfather’s name is Mo and, and literally World War II veteran. And he was like, work is where you show up and you put all your personal shit aside and you get the goddamn job done. And I think our generation, I’ll speak for you and I, we have a little bit of that. We have a little bit of that attitude and maybe it’s a little Jersey in us as well.

But that cultural push of like, yeah, just fucking get it done. It might hurt. It might suck, but just push through anyway. And there’s tons of research that shows this latest generation. [00:08:00] Entering the workforce. Now, they have a very different opinion about that. They want to bring their whole selves to work.

And if work sucks, they want a place to talk about it. If they’re not having a good day, they want a place to talk about it. If they don’t like the work they’re doing, they want options. They want more autonomy and flexibility, and they don’t want to have to suck it up and swallow it. That doesn’t mean they’re not willing to work hard.

And that doesn’t mean they don’t care. I think the big mistake I see is in leaders across the board. All sectors, but Jim are specifically today making a lot of assumptions about the next generation that they’re managing because they haven’t gotten time to really understand that value set because once they do, and I’ll get to, I think you just said a second is I think how you manage them actually doesn’t change.

The how you manage someone who has that different skill set doesn’t change because as you pointed out, it’s all about clear expectations, right? If I can get clear what I want from you, what you can expect from me, what’s going to get done when and how that’s the work of management. And [00:09:00] so regardless of how, how narrow or wide the chasm is between us and how we see ourselves in work, and it’s wide, I think within this latest generation, how you, what you do about that is actually not any different than managing A 30 year old, 40 year old, 70 year old, but the thing that I see get in the way and then many of the calls I was on the last two weeks, what we worked on uncovering is, is the assumptions.

Is the assumptions people are making about the workforce that’s, they’re always on their phones. That means they don’t care, or they never want to work split shifts. That means they’re just, they don’t have a good work ethic, or I can go on and on with examples that I’ve heard the last few weeks. And listen, in some cases that might be true about individuals, but what I find that leaders doing is painting with this brush.

Big sweeping breasts, making assumptions about all of the 20 year olds they’re working with and it doesn’t help them become more managers. It actually makes it more difficult for them to manage because they’re not actually getting curious, asking questions about what their staff needs from them. And so [00:10:00] I think there is a gap and the way you manage doesn’t change regardless of the person’s age.

Is that making sense? Yeah. Yeah, I think it does. And I think there’s two things in here that I think tend to be true in my experience is not to get too law of attraction y, but the things we look at change by the way we look at them, says Wayne Dyer, right? So, there’s something he said for our expectations in some situations.

Even if we’re not necessary to change the behavior per se, we’re just attuned to look at evidence that, Oh, they don’t really want to be here. I think it’s one piece. I think the other thing that is true in virtually any business is the owner cares more than the people that are not the owner, right?

There’s always going to be a little bit of a gap there. So sometimes what I see is this sense of like, they just, they’re not all in it. It’s like, no, they’re not. It’s not their business. They’re an employee. They don’t have the same financial upside. And I know that can feel lonely and burdensome. And that’s why you should join the unicorn society because there’s Believe me, I do think you need spaces and places where you can share about the unique joys and challenges of what we do, but that’s not your [00:11:00] employees.

I think the other thing that strikes me. is that, and it’s funny, I’ve often reflected, I’ve said this out loud, reflected on the fact that depending on which data we look at, you Keeler are the youngest of the Gen Xs. And I am the oldest of the millennials, right? Yeah. So it is perhaps also true because we have a lot of client, that are younger than me, of course.

But we also some gym owners are maybe a little bit older. While I very much, I do think have a certain, I got some of the grind your teeth and get that thing done and put it aside. It was never my expectation that people I worked with would not bring them full selves in the work. It was never my expectation that we wouldn’t need to manage their feelings because if I’m selling someone’s soul force, if there’s something not right about how they feel about their life, even outside of work, first of all, I want to be helpful to them as a human first.

not just like their leader that’s using them for an economic game. And then secondly, even if I’m an evil Machiavellian, I’m going to get better results if they feel cared for, if they can look to me as a resource to really share what’s going on with [00:12:00] vulnerability and know that will be seen and cared for.

And that’s not mutually exclusive. I think with holding people accountable and In some situations saying with all love, look, this is not the right job for you. It seems like there’s a lot of stuff going on in your life right now. Cause the thing I was going to mention before that I think also relates to this, I’m curious your hot take on this too is.

