From Assumption to Curiosity

How one organization reframed five generations of difference.

The Challenge

Five generations were working side by side across the City and County of Broomfield, with generational differences varying widely across departments. Leadership understood that when those differences go unnamed, they can surface as conflict, disengagement, and turnover.

They had tried traditional leadership development before. The experience felt transactional and disconnected from their environment, leaving internal facilitators to spend months adapting the material themselves.

The Partnership

SOS built a train-the-trainer model around a Generational Intelligence Framework, replacing assumptions about generations with curiosity about individual needs and experiences.

The work moved through three paradigm shifts:

Different generations want different things →
We all want the same things and learned different ways to get them.

We came from different places, so we'll never understand →
We're heading to the same place by different roads.

I can assume what's going on here →
I can see the behavior. I don't yet know the story.

Then the facilitators practiced applying the framework to real workplace situations.

What Changed

The nine facilitators reported the experience was more informative and actionable than previous training they'd received—including from much larger firms.

89% reported increased confidence.
89% felt ready to hold difficult conversations.
5 of 9 were ready to co-facilitate immediately.

But the more meaningful shift was what happened underneath the numbers: facilitators began replacing assumptions about other generations with curiosity about the needs behind people's behavior. That mindset is now part of how CCOB trains departments across the county.