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Women at Work wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish. People don't always understand each other or work the same ways.

They communicate differently, they have different work habits, they prioritize different things, they have

different ideas of what constitutes a job well done, or even what the purpose of a job

is in the first place. These kinds of culture and value clashes have been in the workplace forever, but for a long time they were often

suppressed by organizations that forced a one-size-fits-all culture, but with a growing realization that these differences can fuel business

growth, not just slow it down through friction, they're emerging more and more, and all that

demands a different type of leader. One clear way in which these

clashes are playing out in the workplace comes along the generational divide.

Managers who grew up in a more rigid work environment are now leading millennials and others who did not.

Today's author says that empathy is one of the most important tools managers can have to better understand other generations in the workplace.

Mimi Nicklin is an ad agency executive and the author of the book Softening the Edge, Empathy,

how humanity's oldest leadership trait is changing the world.

Mimi, thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. So we're going to talk about generational gaps. I want to place you in a

generation. What generation are you? I am firmly in the middle of the millennial generation.

What was your, like growing up, what was your picture of work and what the workplace was like.

I think I'm one of those rare people that always knew that I wanted to work in advertising

and there aren't many of us.

...