At this point, not all, but many people that are contemporary and certainly in my peer group, right? I know your background is not as explicitly in the fitness as me. The people that I was going with perform better and we were trainers 15 years ago that are still in the game by definition are an unusual sample set because these are people that are lifers were in the game 15 years later.

We’re into middle age. We are owning gyms. Our trajectory is different than probably 80 90 percent of the fellow personal trainers that were with us at that time that a lot of which are probably out of the industry. Perhaps some are still in the industry, but they’re not quite as ambitious as [00:13:00] my particular peer group is defined by hyper ambitious people and the first generation of gym owners that are looking to really take big swings, really build these micro small business empires, really create some wealth, really make impact in our communities.

So sometimes I also see that where my peer group of gym owners Sometimes forget that when we were 20 years ago, we were not typical mid 20 somethings, right? We were, and again, I don’t want me to sound vainglorious. Is that the word? Vainglorious? I don’t mean to sound vainglorious, but we were not the typical sample set.

And that’s not to say that some of your trainers aren’t going to go on to do that, but sometimes I think there’s a sense of, Oh, when we were 25, when we were 30 and yeah, that’s true. But. You’re not a normal fitness professional. You’ve gone on with this incredible ambition and drive to do some like unusual level success in the industry.

And you can’t put that necessarily on people that are your employees. Yeah, 100%. I think it’s an important point to recognize even separate from a generational, you know, [00:14:00] Is that, is that as an owner, you’re going to always have an outsized level of caring and effort you’re willing to put into the business.

And that will always be the case, regardless of the age of the people that you’re working with. I’ll also, I’m trying to think of where we can go now. We’ve got a million directions, but let’s talk a little bit about practical things. So for those out there who are really concerned about. About managing other generations.

Let’s just maybe give a few tips about things that I think can be, could work. I’ll start with one, just pulling on the thread that I started earlier about, I think it’s important to really get in touch with the assumptions you’re making about other people and separate, separate your kind of their behavior from your feelings and assumptions about their behavior.

And then we talk about ad nauseum. We talk about management leadership. It’s easy to say hard to do, but I think all too often, all of you out there have these, you know, implicit biases about the people you work with and you’re, you’re Your best, your fastest way to get through that and become a better manager and leader for.

The next generation coming up is to stress test those thoughts is to reality test those assumptions you’re [00:15:00] making. So if you have a thought in your head that, gosh, all these new interns that just came in, just don’t want to work at all. They’re just so lazy. My suggestion is to find a way and I’ll suggest a way to go stress test that with them, sit down and have a conversation with all of them.

Be like, Hey y’all, one of the concerns I have is work ethic. One of the things that really matters to us here is putting in the hard work and the long hours. Let me tell you a few things I’m looking for. And people are going to be interns here and just to have a conversation about what are the observable behaviors that you want to see in people that represent that value for you or that characteristic for you, then have a conversation.

I think you might be surprised about what you learn, or this conversation might confirm something you already thought, but either way, your job as a manager and leader, and frankly, as a human. Well, we’ll put an asterisk here to circle back to the same conversation about politics on a future podcast that we’ll never do, but, but I think that ultimately it will be a secret one.

Subscribers. Yeah, hidden link. We have it [00:16:00] all figured out and we’re just not telling them all. Exactly. But I think this is just a great human skill to be able to question assumptions and biases you have, and then go and reality test them in conversation with people that you’re applying them to and find out where your assumptions are.

Fair and reasonable and maybe confirm them and where were you just way off base? And I think that it’s the fastest, most uncomfortable, but effective way to, I think, work across difference in this case, generational difference. What else would you say? Fisher is important here for managing across different value sets, skill sets.

Yeah. I’ll give one other, I think, very related pro tip, which sounds like you’re being I don’t know, annoying or pedantic, but I sometimes call this very playfully keeping a Santa’s naughty list because to your point, one of the issues are we start to make these grand narratives and stories about people, but we’re not always being rigorous about what the behaviors we’re seeing, the data that we’re using to tell the [00:17:00] story.

And in addition to stress tested by having a conversation and actually inviting them to dispute what you think or maybe let you know if they agree with some of the claims. I think actually being able to write down all the things that you’re seeing is very important, right? Because what we’re not suggesting is that it’s all in your head because sometimes it’s really not.

