Down with the kids: learning to lead gen Z

In days gone by, junior work­ers may have been wary of their boss­es, but the boot now seems firm­ly on the oth­er foot. In Octo­ber 2021, for instance, the New York Times pub­lished a fea­ture enti­tled “The 37-year-olds are afraid of the 23-year-olds who work for them”. 

The arti­cle con­tained inter­views with sev­er­al busi­ness lead­ers who’d been tak­en aback by the assertive­ness of their gen‑Z staff, who cared lit­tle for organ­i­sa­tion­al hier­ar­chies and were all too ready to man­age upwards, expect­ing their lead­ers to align their organ­i­sa­tions behind polit­i­cal move­ments such as Black Lives Mat­ter.

Alex Bod­i­ni, CEO of Spin Brands, can relate to this. He is a mil­len­ni­al, while about 70% of his employ­ees are from gen­er­a­tion Z. The aver­age age of those work­ing at the social media mar­ket­ing firm is 24.

“I agree over­all that there’s a fear around gen Z,” he admits. “There’s such a dif­fer­ence between them and mil­len­ni­als that it can seem intim­i­dat­ing at first. Every­thing, from their views and use of lan­guage down to the way they dress, can feel total­ly alien to those of my gen­er­a­tion.”

Bod­i­ni adds that “high-pro­file cas­es of can­cel cul­ture” – in which peo­ple air­ing views that are wide­ly deemed unac­cept­able are shunned – is anoth­er rea­son why gen-Zers “can seem scary on the sur­face”. The risk of being pub­licly crit­i­cised or even ostracised can make you “walk on eggshells, in the belief that any­thing you say will be tak­en out of con­text and you’ll be seen as tone-deaf or poten­tial­ly insult­ing”. 

Fiona Gor­don, CEO of ad agency Ogilvy UK, argues that gen-Zers are the first “pure­ly dig­i­tal­ly native gen­er­a­tion”, which makes them more inclined than their elders to use pow­er­ful tech such as social media to broad­cast their views and influ­ence the world. 

“When we were young, we prob­a­bly would have loved the abil­i­ty to make such an impact too, but they’re prob­a­bly the first gen­er­a­tion for whom this is tru­ly hap­pen­ing, owing to their abil­i­ty to be glob­al cit­i­zens,” she says. “Com­bined with the curios­i­ty of youth, being so well informed and hyper-con­nect­ed makes gen Z unique­ly pow­er­ful.”

Hen­ry Rose Lee, an expert in inter­gen­er­a­tional diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, agrees. Many young peo­ple avid­ly fol­low social media influ­encers whose careers they aspire to emu­late, while they’re com­fort­able using such net­works for com­mer­cial ends such as sell­ing sec­ond-hand goods, which means they are often “very entre­pre­neur­ial in their heads”, she says.

A sur­vey that Lee con­duct­ed of peo­ple aged 15 to 19 found that 98% want­ed to start their own enter­prise. On polling the same respon­dents a year lat­er, she dis­cov­ered that 2% had actu­al­ly done so and only 1% were still run­ning a busi­ness.

“Research shows that, when gen-Zers are taught how to be entre­pre­neurs, their aspi­ra­tion, ide­al­ism and opti­mism clash with real­i­ty. They find it’s too hard,” Lee says. “But this entre­pre­neur­ial dis­con­nect, which wasn’t there with past gen­er­a­tions, does have an impact when gen-Zers enter the work­place, as they can some­times feel as though their dri­ve is being ignored.”

Anoth­er impor­tant way in which social media has had an impact, she believes, is that “loy­al­ty and con­nec­tions to the work­place” are weak­er among gen-Zers.

“Fam­i­ly is their first tribe, but social media is their sec­ond. Work may be third, but it’s also some­times sport or music,” Lee observes. “It’s not that gen-Zers are dis­loy­al. It’s sim­ply that work isn’t as embed­ded in their lives as it was for many peo­ple before social media came along.”

She adds that younger work­ers have a stronger ten­den­cy to be influ­enced by peer groups on social media into jump­ing ship if they don’t receive the rewards they feel are war­rant­ed from their employ­ers. This, Lee acknowl­edges, can be a source of “irri­ta­tion and frus­tra­tion” to their seniors, who are less in thrall to the “voice in their ear”.

