Lead Better - How Generations See Privacy Differently

0:00Good afternoon, Scott Baker, Sierra Holland. Good to see you both. Happy Thursday. Happy Thursday. And we have assembled, I think, the perfect focus group for this very topic. Today's field note that we're talking about on lead betters entitled, How Generations See Privacy differently. And we're all in multiple decades here. So this is a good question, because you know, it comes up and I have kids that are in three different decades. So I've seen a lot of different attitude shift. And this is about how corporations, organizations, when they're setting policy find who wildly different impressions in terms of folks that have been around for decades and some of the newer folks who have a very different view of what privacy means. Now, how should we start with this? I don't want to necessarily pull the room about like, what are you willing to disclose live right now? You know, I'm

1:02I had a, I had a soul of platforms. I had a bet that that was going to be your opening question of, yeah, okay, we can all reveal it from ourselves. So that's so funny. But in terms of where to start, I can, I can tell you something that was huge in forming my own perspective on privacy and it gets back to a college class that I took. So the college class was all on cybersecurity and data and technology at the time. And I mean, maybe my professor was a bit of a a doomer on this, but he said, just so you know, you are not private anywhere. You are not private in your home. You are not private when you're in public. You're constantly being monitored and you're constantly under surveillance. And now with, and that was before all of the Alexa's and the Google home and everything that's now embedded in everybody's homes that is constantly listening. So I would say it's not a particularly vivid story, but hearing my

2:07college professor saying, guess what? In terms of cybersecurity, everybody knows where you are, what you're doing and all of the ways that you're being tracked throughout the day. So that has definitely informed my perception of what privacy is and what it means. I understand the field notes a bit more about personal privacy and what you disclose at work. But as a first layer, that class has fully formed my perspective on privacy. Like, yeah, I don't know if you're feeling you know, harmed or anything, but you know, I think out of the in the first four seconds when Sierra said, in my college class on cybersecurity and AI, and you know, I was like, she's she's just it's ageism. She's just mocking me. I kind of imagine that we would have even had a college class. She's mocking you because she can actually remember her college class in the time. Oh, burn. Right. It's like, yeah, or like my 11 year was like, can you tell me about when you were young, you know, like when there was Moses and dinosaurs and I'm like, yeah, right. But there,

3:08there definitely is a difference. So our generation didn't have YouTuber as like the most popular job that everyone wanted to be. But for the last 10 years, Lego has pointed out maybe it's not 10 years, maybe about six years or so. Lego's poll of young people asking them what they want to do when they grow up, becoming a YouTube influencer has been the top thing there, which means a couple different things because we've already noticed that YouTubers younger generation, whether it's streamers or whatever, they're aware of the fact that the things that they say online can cancel them, can get them in trouble does it actually does affect their bottom line very quickly. And their ability to be able to secure, you know, sponsorship deals and that type of thing. And yet they want it. They still want to do it. But they still want it. Right. So the idea of being under the public light, I remember you and I remember in the early days of people like I Justine

4:10coming out and being these lifestyle bloggers where I just she's from Pittsburgh. I know I just seen before she was I just teed. Right. But that that was like we really didn't understand what it would do to the psychology of an individual who was constantly living under not just the kind of surveillance that Sarah was talking about, but like intentionally disclosing everything about themselves for the sake of finding a career that way. So I think it'll be a much more normative thing. I think like the idea of complaining that kids don't play outside as much or do crazy things the way that we did, I think it's related to all that. So this notion of like how you reconcile the privacy differences in the way that people it's not just true about privacy. There's other things in there as well. So the question becomes how do you do you just turn it into an age as in conversation on the way that you've been joking about it, Scott? Or is there a specific way to do? Because I think most people just kind of stop short at making jokes about the ageism

5:15and we we need to intentionally think about how to blend these two ways of thinking because there's been a dramatic shift that has taken place because of technology in the way that we interface with each other and with our tech. Yeah. This has been such an interesting field note to think about in advance of today's conversation because it's all about how do you accommodate people in the workplace who either feel that they want to keep a lot of their life private, whether it's work compensation, their personal lives, etc. How do you accommodate folks that want to stay more private with a growing generation that wants to be more open, that wants to be more transparent about what they're making or their personal lives or sharing their mental health struggles. And it's interesting because I might disagree with some of what the field note is putting out there that you have to strike a balance somewhere in the middle. Whereas I think leaders have to respect their team members' comfortability with with those things. The best leaders that I've seen do this.

