A Quick Story
In early March, I attended the B2B Marketing Exchange conference in Phoenix and enjoyed introducing all the speakers in the content track. That role allowed me to connect with a wide range of attendees as they came into the sessions—and I made it a point to say hello, ask questions, and listen.
Two things stood out immediately:
- The broad range of ages in the room
- The noticeably different perspectives—on marketing and on life—that came with them.
One moment in particular stuck with me: I saw so many young marketers who were energized—truly excited—about facing some classic marketing challenges for the first time. Meanwhile, as a seasoned marketer who’s seen these patterns play out repeatedly, I found myself feeling… well, tired.
That contrast made something click for me. We’re often talking about the same marketing truths but approaching them from completely different places. And unless we recognize that, we risk misunderstanding or misjudging each other.
I’ve seen this dynamic play out in many of the companies I work with and certainly during my time as an owner of the Pedowitz Group. But for some reason, this moment hit differently. It stopped me in my tracks and made me reflect—not just on how much marketing has evolved but also on how differently the people doing the marketing view the world, depending on the lens of their generation.
That experience sparked this blog.
My hope is that it opens a real conversation about how we, as leaders, can better navigate and support the generational diversity on our teams—practically, intentionally, and with a little more empathy.
✅ Five Key Takeaways from Reading This Blog
To help you more easily digest this 2000+ word blog, I’ll begin with the five key takeaways that are most important for revenue marketing leaders.
- You’re Leading in Uncharted Territory
Managing across four distinct generations in a single marketing team is unprecedented. This requires more than traditional leadership models—it demands emotional intelligence, adaptability, and clarity.
- Mindset Drives Performance
You can’t just manage to the funnel; you have to lead the humans behind it. Developing your “inner strengths”—like empathy, optimism, and emotional agility—is the foundation for high performance across generational lines.
- Generational Tension is Real—But Manageable
From differing views on work ethic to tech adoption and feedback preferences, generational friction can derail performance if ignored. But with the right mindset and a few intentional shifts, you can turn these differences into strategic advantages.
- Action is Where Leadership Becomes Real
Inner strengths are only powerful when applied. Practical actions—like co-creating communication norms, updating feedback structures, and pairing team members for cross-generational learning—bridge the gap between intention and impact.
- Seven Immediate Actions to Address Generational Tensions
Learn the seven immediate actions you can take to reduce generational friction and build a more cohesive, high-performing marketing team—starting today.
Where We Are Today
Let’s face it: managing a marketing team has never been more complex. You’re not just driving pipeline and proving ROI in real-time. You’re not just aligning with sales, staying ahead of AI, and navigating budget pressures. You’re also leading humans—and those humans span four different generations.
From Gen Zers fresh out of college to Baby Boomers steeped in institutional knowledge, today’s marketing teams are more diverse in age, mindset, and expectations than ever before. That’s both an opportunity—and a leadership challenge.
If you’re a revenue marketing leader, your success depends not just on delivering results, but on creating an environment where every generation on your team feels motivated, heard, and capable of high performance.
This blog is your no-fluff guide to leading a multigenerational revenue marketing team in today’s high-change world.
The 4 Generations of Revenue Marketing Teams
First, a quick breakdown of who’s most likely on your team:
- Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964): Often experienced leaders or advisors. They value loyalty, hard work, and in-person relationships.
- Gen X (born 1965–1980): Independent, pragmatic, and resourceful. They bridge analog and digital, and often hold leadership roles.
- Millennials (born 1981–1996): Purpose-driven, collaborative, and tech-savvy. They seek flexibility, growth, and meaningful work.
- Gen Z (born 1997–2012): Digital natives. Creative, fast learners, and deeply values-driven. They expect transparency, psychological safety, and adaptability.
Now put that in the blender with a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) business environment, and it’s no wonder many leaders feel like they’re spinning. (PS, I recently learned about VUCA from my daughter who is in graduate school and studying organizational psychology.)
Why Leading Four Generations Is Harder Than It Sounds
It’s tempting to think that experience and a good work ethic are enough to manage everyone. In addition, many leaders have firm beliefs in their ability to lead, yet fail to grasp the different ways of thinking across the generations. But here’s the reality:
- What motivates one generation frustrates another.
- Communication styles are wildly different.
- Expectations for leadership, flexibility, and feedback vary significantly.
- And the remote/hybrid environment has only amplified the divide.
Let’s add a few more layers:
- Boomers may feel sidelined by fast-moving AI adoption.
- Gen Z might find traditional corporate structures outdated.
- Millennials are burned out from being stretched thin between roles and life.
- Gen X is often managing up, down, and sideways—without much recognition.
Bottom Line: Inner Strengths Drives Outer Success
As a revenue marketing leader, you’re in the middle of this generational dance. And if you don’t lead with intention, you risk creating friction, disengagement, and underperformance across the board. In addition, as a leader, you need to set the stage for how each generation acts with each other.
The real power of modern marketing leadership lies in how you connect, adapt, and show up for your people.
I call these inner strengths and define them as the mindsets, emotional skills, and self-awareness that empower leaders to navigate complexity, connect across differences, and lead with clarity, resilience, and purpose—especially in high-pressure, multigenerational environments.
It's not just about solving tactical issues—it's about using who you are as a leader to guide your team through generational differences with trust, clarity, and shared purpose.
I’ve outlined two steps you can take Shift how you lead and put that shift into practice.
Step One: Shift How You Lead—Use Your Inner Strengths To Drive Performance
Let’s be honest—traditional leadership models weren’t designed for this moment. Command-and-control? Outdated. One-size-fits-all training? Useless. Managing a multigenerational team requires a different kind of leadership—one rooted in clarity, emotional intelligence, and the ability to adapt across perspectives.
