“You left your employer short- handed on a Saturday night?” scolded her Veteran grandfather.

“That’s going to look terrible on your resume,” fretted her Boomer mother.

“Don’t you know how hard it is to find a job these days?” worried her Gen X brother.

“I asked off three weeks ago! They scheduled me to work anyway. I am not missing Stacey’s wedding. Besides, my friend said they need someone at his work,” she said confidently.

Perfect examples of how the four generations handle things differently. From their point of view, they are all correct.

The four generations in today’s workforce come with very different expectations and values. They are rewarded, use technology, communicate and see education and advancement in quite different ways.

Veterans, 65 years and older, still make up 10% of the workforce. Healthier than previous “seniors”, many still want to work well into their 70’s, even if only part time. Their values, shaped by the Depression and WWII, are of discipline, sacrifice and loyalty and they demand that of others.

Boomers entered the job market with 80 million others.  Competitive workaholics, they are finally saving for retirement. At 45% of the workforce and 46-64 years old, their sheer numbers have always helped them dictate much of what is considered the norm.

Just ask the Gen Xers, 30-45 years old and getting tired of always competing with the Boomers ahead of them. These “children of divorce” insist on balance between work and family life. Lack of time is their big issue as this “juggling” generation struggles to make it to their kid’s soccer game and manage their careers. Their weapons: the technology they understand so well and the skills they’ve built as they have hopscotched from opportunity to opportunity.

Here come the Millennials, 29 years old and younger. At 76 million, there are nearly as many of them as Boomers. Their educations often cost more than the family home and they ( and their parents) are looking for that investment to payoff.  This “networked generation” who grew up on the Internet knows how to find everything and if not, they can find someone who does.

What do they all have in common? They all want to do good work for great companies and feel valued. How does a manager bring these very different people together and make that happen? Start by looking for ways to leverage their different strengths. Help them see that each of them brings something of value others can use to reach company goals. Discourage the “we know better” attitude. For example, have Veterans to mentor Millennials about developing a strategic approach. Create opportunities for Millennials  to coach Veterans about social networking and technology. Give everybody a chance to strut their best stuff and see what happens.

Persist is the verb: to go on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of opposition, importunity, or warning.

Resilience is the noun: has an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

Said another way, persistence is the behavior and resilience is the character trait.

As a coach, I often notice the degree to which clients will stick with it, hang in there, and stay after it. With the recession, resilience will certainly play a role in how well someone is able to recover from downsizing, switching careers, or adapting to a new standard of living.

I spent much of last year in treatment for breast cancer. My refusal to let it get the upper hand built my resilience in ways I never imagined .Trust me, there is nothing like being on a cancer journey to test one’s resilience.  It required that I keep on keeping on. The more I hung in there the more I hung in there.

Can you build resilience by upping your persistence? For a long time, psychologists didn’t believe people could truly build resilience. To tell the truth, there have been times I have had a hard time bouncing back after an injury to my pride and sense of self.

I now believe you can build resilience.  A cancer journey requires that you recover from the assault on your body and adjust to change. I used to be a brunette with straight hair. Now I have what I call my “chemo curls” and I have had to embrace them (and a lot of other things that aren’t the same. Trust me.)

I used to have a sailboat. When you sail, you rarely get a wind that pushes you magically to your destination. You use your  jib to tack back and forth, using the wind you have to get where you want to go.

Times like now remind us to persist in spite of storm warnings or dead calm, to use what we have to adjust to the wind, to persist and be resilient.

For $10, I recently bought “StrengthsFinder 2.0” from Amazon.com.  After taking an online assessment of your strengths, they will email you a twelve page report with lots of information about how to leverage your strengths.  A great investment and one I highly recommend.

What did I learn about myself? I have a love of information. I have a craving to know more. I collect and catalog all kinds of ideas. (Must be the explanation for all my books and files.) I am also highly strategic. It’s part of my nature to look for alternative approaches. I love making connections and finding trends between all those ideas I collect. I like to turn those thoughts into action and have a high need for achievement.  Hmmm. Sounds like consulting, coaching and training is a good fit for me.

Management sage Peter Drucker said, “Often, a strength taken to extreme results in weakness. For example, perseverance may be strength until it becomes stubbornness.” 

Oh, so true. When my strengths are taken to an extreme, what happens? I drown in data. I spend untold hours going down every pig trail my research uncovers. I dither over so many choices.  Action immediately becomes history and I fail to savor my successes. I drive myself nuts.

Last week, a colleague shared a great way for me to channel some of this. He suggested that I ask myself, “Be honest. Is this story/information/spreadsheet useful? Or is it merely interesting?” If useful, great. But if it’s just interesting, walk away for now and when you can, return to it. It sure has helped with my time management and distraction this week.

You know, sometimes we have to be ready to hear the message.

Even in the toughest of times, customers still have to buy to keep their businesses and homes running. To make sure they are still buying from you, take a quick survey. Are you are doing these things to improve your sales in 2010?

Calm down!

Keep your own negative emotions in check. Even during the worst of times, some people end up winning.  Your positive self talk and self confidence is more important than ever. Be upbeat, be present and be a leader.

Tune your Value Proposition. This is the time for messages of low risk like protection, security and stability. Be prepared to explain ROI. Prepare for a longer sales cycle. It is the pain that will get funding now, so know your client’s pain.

Who are you talking with? Re-qualify every prospect. Focus on your best selling opportunities.  Are you calling high enough to get approval?

Focus on them. Talking about your company and products will not engage customers. Talk about them, ask about them, provide ideas for them and communicate in terms of them.

Prepare. “In preparing for this meeting I took some time to…”  Then simply highlight the two or three critical things that you did to prepare. You will blow away the last rep that was just “checking in.”

Selling is about relationships and you are the difference. Customers buy from people they like and trust. Trust is built over time on a foundation of credibility and competency. Connect!

Get creative with how to do the deal. Figure out ways that to repackage your offerings. Offer pricing options over time, cut up your offering into time pieces, turn your product into a service, offer a discount that is attached to a specific date, or give a bonus.

Get some executive coaching and sales training. There is never a better time than a tight economy to fine tune your game, refresh yourself and expose yourself to new ideas. As Coach John Wooden says, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”