Young nonprofit workers should consider carefully how they communicate with their baby-boomer colleagues, and tweak their approach in an effort to build understanding between the generations, writes Rosetta Thurman on her Perspectives from the Pipeline blog.

Ms. Thurman, who recently solicited feedback from a group of baby-boom age nonprofit and business leaders, learned that “younger generations have to listen, even if we think we know the answer, and can predict exactly what’s going to come out of our older colleagues’ mouth.”

The older leaders, she writes, noted twentysomethings’ sense of “entitlement and righteousness,” and the boomers crave respect for the experience they have accumulated.

“Gen Y should not seek to tell older leaders what they should do,” Ms. Thurman writes, “but instead ask for their help in creating shared solutions to the issues we are all facing in the workplace and in our professions

For a more detailed account of the tensions between older and young nonprofit workers, see this recent Chronicle article.

What do you perceive as being among the key obstacles to bridging the generation gap between baby boomers and young people in the nonprofit world? Click on the “comments” link below to share your thoughts.