Further the issue when you’re talking about something as Nebil says, I just feel like you don’t give that much of a shit. Listen, it’d be easy if they were just stealing money from you because then you catch them and you fire them. It’s simple. It’s The problem is all these subtle things. And again, To Kira’s point, it might be a couple of things and you might really just be misinterpreting behavior because it’s only a few things.

Or as I once had a conversation with a, when I just love a former FFR who I’m sure gives no shit. It’s not listed. She’s a nurse now, but I just love her so much. What is one of my favorite people that in the world, though, she would laugh if I say she was not always easy to manage. And she was incredibly valuable for my [00:18:00] development because it was the first time where I was like, Oh.

Yeah. And I sat her down with a list of, I think like 13 things and I was, listen, each and every one of these things in and of themselves are not a big deal. We wouldn’t even be talking about it, but I was able to present her with, look, these are 13 pieces of behavior that when I take them together are telling me the story that maybe you don’t really give a shit and want to be here and these behaviors can’t continue and I want to invite you to be part of this conversation because maybe I’m reading you wrong, maybe there’s some expectations not clear about it.

What we need to see. Or you might not be aware about the way this might be coming across. And I think that becomes very helpful because then we’re not trying to manage our story. We’re able to talk to. Here’s the specific thing. But the challenge for you is the manager is that does require a little bit of discipline because usually it’s not gonna happen in a three day period.

And what I see in practice is they do one thing. It’s annoying. And maybe you don’t even mention it, but you notice if you’re a little annoyed, but whatever, it’s, you don’t even, you don’t think it’s worth the conversation. Then something else happens two weeks later, and then maybe you do have a conversation and it gets a little bit [00:19:00] better, but you still haven’t really written and logged the thing down.

But then a month and a half later, and what’s happening is you’re getting progressively more and more frustrated about to you what feels like this issue that is metastasizing and getting worse. And again, you’re not making this up. But then when you have the conversation with the person, they might not be self aware.

And to their defense, they’re noticing you’re coming at them with a lot of heat. They don’t want to be doing a bad job. They’re not even sure exactly what they’re doing. And then now you blow up because they answered an email. two hours past the deadline. They’re like, what is wrong with you boss? What is up your butt?

And again, I think like you’re not out of your mind. I understand how you got there, but for you to be helpful to them and yourself, you’re going to have to be a little more rigorous about really keeping a log of these things. Yeah. Santa’s naughty. Yeah. And including them earlier in the conversation.

Cause I think after you’ve captured three, four, five things, someone’s done over a period of time and haven’t talked to them about it once, then you just now have such an extreme confirmation bias, you’re going to be finding countless [00:20:00] reasons to justify your fury. And you’re getting more and more angry.

Yeah. And it’s going to get easier and easier to find things they fucked up because you’re not gonna be able to see them any other way. It’s solidifies in our mind. And so I think keeping tabs, you know, this is making me think of, cause you know, I’ve been in research mode lately for school is in a lot of qualitative research, a lot of things that researchers do, one of the things researchers do to keep track of this sort of thing is called memoing.

That’s exactly what you’re recommending here, which is interesting. Keep notes about how your thinking changes over time and what actually the stimulus is that changes your thinking. And we’re saying here is do some memoing, put your scientist hat on for, for what are the things that you notice, the observable behaviors of your team that are actually changing your opinion about them and keep track of that over time.

So you can start to see the breadcrumb trail of kind of evidence, but don’t hold onto it forever. You’re not writing a book. Talk to them about it as soon as you can. It’s not like I’m keeping a naughty list. Yeah, that’s not, that’s the opposite of what we want. Totally. [00:21:00] Yeah. But I think that it’s a really good tip, I think, and really important to our sense making, right?

Because that’s what we’re doing all the time is making sense of the world. And we’re not often very clear about how that happens. We wind up with these big bulky stories that are unwieldy. Which leads to all sorts of issues. And we shan’t go down that route. Yeah, let’s pull up there because we keep talking about this all day.

But I think we’ve covered enough about, I think for anyone out there struggling to manage folks that they perceive to be in a different kind of generational spectrum. I think hopefully the tips here today, I’ll help you get started on the right foot, but thanks for the great conversation. As always, Fisher, we’ll just remind people if you want to learn more about working with CFSC, go down on the show notes, click the link, learn more about how to work with them.

We highly recommend it and I’ll see you all on the next one. Bye bye.