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Bridge the Generation Gap with the Four Cs

September 2, 2026

If you think the generational gap is about age, think again, said a panel of young leaders during a recent webinar.

It’s easy to blame generational friction in the workplace on age differences. But “A lot of the challenges that are labeled as generational actually aren’t about age,” said Jayne MacKinnon, director of Young Leaders for SITE Canada and a manager at Cantrav in Vancouver, during a recent SITE Young Leaders webinar. “They’re about experiences and our lived realities.”

To make sense of those realities, panelists Anthony Every (ECO Destination Management Services), Beatriz Sa (Portugal Travel Team DMC), Brittany Cirillos (Motivation Excellence, VP of Young Leaders for SITE Chicago), and MacKinnon introduced a framework they call the Four Cs: Curiosity, Contribution, Change-Making and Championing. The stages aren’t “based on age, job title or years of experience,” Every said. “Instead, it’s described by four different methods or mindsets that many of us move through during our career.”

Curiosity: Do I Belong Here?

Every career stage begins with curiosity, Sa explained — not just a first job, but any new chapter: a promotion, a new client or a new leadership role. “We ask ourselves the same question: Do I belong here?” she said. It’s rarely spoken aloud, but it drives people to study the culture, the unwritten rules, and who holds influence.

Crucially, curiosity doesn’t always look the way you might expect. “Sometimes it looks like someone taking notes instead of speaking,” Sa said, or “seeking a mentor before sharing an opinion.” That’s a problem when quiet observation gets misread as disengagement, rather than the information-gathering it actually is.

Contribution: How Can I Make a Difference?

Once confidence builds, professionals shift toward contribution — volunteering, joining committees and raising a hand for new responsibility. Cirillos called this stage “the biggie,” since it’s where the perception that young leaders want responsibility before they’ve earned it tends to surface — a common complaint more senior planners tend to have about the younger members on their teams.

Her counterpoint: Ownership is how anyone learns. “How does anyone actually gain experience?” she asked. “At some point, someone had to give us a chance.” She described having worked for a manager who created space for her to figure things out — and the trust that built made her rise to meet it. The alternative, being told a task is “not in the scope of your role,” can produce the very frustration and burnout that gets mistaken for entitlement.

Change-Making: Is There a Better Way?

As contributors gain credibility, the questions shift again — from “how can I help” to “is there a better way?” This is where young professionals start challenging processes, and where friction can run highest. “That can sometimes feel uncomfortable, especially to those who have spent years building those very processes,” the panel acknowledged.

But the panelists were emphatic that questioning a process isn’t the same as dismissing the people or history behind it. “We’re not challenging the individual or leadership,” MacKinnon said. “We’re challenging the process or asking why it is this way. It’s not personal.” Having grown up immersed in fast-changing technology, many young professionals feel an implicit expectation to be the ones pushing for efficiency — which is often the real motivation behind pressing for change.

Championing: Who Comes Next?

In the final stage, the focus turns outward. “Your job title here doesn’t necessarily matter,” the panel noted. “It’s more of a choice or your mindset to invest in others.” Cirillos traced her own path through all four stages within SITE Chicago — from curious new member, to committee volunteer, to change-maker, to her current role as VP of Young Leaders, where she now thinks about “who comes next” and how to create the opportunities she wishes she’d had earlier.

She closed her section with a line she called a favorite: “The true measure of leadership isn’t how many followers you have; it’s how many leaders you help create.”

Why the 4Cs Matter

The panelists were careful to note that these aren’t rigid, linear stages — someone can be “curious” again after switching industries, or a “change-maker” in one project while still “contributing” in another. The point isn’t to sort colleagues into buckets by generation, but to recognize that the same behavior — silence, a challenge to process or a request for feedback — can spring from entirely different mindsets depending on where someone is in this cycle.

“If we judge the behavior without understanding the mindset behind it, it’s very easy to reach the wrong conclusion,” Sa said. The Four Cs give us a shared vocabulary for figuring out what’s actually driving a colleague’s behavior — and meeting them where they are.