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.

Research findings: We’re both more alike and different than we think

Attuned specializes in measuring what motivates people and the extent to which their work environment meets their motivational needs, values, and preferences. Their award-winning software is built around a scientifically validated, statistically reliable motivator assessment developed by I/O psychologists, and the tool is used by companies like AWS, Hitachi, Rakuten, Schindler, and Suzuki, with tens of thousands of people having taken their assessment over the years.

A few weeks ago, Attuned kindly made part of their data available to me in an anonymized form to perform this analysis.

(Full disclosure: I led Attuned as managing director in the first two years of its operation and have retained a consulting relationship with the company.)

Attuned measures the extent to which people are motivated by 11 motivational factors:

• Altruism: The endeavor to help, support and maintain the wellbeing of others, as well as the expectation that others will help us if we need it; the preference of a kind of environment where this comes about on a mutual basis.
  

• Autonomy: The need to develop and preserve personal freedom; striving for independence in decision-making, time management, and working out solutions while assuming personal responsibility.
  

• Competition: An attraction to challenges, struggles and competitive situations; a continuous striving to compete with others, to reach appointed goals and find success, in relation to both others and to oneself.
  

• Feedback: The need for feedback from others, for evaluation and recognition in all areas of life; the desire for both negative and positive feedback to help carry out work satisfactorily and reinforce a sense of worth.
  

• Financial Needs: The desire for financial security and wellbeing; a liking for activities entailing the generation of profit, and of endeavors to accumulate and safeguard wealth.
  

• Innovation: An attraction to varied and novel situations and tasks in all areas of life, where an opportunity exists to create something new, to introduce new approaches, and to apply unconventional solutions.
  

• Progress: The endeavor to acquire new capabilities or skills and to expand knowledge in all areas of life, driven by the need for personal development and professional growth.
  

• Rationality: An attraction to logical, objective and scientific methods; the endeavor to make decisions based on factual data and connections of cause and effect, and by taking into account objective feedback from others.
  

• Security: The desire for planning and predictability, and the need for precisely defined rules, clear frameworks and spheres of responsibility; a striving for stability and permanence in all areas of life.
  

• Social relationships: A fondness for belonging to a group; striving for frequent and mutual social interactions, developing quality human relationships and a good social atmosphere.
  

• Status: The desire for reputation, recognition, respect and continuous progress through the ranks, as well as the endeavor to develop a lifestyle which, through external appearances, makes social status and position at the workplace unequivocal.

Attuned also collects some demographic and metadata from respondents—including what age group they belong to (in five-year increments) and the date on which they took the assessment—for research purposes. Based on this data, I was able to unambiguously assign 13,171 respondents to specific generations, in the following breakdowns:

Only unambiguous assignments were made, so if a respondent’s generation couldn’t be ascertained from their age group and assessment date with 100% certainty, they were excluded from the generational analysis. However, when analyzing response trends by age group rather than generation, there were an additional 4,485 responses that could be considered, bringing the total sample up to 17,656 respondents. Sample sizes for each five-year age group between 20 and 65 ranged from 386 to 2,927.

Altruism, Innovation, Progress and Security are roughly equally important to all generations

Looking at the distribution of responses, it appears that four motivational values—Altruism, Innovation, Progress, and Security—are roughly equally important to all generations. Regardless of which generation they belong to, people are equally likely to value a supportive work environment, opportunities to create something new and learn new skills, and clear frameworks that allow them to plan ahead and perform at their best.

For example, look at the distribution of responses across the four generations when it comes to Altruism:

No “war of generations” to see here. Regardless of which generation you belong to, you’re practically equally likely to value a supportive, collaborative environment and opportunities to mentor and help others, or to prefer individual problem-solving and a task-oriented vs. people-centric approach.

And even though there is an ever so slight, barely perceptible decline in the importance of this value for Baby Boomers and Generation X compared to Millennials and Generation Z on average, a woman of the Baby Boomer generation is actually very slightly likelier to value Altruism than a millennial man because women score slightly higher on Altruism than men on average (but here again, the difference between genders is a lot smaller than stereotypes would have you believe, and non-binary people score higher than either women or men).

The picture is similar in the case of Innovation, Progress, and Security as well, with no major differences across the four generations—although in the case of Security, with a slightly more pronounced decline in the older generations compared to Generation Z. But the fact that young people at the start of their careers appear to value clear, well-defined roles, frameworks, and expectations slightly more than people with decades of work experience shouldn’t be too surprising.

Competition, Feedback, Rationality, Social Relationships and Status appear to lose some importance with age

In the case of Competition, Feedback, Rationality, Social Relationships and Status, the distribution of responses shows a more pronounced decline among Baby Boomers and Generation X compared to Millennials and Generation Z.
Take Feedback as an example:

The average Gen-Z-er and Millennial would be in the top quartile among Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers as well—that’s a pretty significant difference. In fact, a member of Generation Z is around 2.5 times more likely than a Baby Boomer to find Feedback highly motivating, meaning that while only around 18% of Baby Boomers are likely to be highly motivated by feedback, approximately 45% of Gen-Zers are likely to need it to feel motivated at work. 