Emma Par­ry is pro­fes­sor of HR man­age­ment and head of the Chang­ing World of Work group at Cran­field School of Man­age­ment. She says that traits com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with gen Z, such as the propen­si­ty to stand up for their rights and quit if nec­es­sary, actu­al­ly start­ed with gen Y, part­ly because of shifts in par­ent­ing styles. But Par­ry is gen­er­al­ly wary of cat­e­goris­ing peo­ple based on their age, not least as it “lends itself to stereo­typ­ing”. 

There’s a lack of empir­i­cal research evi­dence to sup­port the view “that dis­tinct cat­e­gories of peo­ple in the work­force based on age have dif­fer­ent val­ues and expec­ta­tions”, she says, adding that there are gen­er­al­ly “more dif­fer­ences with­in gen­er­a­tional groups than there are between them”. 

Nonethe­less, Par­ry accepts that per­son­al and soci­etal atti­tudes do shift over time. These are shaped by the con­text in which each gen­er­a­tion grows up and will change accord­ing to each individual’s stage of life. Such fac­tors can lead to inter­gen­er­a­tional mis­un­der­stand­ings. 

So what can busi­ness lead­ers do to get the best from their younger work­ers? Bodini’s approach has been to immerse him­self in their world. This has includ­ed study­ing the lan­guage trends and emo­jis that gen-Zers use on pop­u­lar social plat­forms such as Tik­Tok. He has found that, while mil­len­ni­als typ­i­cal­ly use a small num­ber of key news sources to stay informed, gen-Zers tend to fre­quent many more, chan­nel-hop­ping in the process.

With this fac­tor in mind, Bod­i­ni feels that he needs to chan­nel his young employ­ees’ ener­gy care­ful­ly. Oth­er­wise, “they’re like­ly to go off in a mil­lion dif­fer­ent direc­tions with­out under­stand­ing the key out­put required”. 

He con­tin­ues: “To har­ness their tal­ents, you need to ensure that each role offers a degree of cre­ativ­i­ty and ini­tia­tive with­out giv­ing peo­ple free rein. You must there­fore be clear about your objec­tives and pri­or­i­ties. Say how you’d pre­fer things to be done, but leave about 25% wig­gle room for their own inter­pre­ta­tion.”

It’s also impor­tant to set clear bound­aries when it comes to issues such as pay and pro­mo­tion prospects, Bod­i­ni adds. “At Spin Brands we always stress that hunger is good, but impa­tience is bad. Peo­ple here know they can’t expect a pro­mo­tion every six months. They have to spend a cou­ple of years mas­ter­ing a role first.” 

Anoth­er effec­tive way of har­ness­ing gen-Zers’ entre­pre­neur­ial urges while giv­ing them a mean­ing­ful voice is to set up an inno­va­tion cen­tre. Lee rec­om­mends staffing this with peo­ple from a mix of age groups, who will work togeth­er on a par­tic­u­lar project for three to six months before rotat­ing out. 

Ogilvy UK calls its ver­sion of this approach the Side­Board. The aim is to enable young employ­ees to inter­act more mean­ing­ful­ly with senior exec­u­tives and give them the chance to work on ini­tia­tives that affect the whole busi­ness – for instance, design­ing its hybrid work­ing mod­el. Reverse men­tor­ing is also used.

Bod­i­ni agrees that it’s impor­tant for lead­ers and their youth­ful staff to engage in such rela­tion­ships and dis­cuss every­thing from com­mer­cial objec­tives to cul­tur­al mat­ters such as work/life bal­ance and diver­si­ty. The goal here is not only to ensure every­one has a voice but also to engen­der a sense of pur­pose by help­ing the whole organ­i­sa­tion to see the big­ger pic­ture. 

When it comes to han­dling issues of staff loy­al­ty and reten­tion, Lee believes that lead­ers who focus on the so-called five Cs – cause, com­mu­ni­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion, con­tri­bu­tion and career – will encounter the fewest prob­lems.

“You could sum this all up in one word: ‘cul­ture’,” she says. “If you get this right, it’ll have a pos­i­tive effect on every gen­er­a­tion in your organ­i­sa­tion, not just gen Z.”