In most organizations, you’ll find Boomers, Zoomers, and every label in between. Consultants have made a living convincing leaders they must manage people differently based on their birth year. The assumption? You’ll magically “get” people from your own generation while remaining mystified by others.
Let’s set fire to that nonsense.
Executives who would never tolerate racism or sexism embrace “generationalism” without a second thought. Experts lecture on how Gen Xers love autonomy, Millennials crave purpose, and Gen Z can’t put down their phones. But before you waste time decoding astrological birth charts masquerading as business insights, consider this: Human uniqueness doesn’t vanish when people share a birth decade, or start then they don’t. Thinking otherwise excuses leaders from actually getting to know their people, and from distinguishing excellence from mediocrity. That’s malpractice.
The Talent Trifecta
Great employees—no matter the generation—share a trifecta of qualities: aptitude, behavior, and experience. Evaluating talent with this model will help leaders make far better decisions about who deserves a seat at the table.
Aptitude
Aptitude means intellectual horsepower. It reflects a person’s ability to learn, synthesize, and adapt. Forget how many certificates they’ve earned or acronyms they’ve stacked behind their name—can they think? Can they solve problems they’ve never seen before?
Aptitude includes three key capacities:
- Verbal reasoning
- Quantitative logic
- Strategic thinking
Strategic thinkers don’t drown in data. They filter noise, focus on priorities, and avoid analysis paralysis. They learn on the fly. They shift gears when the road changes. You’ll often recognize aptitude through past behavior: how fast they picked up new skills, how well they navigated chaotic circumstances, how resilient they remained under pressure.
If aptitude’s missing, nothing else matters. You can’t coach someone into intellect. You can’t train your way out of a talent void.
Behavior
Behavior reflects conduct, not mood. While people may flex slightly across contexts, most behavioral patterns anchor in comfort zones. You want people who present themselves with professionalism and ethics. You want those who treat colleagues with respect, show up prepared, and finish what they start.
Behavior drives culture. One high performer who undermines team trust poisons the entire well. You can teach someone how to write a better proposal; you can’t teach them not to throw a colleague under the bus. Evaluate how people have conducted themselves in the past—that gives insight into how they’ll behave tomorrow.
And yes, behavior includes leadership presence. Gravitas. Self-control. Personal discipline. This doesn’t come from generational habits—it comes from character.
Experience
This one’s simple. What has the person done? Where have they built expertise? What industries, roles, or environments have shaped their skillset? Do they have ten years of experience? Or one year times ten?
Experience tells you what the candidate already knows how to do. But here’s the trap: past performance doesn’t predict future growth—unless it rides shotgun with aptitude and strong behavior. I’ve seen experienced people coast. I’ve seen rookies run laps around them. Don’t confuse tenure with talent.
If you encounter someone who lacks experience but shows high aptitude and solid behavior, invest. Train them. Coach them. Give them access to stretch assignments. That’s how you build a bench of leaders instead of just hiring them off the shelf.
A Word on Coaching
You might discover people with the brains and the heart but missing polish. Maybe they lack presentation skills, or they fumble difficult conversations. You’ve got options. You can coach them directly. You can send them to an executive coach. You can throw them into deep water with a life vest and see how they swim. Whatever you choose, growth follows when raw talent meets the right push. But if they don’t have aptitude to begin with, all that coaching is just babysitting. Best to not waste the resources.
It’s Not Generations that Matter, it’s the Right Standards
Top talent doesn’t wear generational uniforms. It doesn’t live inside a BuzzFeed quiz. It thinks, drives results, and does the right thing when no one watches.
If you lead a company and want it to grow, then kill the labels and elevate the standards. Shed the comfortable fiction that managing generations creates results. It doesn’t. Assess people based on who they are and what they can do—not when they first logged into AOL or TikTok.
Learn to judge talent by the trifecta: aptitude, behavior, and experience. Master that, and you won’t need cheat sheets about “how to talk to Millennials.”
You’ll already know how to lead humans
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