This is where many revenue marketing leaders miss the mark.
They focus on funnel mechanics, but not on the mindset and motivation of the team powering it.
If you want to lead across generational lines, you need to build what I call “inner strengths.”
These are the power skills—the internal strengths that make the biggest difference when you’re leading people with vastly different values, expectations, and lived experiences.
The Eight Inner Strengths Required to Lead a Multi-Generational Team
🌀 Emotional Agility
Stay present and responsive—even when faced with tension, resistance, or conflict across generations. This is the key to leading without escalating stress.
💬 Empathy
Recognize and respect how different age groups view the workplace, communicate, and show up. Empathy isn’t about agreement—it’s about understanding.
🌞 Optimism
Keep your team grounded in possibility. Your mindset sets the tone—especially when priorities shift or pressure mounts.
🔥 Purpose-Centered Motivation
Help every team member connect their work to something that matters. Purpose cuts across generational lines—it energizes Boomers and Gen Z alike.
🎯 Focused Decision-Making
Cut through competing needs, lead with clarity, and make confident decisions when the path isn’t obvious. This is especially important in a high-stakes, VUCA world.
📈 Growth Mindset
Encourage learning and experimentation. Different generations have different learning curves—what matters is your ability to lead through them.
🧭 Confidence & Executive Presence
Lead with calm, clarity, and courage—even when things get messy. Teams take their emotional cues from you.
🤝 Relationship Building & Influence
You can’t lead people you don’t understand. Build trust across generational lines by listening, learning, and connecting with intention.
💡 These aren’t soft skills. They’re survival skills for leading in today’s marketing world—and they can be developed, strengthened, and practiced like any business skill.
Next, we’ll walk through how to apply these insights to the real friction points showing up across generational divides on your team.
Step Two: Apply Inner Strengths to Address Generational Tensions
In this section, I’ll address the most common generational tensions I see in marketing organizations, highlight the leadership shift and practical actions you can take.
🌟 1. Misalignment on What Matters
Across generations, values, motivations, and definitions of success vary widely. What feels meaningful to one group may feel irrelevant to another.
Leadership Shift:
Tap into purpose-centered motivation. Your job isn’t to force alignment—it’s to help every team member connect their work to what matters to them.
Action You Can Take:
- Ask in 1:1s: “What about your work energizes you the most?”
- Reinforce the bigger ‘why’ behind the team’s mission and how each person contributes.
🧭 2. Generational Assumptions and Biases
It’s easy to fall into unconscious assumptions—like “Boomers don’t get digital” or “Gen Z doesn’t want to work hard.” These labels create distance and limit connection.
Leadership Shift:
Use your empathy and emotional agility to identify and challenge your own assumptions. Lead with curiosity, not judgment.
Action You Can Take:
- Create space for generational storytelling or “career journeys” in team meetings.
- Model openness by naming your own learning moments across generational lines.
💬 3. Clashing Communication Styles
Gen Z may send a GIF in Slack. Boomers prefer a call. Gen X and Millennials fall somewhere in between.
Leadership Shift:
Use your empathy and emotional agility to recognize and respect individual communication preferences, while building a shared framework for team clarity.
Action You Can Take:
- Host a quick team sync to talk about communication preferences.
- Co-create norms for things like response time, tone, and tools—and explain why they matter.
🔁 4. Misaligned Feedback Expectations
Younger marketers want regular, growth-focused feedback. Older generations may feel that’s excessive or intrusive.
Leadership Shift:
This is where your growth mindset and focused decision-making come in. Normalize a culture of feedback that supports performance, not control.
Action You Can Take:
- Audit your current feedback rhythms—are they working for everyone?
- Introduce more frequent check-ins (especially for younger team members), while coaching older managers on how to give feedback that empowers.
⚙️ 5. Gaps in Tech Fluency
Gen Z adapts to tech in seconds. Boomers may need context and more hands-on training. This can easily become a source of friction—or a chance to build connection.
Leadership Shift:
Lean into relationship building and optimism here. Frame these differences as a learning opportunity for both sides.
Action You Can Take:
- Pair up tech-savvy younger team members with senior marketers for reverse mentoring.
- Make tech adoption a shared goal, not a burden. Celebrate small wins along the way.
🕒 6. Different Views on Work Ethic
Boomers and Gen X may value long hours and in-office presence. Millennials and Gen Z lean into flexibility, outcomes, and balance.
Leadership Shift:
Use your purpose-centered motivation to align the team around shared goals, not shared schedules. Lead conversations about what “high performance” looks like today—and let go of outdated notions that value hours over impact.
Action You Can Take:
- Establish a team agreement around deliverables, availability, and trust.
- Coach senior leaders who may unintentionally be reinforcing old expectations.
🔄 7. Change Fatigue and Adaptability Gaps
Some generations may embrace rapid change, while others crave stability and structure. That tension can surface in team dynamics and culture.
Leadership Shift:
Use your optimism and growth mindset to normalize change as a shared journey. Acknowledge the fatigue but reframe it as a chance to grow together.
Action You Can Take:
- Build change into your team rhythm (e.g., “What’s one thing we tried this quarter that didn’t work—but taught us something?”)
- Offer targeted support for those struggling to adapt—without judgment.
The Truth Is…
The truth is, leading across four generations isn’t just a marketing challenge—it’s a human one.
And it’s not going away. But it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. When you build your inner strengths as a leader and apply them intentionally to real-world tensions, you create a team culture rooted in trust, shared purpose, and sustainable performance. The best marketing teams aren’t the ones that avoid generational differences—they’re the ones that harness them. So let’s lead with more clarity, more empathy, and more intention. Because when you lead from the inside out, every generation on your team has the opportunity to thrive.
