Generational Considerations for Academic Leaders

At a recent regional meeting I did a presentation on what leaders could consider when working with Generation Z (people born between 1997 and 2012). During the discussion, there was hefty skepticism regarding the validity of generational norming. This was despite my framing the information with poll results shared by YouGov (Jones, 2024): 27 percent of people do not identify as the generation they fall under, 15 percent said they were not even sure what generation they are, and 45 percent of Gen Zers were the most likely group to say they do not match their generation’s description. While the YouGov poll framed this poll as who does not identify with their generation, 73 percent do identify as the generation they fall under, and that includes 55 percent of Gen Z. This is not to say that generational commonalities apply to everyone born during a certain date range, but it might be worth considering commonalities.