In 20 years, I’ve not succeeded at explaining to my parents what I do—or why.

They’ve shown periodic interest in my various endeavors, and I’ve periodically tried to enthuse them with what I hoped were vivid and accessible verbal excursions into HR technology, product management, and the psychology of leadership. But it never takes more than a minute or two for their eyes to go into a blank stare, and for my voice to taper off until the discussion culminates in yet another tacit, embarrassed, abrupt change of subject. 

Nor have they found it easy to grasp, although they’ve mostly expressed a mix of tentative support and quiet resignation about my repeated forays into new roles, industries, careers, countries, and sometimes continents every few years. That’s hardly surprising given that they’ve both lived most of their lives in the same towns, working in the same careers throughout their lives, changing jobs only if they had to, and no more than a couple of times each in over 40 years. Also, most of the fields I’m excited about didn’t even exist when I was in high school, at least not in our part of the world. Many still aren’t taught at universities. 

Some of my friends’ pre-teen kids feel the same way about me. In no uncertain terms, though often with a cheeky grin and a sparkle in their eyes, they berate me for driving a diesel or not having social media profiles, incredulous that a friend of their parents could be so uncool.

Even if you’re better at explaining what you do, or are way cooler than I am, I’d venture to guess you’ve had some similar experiences. In many ways, we really do inhabit different worlds than the generations before and after us, and many of these differences do spill over into the world of work.

That may well be one reason why the popular idea that different generations want different things at work has had such enduring, intuitive appeal. From “OK boomer” through “avocado-loving, entitled millennials” to “sensitive, job-hopping Gen-Zs,” stereotypes galore are broadcast into the world in viral videos or eye-catching infographics that capture these generations’ purported traits and values in funny memes or a few bullet points, eliciting thousands of likes, comments and shares because they describe an experience that we all can relate to.

What they don’t describe, however, is reality—at least when it comes to the question of what different generations want at work. The world these videos and infographics paint—a world where all or even most members of a generation are characterized by the same three or four personality traits or motivational needs, values, and preferences—is a mathematical impossibility. Like height, IQ, or blood pressure, both personality traits and motivational needs, values, and preferences are also normally distributed in the population.

That means that the roughly two-thirds of us in the middle—or 68.27% to be precise, assuming a perfectly shaped bell curve—are endowed with more or less average height, IQ, and blood pressure, aren’t significantly more or less conscientious, emotionally stable, or open to change than most people, and value autonomy, security, or feedback approximately as much as most people.

And there are roughly 16% of us at either end of all of these scales who are noticeably different in some ways—very tall, exceptionally smart, struggling with very high blood pressure, particularly conscientious, emotionally stable, or open to change, or much more appreciative and in need of Autonomy, Security, or Feedback than others—or just the opposite.

From this, you can already see why it doesn’t make much sense to say that a particular generation wants something at work while another doesn’t.

When it comes to our motivational needs, values, and preferences, what we want is distributed along a continuum rather than in discrete categories. In other words, it makes little sense to say that some people want, say, Autonomy (or Security, Feedback, etc.) while others don’t. That would be like saying some people have height while others don’t.

What we can say is that:

We all need some level of Autonomy (or Security, Feedback, etc.)

Most (around 2/3) of us are pretty similar in how much of it we need

Some of us (around 1/6 each side) need a lot more or a lot less of it than most people.

But, you might object: that doesn’t mean a generation can’t be on either side of the bell curve, meaning they want something much more than other generations.

Theoretically, that might be possible, but as you’ll see in the research findings below, the data shows a very different picture.