Blog Posts
Emotional Intelligence Can Improve Communication Between Generations in the Workplace
There are five generations in the workplace today, bringing roughly eight decades of life and work perspectives to the global marketplace.
Years on the job build judgment, history, relationships and an instinct for catching problems early. Ultimately, what walks out the door when experienced employees retire is more than a job title.
Take a benefits administrator who retires after 20 years. Their successor has the documented enrollment process, yet colleagues ask why one carrier file needs a manual check before upload. That question points to institutional knowledge, the history and “why” behind how an organization works. Succession planning prepares people for roles, while knowledge continuity preserves the judgment and relationships that keep work succeeding.
Retirements and an aging workforce mark a natural milestone, a reason to start sooner. What follows covers where that knowledge is most concentrated, practices that move judgment and a three-question readiness check.
The most consequential knowledge an experienced employee holds can be hard to see while they’re still on the job. Years of pattern recognition let them resolve problems before others notice the complexity.
Explicit knowledge can be written down in procedures and manuals, but tacit knowledge is the know-how and intuition built through practice, showing up as mental models and judgment calls. A review in Heliyon notes that tacit knowledge is considerably harder to transmit than its explicit counterpart.
These forms of knowledge frequently leave the building during retirement:
Spotting the institutional knowledge that’s concentrated in one place starts with naming where it sits. Knowledge concentration describes critical know-how that rests with one person or a few team members.
In one conversation per team, leaders can ask four questions:
Who is asked first when something unusual happens?
Who is trusted with exceptions?
Who connects information across functions?
What would take the team the longest to rebuild if they left next quarter?
A 20-minute “who would we ask?” round, revisited in 30 days, can turn this into a habit. Passing forward what works and revisiting habits or workarounds that no longer fit matters more than capturing everything an employee knows. Once you know which decisions, relationships or exceptions sit with one person, the next step is moving it.
Knowledge transfer moves know-how from person to person through shared work, while knowledge management covers the practices and tools that organize information. Building judgment takes the first far more than the second.
Files and recorded demonstrations capture information well. A new hire might follow a well-built month-end close checklist, then pause at an unusual adjustment, because the veteran’s way of weighing exceptions lived in experience, not on paper. Succession planning works best when it starts early and builds judgment, not just a named replacement, while experienced employees are still fielding exception calls and signing off on judgment.
These practices move judgment rather than information:
For example, a newer team member who helps prepare a vendor negotiation, then compares notes with the veteran afterward, builds the same kind of judgment, one negotiation and one debrief at a time.
Knowledge management tools still organize information well, but tacit knowledge typically moves from person to person. Efforts to capture it through technology have been largely unsuccessful so far, Deloitte’s workforce research suggests, though that could shift as AI matures.
Retirement shows where knowledge concentration already existed, which is a good prompt to name a second and third person who can also handle it. A capable successor has the potential to do the job someday. An able one is performing it at a sustained, acceptable level, and naming someone capable is only the start. The goal is helping that person become able.
A quick readiness check shows where someone stands: has this person made consequential decisions with support, worked the key relationships and handled exceptions? A succession review might name a capable successor for a key account lead, then find the successor has handled one exception with support but hasn’t built the key relationship, prompting a joint client conversation this quarter.
Pick one key role this week, answer the three readiness questions on a single page and add a dated next step for each “not yet.” Repeating that check in your quarterly talent review keeps continuity on the agenda, not something revisited only once a retirement date is set. This kind of continuity works best as an ongoing leadership responsibility, backed by coaching, mentoring and developing future-ready leaders. Taking steps to strengthen your leadership pipeline makes that kind of succession feel intentional rather than reactive.
Knowledge transfers fully once someone can make the same call you would, without checking first, when something goes off script. In your next handoff conversation, state the “what” of a decision in one sentence and the “why” in the next, then ask your colleague to repeat the “why” back in their own words.
The Center for Leadership Studies (CLS) gives your organization’s leaders the tools to make this continuity practical. Our Situational Leadership® Essentials course teaches leaders to diagnose what a team member needs for a specific task and respond with the right support and direction, so judgment keeps moving even as roles change hands. Our Communicating Effectively course gives leaders a clear way to share the “what” and the “why” behind a decision, turning a written process into something a successor can actually use.
Together, these courses prepare your leaders to keep passing on the judgment calls, the relationship know-how and the unwritten exceptions that would otherwise walk out the door.