(“High” is defined by Attuned, and in this analysis, as belonging to the top 30% of respondents, which roughly corresponds with those who score at least 0.5 standard deviation above the mean in a normal distribution.)

Note that these numbers are very far from indicating that “Gen-Z wants Feedback at work while Baby Boomers don’t.” The two generations are similar in that individual differences dominate in both—some Gen-Zers and some Baby Boomers need more Feedback than the average person to feel motivated at work, and some in both generations need less. But in the case of Gen-Z, a lot more people belong in the former group.

But are these differences generational or age-related?

In the absence of longitudinal data, it’s hard to say. (Attuned is collecting such data, but the time span isn’t long enough yet to draw conclusions from it.) What we can say with certainty is that to the extent that motivational differences do exist between the four generations, they appear to be progressive and incremental, following the same trends across the different five-year age groups within generations as they do across generations. This may indicate that these changes are driven by age rather than generational membership, or that generations themselves may be better conceptualized as existing along a continuum rather than being discretely demarcated.

Eventually, I don’t think the answer matters all that much to practicing managers and HR professionals. For practical purposes, it’s enough to know that the younger your team and workforce, the more they need feedback and recognition to feel motivated at work. And by the time the next generation enters the workforce, Attuned should have longitudinal data across a long enough time span to settle the question.
The younger generations also appear to value competitive challenges, clear explanations of cause and effect and of the rationale for decisions, opportunities to make close friendships at work, and career opportunities to progress through the ranks slightly more than the older generations. These trends appear to hold equally for both genders, with one interesting exception: women of the Baby Boomer generation appear to value Rationality a lot more than Baby Boomer men or women of Generation X, almost as much as Millennials of both genders. This finding is somewhat surprising as men tend to value rationality slightly higher than women on average, and I don’t have a good explanation for it, but I find it to be a great example of how useless generational or gender stereotypes are when it comes to understanding what motivates people.

Autonomy appears to gain importance with age

Autonomy—the ability to make your own decisions and schedule your own time flexibly and independently—appears to become more important with age.

A Baby Boomer is roughly 2.5 times more likely than a member of Generation Z to find Autonomy important at work, and Gen-Xers and Millennials aren’t far behind. Keep in mind that this, too, doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions of Gen-Zers out there who highly value Autonomy at work. It simply means that a smaller percentage of them do than of the other generations.

This trend is even more pronounced among women, with women of the Baby Boomer generation being four times more likely than women of Generation Z to value Autonomy highly.

Millennials find Financial Needs more important than other generations

The labor market is called a “market” for a reason; we all work for money, at least most of the time. But the importance of money in our choice of work and as a motivating factor appears to vary somewhat with age (or generational membership), with Millennials finding it somewhat more important on average than other generations.

Again, it’s difficult to know if this should be attributed to age or generational membership.

But because the importance of money seems to decline progressively with age for Millennials, too, after peaking at the age of 30-34, and because that is approximately the age when many people get married, start families, and buy houses, cars and other expensive possessions if they can, I’m somewhat more inclined to attribute the difference to age. In a few years, I hope we can answer this question with certainty.

Comparisons and conclusions

How do these results compare to previous studies?

In some respects, these findings replicate previously published research into the subject.

Similarly to this analysis, this study also found no significant differences in Altruism values across generations, and it also found that Baby Boomers scored lower on Status values than other generations. It hypothesizes that “higher status and longer tenure [for Baby Boomers] mean that these requirements have been met and these [i.e., status] work values are no longer as salient for older groups.”

On the other hand, the study’s findings for freedom work values differ from what Attuned’s data shows regarding the different generations’ need for Autonomy. One reason for the difference may be that Generation Z didn’t feature prominently in the study. And because the study’s sample size at 504 was much smaller than the sample for this analysis at over 13,000 people, and over 80% of their sample belonged to the Baby Boomer generation or Generation X, I think it’s fair to consider the data sample for this analysis to be more robust.

Overall, the conclusion that there aren’t significant differences between the generations when it comes to motivational needs, values and preferences, and the idea that the differences that do exist may be age-related rather than generational shouldn’t surprise those who have kept up with serious research into the subject.

Meta-analyses like this one have also concluded that “the relationships between generational membership and work-related outcomes are moderate to small, essentially zero in many cases,” and suggested that rather than generational membership, “chronological age, or some other variable, is likely responsible for the small effects that were observed.”

It is also worth contrasting the small differences that we did observe between the four generations with the almost infinite combinatorial variety of motivational needs, values, and preferences at the individual level. Considering that Attuned measures 11 motivational factors, and that respondents can have a low, average, or high score on each of these, there are three to the power of 11 = 177,147 different general motivational profiles any respondent can have (and more than 7.5 quadrillion unique combinations).

Take any two people from any particular generation, and it’s highly likely that their motivational profiles will be more different than alike regardless of their similar age or generational membership. But take two larger groups from two different generations, and it’s highly likely that their motivational profiles, on average, will be more alike than different regardless of their different ages or generational memberships.

Paradoxically, we’re both more alike (at the generational level) and different (at the individual level) than stereotypes would have us believe. I don’t know about you, but I find that beautiful.

This article has been edited down from its original length. To read the full version, visit The MotivatingManager Monthly on Substack.

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Daniel Bodonyi

Founder, MotivatingManager