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Perpetual: Reads | Sticking Points

Our series of book recommendations to empower talent and fuel brands.

Sticking Points

Why Perpetual recommends it

Haydn Shaw’s Sticking Points tackles the same multigenerational workplace territory as Gentelligence, but with a sharper focus on the twelve specific friction points where five generations most often clash, from communication style and feedback preferences to attitudes toward hierarchy, dress code and work-life boundaries. Shaw’s research is grounded in extensive workplace surveys rather than anecdote.

The book’s strength is its specificity. Rather than a general call for generational empathy, Shaw breaks down exactly how, say, a Gen X manager’s preference for direct, efficient communication can be read as abrupt by a Millennial employee expecting more context, while that same employee’s preference for frequent feedback can be read by the Gen X manager as needing excessive reassurance. Neither read is wrong, they’re just different defaults.

Shaw is pragmatic throughout, arguing the goal isn’t for one generation to win the argument about the right way to work, but for teams to build enough shared understanding that these twelve sticking points stop generating unnecessary conflict.

This is a genuinely practical companion to the generational conversations we help clients navigate, particularly around feedback norms and flexibility, which come up in almost every multigenerational team we assess.

  • Twelve specific sticking points account for most generational friction at work
  • Different generational communication defaults are different, not right or wrong
  • Feedback frequency and communication directness are common flashpoints across generations
  • The goal is shared understanding across generations, not a single winning working style

A practical step is picking the sticking point that shows up most in your own team’s friction, feedback style, communication norms, or flexibility, and naming it openly in a team conversation.

We give this book three and a half out of five stars.

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