6:18The just the compromise isn't enough. You might have to have some flex in both directions. Yeah. I mean, I've seen leaders who they set the ground rule as you're welcome to share as much or as little with me as you are comfortable. You set the agenda of how much I know about you outside of work and I'm going to follow your cues. So as an example, if we talk about your yearly goals and I say is there anything you're focused on getting better at outside of work, you have the opportunity to say, yep, I'm working on a few things but not relevant to this conversation and that I as a leader respect that versus somebody who says, well, I need to know what's going on in your personal life. You have to let your team member lead you in what they're comfortable disclosing. And I struggled a bit with the compromise idea because I don't want a team where everybody feels unsatisfied with how much they can share or cannot share. If I have a team member that wants to disclose to me their medical diagnoses, their their mental health and how I can support them

7:20or better understand how to lead them, I want them to feel free to do so. But I'm not going to expect that of my team members to for them to all live under the exact same norm. I would say my norm as a team leader would be you set the tone and the depth of what you're willing to share with me and I'm not going to push you beyond your bounds. So as a younger person is your self-awareness of that moron display than someone who's older because because the amount of disclosure is something that you would be okay with and not necessarily an older person. It's an interesting question but I'm thinking of a leader who I reported to for a long time who set that agenda with me and he's not, you know, a 25-year-old leader, he is older in age. So I wouldn't, I think anybody has any leader can set that expectation but maybe it's coming more naturally to me because that's my general leadership style is you have to let some of your team members leave you and how you can help

8:21them. But then second, I've had a great role model of it and they weren't, you know, a 30-year-old leader or 25-year-old leader either. I would say I am more aware of how much is shared because I'm actually somebody who grew up on the social media and everybody sharing everything and I've since moved away from social media, I don't have Instagram, I don't use Facebook. So my own relationship with how much I'm willing to share and how much I find that to be meaningful has changed a lot in the last five, six years whereas others continue to share their lives publicly. I mean, my only social media is LinkedIn which probably tells you something. Yeah, it probably does. Well, let me ask you one question here because and there's like so many areas like I think we could do like 90 really interesting minutes on this honestly. But but see are you talked about this idea and an organization which is part of the point of the field note and our discussion here how are we helping leaders and and the ability to let people disclose as much as they're comfortable. There's an element in the field notes not fully built out but I think

9:25it is part of the tension which is that that and I'll give it an today example because Adam granted an email today about his argument going back to 2016 with Brunei Brown on authenticity and the idea of oversharing right now they've worked and they do a podcast together now and I'll come back to that. But the idea is that a lot of times in these organizations it's not just that we want you to disclose what you're comfortable about but that there's an element where the organization is having to set some policies because some people are very uncomfortable with how some younger generation people are like I'm just sharing it I have to share this I have to share my this part of myself or my political views or everything else and they're saying well we're going to try to set some bounds here it's not just the permission to you to share but it's where do you put the restrictions on what people should share. Yeah that's a different generational sensibility isn't it? It is and what it's getting at is

10:30what are the kinds of conversations we allow in the workplace versus not and I think that has to be a very difficult role to say here here's our policy on what's on the table and off the table for discussion and you know I I spent you may not know this about it but I I spent time at the in the Tully Center for free speech so I have a bit of of that in the back my mind I know it's not exactly the same thing but I think when we shut down the discussion we shut down the opportunity to connect with one another and I think if you're the leader that's saying you know this person's disclosing too much to me of course maybe it's maybe it's crossing those boundaries and leaders need to deal with that with HR in the way that's comfortable to them but I think when we start layering in all of these different restrictions and what you can say and what you you're not willing to you're not allowed to talk about in the workplace I struggle with that because I think discussion is such a gift to teams to creating connection to creating understanding and that's maybe just a world view that I bring that that makes this field no challenging for me.

11:31Well we talk about in our recommendations for our social media policy for instance that people not discuss religion and politics online in the way but the reason that we're doing that is obvious right we don't our understanding of the culture inside of the building is much different than the way that people might understand it outside so there's not going to be a policy internally for us about not discussing politics but it definitely is going to show up on our social media recommendations on how people should or shouldn't behave online. So but there there's going to be a lot of people on the free speech issue who are going to take issue with that Sierra and they're going to they're going to be like like they're immediately go to an infringement issue so the careful discussion of what you can and can't talk about internally from a privacy point of view is like some people will just automatically think that it's a political thing like and because of your background you come from it from thinking of from a free speech

12:37violation right and yeah that's the one I bring right and so as a result of that like everything is now up for grabs like you're not suggesting that we don't draw those guidelines but the value of a specific organization where their culture is might look differently for many other cultures like inside the organization how might where you came from from the I can't remember the name of the organization that you just mentioned. Yeah Tully Center but the Tully Center what you know do they actually draw lines internally about what could and could not be discussed does that mean that we're all going to be discussing salaries right because you don't want to write right right which is the example then the field note right yeah and I think where the field note I continue to just noodle a lot it's smarter the smarter people than me wrote this field note so there's something for me to learn and to gain from it but the point around we have to get to some level of compromise in the middle and that if both people who are very

