Jennifer Deal

Jennifer Deal is the Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership and the Project Manager for the Emerging Leaders Research Project which analyzes similarities and differences between generations regarding their perceptions of leadership, learning, and values. Deal’s work focuses on helping people learn how to interact more effectively across differences of all types, specifically generational mixes. In her book Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground and In a recent podcast entitled Say Goodbye to the Generation Gap, she explains how people have the same fundamental “wants”, regardless of the generation they represent, and that most of the misconceptions of the elusive generation gap stem from insecurities and need for power. Retiring the Generation Gap is an empirically-based research study in which Deal at the Center for Creative Leadership analyzed the workplace perspectives of over 3,200 employees of varying ages. She uses this data to show how, for instance, the top values listed by survey respondents across generations are largely similar.