NEXT GENERATION SKILLS GAP: What Boomers Need to Teach Gen Y and X

The "Corner Office" column interview in the New York Times on September 20, 2009 featured Linda Hudson, president of the land and armaments groups at BAE Systems giving an important perspective on corporate culture and the deficiencies of business school education. When asked by the Times' Adam Bryant what she would like business schools to teach more of, she responded:

"Business school graduates come with a large amount of theoretical knowledge. "But they don't have a clue of what it's like from a people-skill point of view, or the coping skill perspective of learning to deal with disappointment and failure. They come in here thinking that, first of all, they're going to run the company overnight. Many of them are convinced they've never made a mistake. They're not accustomed to encountering road blocks or disappointments. We give them all the book smarts, but we don't tend to give them the other skills that go along with business."

We hear the same themes from many professions and industries - in business, law, medicine, engineering and so on. The education system is focused on data and theory rather than incorporating a healthy portion of how to communicate effectively and relate to people -  colleagues, clients, customers, suppliers. It is the latter set of skills that enables people to become leaders that others will follow and to achieve necessary change in a fast-paced world. And in that fast-paced, time pressured, billable hour-type world, few individuals in the more senior generations have financial incentives to train and mentor the new young, blood brought in supposedly to invigorate and perpetuate the organization. On the contrary, they may feel they are digging themselves an early grave.

While Generations Y and X may be extremely technologically literate, most of them don't measure up to the Boomers and Traditionalists in people skills. Through mutual mentoring each can learn from the other, but there has to be a greater value put on communication and inter-personal skills in schools to lay the foundation, and the organizations that hire the young candidates need to persuade and partner with educational institutions to make sure that happens.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot     www.pdounsel.com