Coaching Across Generations: Enabling Sense-Making in a Multigenerational World

Abstract

With the presence of five generations in organisations today, there is growing interest in finding new ways to manage and leverage a multigenerational workforce for individual and collective success. With rapidly evolving technology and the ever-changing nature of the workspace, a deeper look to understand the correlation between generation and development is required. Coaching is gaining traction as a means of enabling development for professionals. This article uses data from eight coaching case studies across four generations to analyse dominant coaching themes and preferences. We present seven key findings that point to some startling similarities and differences between and within generations, the need for an adaptive approach, and four implications for organisations and coaches, including the opportunity to look beyond generation and age.