Ethics and Boundaries: Understanding Multi-Generational Differences: Ethical and Boundary Considerations in the 21st Century

This training equips human service professionals with the knowledge and skills to navigate generational differences, enhance communication, and support effective interactions with clients and colleagues across all age groups.

Navigating Multigenerational Clients and Teams

Human service professionals today work with the widest range of generations in history — from the Silent Generation to Gen Z. This course helps you understand why you may sense generational friction and how differing values, communication styles, and expectations shape both client relationships and team dynamics. Through practical examples and ethical reflection, the training explores how generational diversity can strengthen service delivery while offering strategies to navigate conflict, maintain boundaries, and build more respectful, effective multigenerational interactions.

Learning Objectives

• Gain an understanding of the differences and similarities of the 5 generations working on teams in the 21st century.
• Recognize and explore communication and behavioral patterns that can be useful to resolve conflict, motivate others, and give you the power to be effective in teaming.
• Explore and consider ethical challenges and boundaries that could be impacted by multi-generational communication, behavior patterns, and the role of the helping professional to alleviate ethical challenges.
• Demonstrate understanding of the Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct (MPSW 20), ethical principles, and boundaries applied to specific ethical dilemmas when confronting challenges by co-workers, clients, and organizations utilizing the Nine Step Ethical Decision-Making Model.
  

This program meets Wisconsin Ethics and Boundaries continuing education requirements for human service professionals.

Who should attend

Human service professionals such as social workers, professional counselors, therapists, and psychologists.

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  Dana Johnson from Wisconsin is a career social worker (Licensed MSW), practicing in senior level management in state government, county human services, an educator in higher education, and operating a consulting and professional development firm. His experience includes child welfare practice, policy, and reform; transformational organizational leadership and culture change, supervision of teams, continuous quality improvement, ethics and boundaries theory, and dynamic equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts across micro, mezzo, and macro systems.