13:43private versus people who are very public if they both feel that they're a little unhappy with the policy it's probably the right one I still question that even in and of itself because the structure of privacy benefits certain people to keep salaries private benefits some people to keep certain decisions private benefits some people and disadvantages others so I think it's just a broader conversation of what is the good that we're trying to do and I think a leader's role is to connect with people to form those bonds to create that fellowship to create team connections and I think when you start putting these really harsh guardrails in place of we can never speak about this we can always speak about that it makes it harder to have those open conversations and also who's monitoring that like what what is the the way that we're actually going to enforce that except through complaints um well even chemo in the in the comment section he mentioned specifically that the way that he's seen it done is that it's part of the NDA that people will sign

14:46so the actual rule we we talk about it as norms in the field note but if it's actually spelled out explicitly as a rule then it being placed in a NDA is something that people are like we're going to take this very seriously about what you can again now the the move to put that into an NDA says more about the culture of the organization than it does about whether or not we should adopt that rule right and so what does your culture say that you should do when you actually want to enforce the norm that you've now set out loud right and there's a variety of ways to do that as well thinking about it explicitly uh first that there is going to be a generational divide about it is the first step secondly naming the norms out loud is the second step the third thing is about enforcement right and those three steps are going to be show up very differently in every organization there's no universal that we could think of that we should say should show up in every organization is that I can't think of one because it is all going to be based on that culture based on that employee base based on

15:51the work that they do the values that they hold the culture that that makes sense for them um but definitely a provocative topic yeah well and I'll just wrap it the answer so much we didn't get to but you know it's one of the things that I I remember from the pointer institute which would inform journalists that you that you were always in the in the the the mode of trying to seek the truth and report it as fully as possible right but that you had to within the boundaries of that respect that there were that you would maximize truth telling but minimize harm and so we're all doing an internal version of that and but there are things we didn't even touch on in here beyond just the dynamics in the organization which is you'll have younger generations who won't have any thought about not just sharing with an LLM information about themselves their medical history company information and how would you even police that and you're feeding it and you don't even know where it goes right yet you don't even know where all of that ends up it's all being collected it's all being sorted in some you know fashion and so you're going to see this and it will

16:56whatever we've seen over the last 20 years and Mike and I both been really busy in the social media world for that period of time we're real you know pretty traction there um and we we have more than just LinkedIn pages but the um but with that it's going to get more complex so I think you really as leaders the main thing here is you're going to set Norris but you actually have to really be thinking about this all the time and I you can overreact I don't know like I remember 20 years ago hearing a futurist who still she's very busy I heard her at a conference and she had a new baby or a new toddler and she's like we don't put pictures of our our child on the internet because and she gave examples of how even back then that in 2007 you could take extrapolations of that child's face and project not only forward and she did an example like 20 years ago she took a picture from a Baltimore Raven Stadium picked out a fan now she's she anonymized it but she

17:57said and then she ran with facial recognition for 20 years ago an entire story voting history everything about the person that was identified in that stadium and then now you combine that with the availability of not only your information but they contract the the medical history psychological profiles your family members like you can run a background check and say well is this person inclined to have this kind of mental health problem because we've done a psycho map across their entire network of connections and so I was like okay we're not putting pictures of the kids on the internet my youngest my 11 year old basically has lived her whole life without any pictures of her on the internet like her like her mom and I don't put pictures of her face now recently she had a picture or two that appeared in the news and some things for some things she was doing in Pittsburgh and in the in the theater but there haven't been a lot of pictures of her online at all but maybe that's overreacting I don't know but you can see that it's actually going to get just more and more complex and so I do think it's it's incumbent upon

18:59leaders to be reading deeply thinking deeply and then talking with everybody deeply about all of the implications and and then we'll see where it goes yeah yeah I think the last point I know we have to wrap but I know they'll I think the last point that you made Scott is one of the most important ones that leaders have to be thinking deeply about this but then they have to engage their team in conversations about it because the three of us could probably go on for 45 more minutes debating all different stories but as a leader you have to create an understanding instead of context around why you've decided on the policy that you've decided why you've landed on the norms that you've landed on and how you're going to deal with it if things feel outside of the norm or outside of the policy so lots to dig into but go ahead Mikey I saw you're going to jump in. I would say like many other conversations we have around these field notes this is really just the beginning of the conversation that if you're not having it internally there's there's a lot to talk about. Great thank you both for your time today thanks for those that showed up in the chat as well

19:59appreciate your participation someone named Scott Holland also showed up I don't know if that's a family relation of yours here but yeah sure it's all right we'll see you later bye now yep see ya bye