Who wants to be the boss anymore? According to the headlines, not Gen Z.
Katie Trowbridge, a multi-generational workplace strategist, is trying to help bridge the leadership gap. She spent twenty-three years as an educator, working with millennials and Gen Zers and identifying their core values, how they work best, and what motivates them.
“We tag them as lazy. They’re not lazy. They are far from being lazy. They just are curious and they want knowledge,” she says. “They’re just asking us to teach them how to do it.”
While Gen Z may be asking, Trowbridge doesn’t believe that today’s leaders are answering.
Leaders shouldn’t assume that their workers have the same priorities as they do, especially when it comes to work-life balance. Trowbridge notes that long gone are the days when a job takes precedence over all else.
“One of the things that millennials and Gen Zers are getting right is that they are not allowing work to be the thing that defines them.” It is in the best interest of current leaders to abandon much of the rigidity that has defined work culture for the past few decades, she argues.
“[Companies are] going to have to make sure that there’s that mentorship, that coaching going on, that there is that connection [and] team building really happening.”
