Why Won’t My Co-Worker Tell Me What She Knows?
“My boss wants me to record department processes so if anything happens down the road, we know what to do. However, I have this co-worker who just won’t share anything with me. I ask and she ignores me.” This is a common story for many, and this common story often times has a common denominator – the co-worker is a Baby Boomer.
Why is knowledge transfer and succession planning difficult for Baby Boomers? It’s not usually a conscious or deliberate defiance driving the Boomer. More often than not, it’s a subconscious, quiet voice telling the Boomer, “If you share your knowledge with this colleague, you will no longer have a competitive edge or specialty in the office. And if you don’t have a competitive edge or specialty, they can get rid of you and hire someone younger and cheaper.”
Where does this thought even come from? For most Boomers, it’s a part of their generational DNA. Boomers entered the workforce with 80 million other Boomers. The only way to prove themselves was to be unique and special in some way. This created a generation of competitive employees who were careful to be enough of a team player to count, but who ultimately were quietly protecting their own interests. “I would never tell someone I’m looking for a new job – that person might be looking too! I’d be decreasing my odds of promotion if I told others.”
Knowledge transfer and succession planning is an intriguing challenge for many organizations. By knowing why your Boomers are struggling to share information, you can shape your message to make the process easier and less threatening.
Practical things you can do:
1) Acknowledge the Boomer’s expertise and explain why his/her knowledge is so critical to the ongoing success of your organization.
2) Clearly show how you will use the gleaned knowledge to the benefit of the Boomer. “No one else has your knowledge about this process. We need that history to make sure we keep the program you created alive and functioning. You’ve worked so hard on this, we don’t want to lose it.”
3) Think outside the manual. When it comes to knowledge transfer, people often think this has to be written down in a manual somewhere. Knowledge transfer happens all the time in meetings and on the fly. Ask people to do short video clips on their phone to store in company files or host a panel luncheon where experience workers each give an example of an unusual scenario they’ve run across in their work experience.
Keynote speaker, trainer, and consultant, Sarah Gibson, helps organizations leverage the power of communication, teamwork and diversity to improve engagement and transform teams. To buy her book or inquire about her speaking programs, please visit www.sarahjgibson.com.
