Article written by @Manel Reyes , Partner – Training Director at MRC International People Training.
You’re between 45 and 65 years old, in the maturity of your professional career. In many cases, you’re the oldest in the group. You feel fulfilled and proud of what you’ve contributed, and you believe you still have much more to offer. You grew up hearing phrases like “praise makes you weak.” Your parents didn’t say “I love you” every five minutes (perhaps they never said it at all). They didn’t tell you “I’m proud of you”—you learned you’d done a good job precisely because no one said anything.
You struggle to understand the lack of commitment you see around you. You’ve probably thought, “young people are in trouble.” You can’t understand why your kids don’t answer your calls even though they’re clearly online. You’ve been called a “Boomer,” though you might actually be Gen X. And every now and then, you remember Mafalda saying, “Stop the world, I want to get off.”If you identify with most of these statements, you belong to the Hinge Generation. Just like me.
Our generation was led by very authoritarian models and, even though we often suffered under them, we eventually normalized that as “the right way” to manage people. And that worked—until young people started entering the workforce, young enough to be our children. This new generation—digital natives, every one of them—has joined organizations, creating an enormous cultural clash. Their understanding of work, commitment, responsibility, balance, and life itself has little to do with ours. We constantly make the mistake of trying to fit them into a mold that simply wasn’t made for them. They think faster, communicate differently, are bolder, less willing to settle, and they want to work to live—not the other way around.
Every generation has thought the next one was losing something valuable. Ours is no exception.
My generation grew up in an analog world and learned—sometimes clumsily—to survive in a digital one. And we didn’t do that badly. And we didn’t do that badly. The generation before us encountered the digital world at the height of their careers and joined the movement half-heartedly—some didn’t even try. The next generation, however, was born into the digital era, with immediacy running through their veins. The arrival of the internet changed the world like no revolution ever had before. We lived through the transition between those two worlds. That’s why I decided to call ours the Hinge Generation.
The internet brought immediacy—“I want it, I’ve got it”—along with new ways of socializing and the pursuit of validation through likes. Then came impatience, silence as a form of response, and urgency overtaking importance.
When immediacy becomes your default pace, waiting for things to happen feels unbearable. This difference in speed creates friction between generations.
If urgency hadn’t beaten importance, instant noodles wouldn’t exist.
We did tell them “I love you” every five minutes—perhaps because we didn’t hear it enough ourselves. They grew up seeing affection as an essential part of their social bonds. Now they ask, “Praise me when I do things right,” because they need that validation to stay engaged.
We must learn to coexist without becoming rival tribes.
We must connect both worlds to make the generational transition smooth for everyone. We need to design business models where agility doesn’t conflict with prudence, boldness with wisdom, short-term thinking with patience, possession with sharing, or affection with effectiveness.
Every so often, I remind myself that they are the future. And I am beginning to be part of the past.