Managing Gen Z Staff As A Millenial (Gen Y)

In this episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast, host Simon Goode explores the challenges millennials face when managing Gen Z staff, using a real-life case study to illustrate common issues like communication barriers, differing work norms, and heightened sensitivity to feedback. Simon shares practical conflict resolution strategies, emphasizing the importance of de-escalation, flexible expectations, and understanding generational "cultural differences." He encourages managers to foster collaboration by balancing assertiveness with empathy, and adapting approaches to build trust and resilience in younger teams.

TIMESTAMPS: 

00:00 Engaging Across Generational Teams

07:01 "Power of Diverse Perspectives"

08:28 Navigating Norms and Value Conflicts

12:56 Managing Stress Through Coaching

16:02 Building Trust Through Certainty

19:54 Performance Improvement Strategies

24:46 "Understanding and Engaging Gen Z"

27:34 Building Trust Through Better Listening

32:08 "Structured Meetings for Collaboration"

36:05 Listening Styles and Management Balance

39:55 "Growth Through Challenges"

41:23 Conflict Resolution Resources & Training

Transcript

0:09

Hello and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe now. In the episode today, I'm going to be talking about possibly my favorite topic that I've ever talked about in the podcast, which is dealing with Gen Z or Gen Z, if you're in the sort of American pronunciation. The very young staff, often in their early 20s, joining the workforce has created a number of challenges, I think, for the rest of the workforce in terms of how to communicate with these people, how to adapt for their different way of thinking. How do we navigate difficult conversations and conflict with young staff who are at times hyper vigilant to criticism, hypersensitive to stress? Managing uncertainty or sudden changes doesn't seem to be anything that they have the capacity to do. And yet, as managers and team leaders or small business owners, etc. The challenge is how do we engage with these people, communicate in a way that resonates, ideally probably meeting their needs as well as our own, so that we can set up more of a collaborative way of working, moving forwards. So I'm going to be reading a case study that I came across on this particular topic and my goodness, it seemed to do a good job of summarizing some of the challenges that people often face when they're dealing with these younger kind of staff. This particular example that I'm using is written from somebody who's a millennial, so they're in the Gen Y category. So that would be people in their, what would they be at the moment, sort of early 40s to including their 30s. And that tends to, in terms of the research, be the types of manager that Generation Zs, the young stuff, often prefer. They like managing, being managed, I should say by someone in their 30s or early 40s. There's more of a challenge when you're kind of jumping across two of the different age groups, if that makes sense, and you're dealing with someone who's a Gen X, or maybe even in the baby boomers preceding that. So we've got a manager who on paper seems like someone who these Gen Z's would like to be managed by. And yet they're dealing with challenges. And a lot of the challenges that they face might resonate with you. They might be the same kind of things that you're dealing, dealing with. So when I talk about these case studies, I'm not necessarily saying that you should do something, especially if you are dealing with this kind of situation. I've honestly got no idea probably what you should do in your situation. But I'm hoping that me demonstrating the way that I think about these issues as I'm analyzing a case study, as if I was in the hot seat, as if I was the manager needing to actually engage with these staff, it's quite different from the hat that I wear when I'm doing workplace mediations. In these case studies I'm really talking about, these are some options that you should consider. So they might be literally the options that you do consider. And if you're feeling like you're hitting your head against a brick wall and you're stuck, that might be helpful in itself. But my hope is that you can kind of transpose the way that I think and the way that I approach this in terms of critical reflection. And then that would help for other challenges that you might be facing. You know, dealing with older stuff, for example, probably there's a similar cause in terms of the cultural gap and navigating some of those cultural differences. But the actual interventions that you use would be very different with an older staff member compared to a younger one, potentially. I mean, obviously there's going to be individual differences, and we're generalizing, so to speak, that everybody is very similar in the group and obviously there's going to be differences, but between the members of the group, etc. So I'm going to read the scenario now and then after that I'll talk about some initial points and then a couple of the big themes that jump out at me. So it's written from somebody, as I say, who's a millennial. The title of the post actually was Managing Gen Z as a Millennial. That might actually end up being the podcast title that I used today, actually, because I quite like that. So here's the case study for context. I'm a millennial, in fact, one of the youngest millennials. And I do share a lot of cultural DNA with Gen Z. But at the risk of sounding like a boomer, I'm quickly noticing some of the hyperbolic rumours I've read about this generation in News Corp Rags may in fact be true. So they're talking about the traditional corporate controlled media, the newspapers, etc, and they're often talking about this exact topic, but in a very critical and judgmental kind of way. So they're saying maybe some of those things are actually true. So they continue. I have hired five new Gen Z team members in the last few months. Vague white collar industry and I'm finding this a huge challenge. By nature, I'm a relaxed manager, I trust my staff and have an allergy to micromanagement. This has always been effective in the past. With mutual respect, I've always allowed flexibility and have been rewarded with fantastic output. However, I've mainly had millennials under my wing. I'm now dealing with a team who have been there less than five minutes, leaving early, starting late with zero explanation, wearing athletic wear to the office, being absent from their desks for large swathes of time, no sense of urgency, essentially taking the piss in every way possible. Is anyone else dealing with similar? How have you worked around this? I don't want to blow up the calm in my team and turn into a monster manager, but this is getting beyond a joke. So what jumps out at you as I've read through that post, what resonates? Is there any of those experiences that sound all too familiar? Or are these challenges that you are not yet to face, but maybe you're dealing with other things on your plate at the moment? So it's an interesting way that they end, isn't it? I don't want to blow up the calm in my team and turn into a monster manager, but this is getting beyond a joke. So I'm wondering if in their head they're conflating being assertive with being a monster. Or I wonder if they conflate having a difficult conversation with necessarily blowing up the calm, quote unquote. Within my team, when it comes to conflict, some people are quite conflict avoidant. And I think when they come to training workshops that I run on conflict resolution skills or managing difficult conversations or something, they think that the goal almost too is to avoid conflict. And obviously there's some type of conflict that's not very productive or there's situations where we would prefer to be dealing with something else and that might sometimes make strategic sense. There are actually other priorities that we should be focused on, but I don't think a team that is completely calm is necessarily going to be high performing. In fact, when we look at the research on some of the things that you might think about like high performing teams, I can remember this when I was studying my mba, one of the factors that tends to be common is different perspectives, different ways of working, different, I guess, takes on the same situation. And in that way these teams are better able to identify the problems that are holding them back. Like cultural difference, for example, or expectations in terms of what to wear to the office or that kind of thing. They can just navigate that difficult conversation in the moment and they deliver the feedback in a way that's strategic so it doesn't trigger the defensiveness and resistance. The other side of it, the younger staff in this example, the people who are receiving the message are able to take that on board without getting the backup and get all defensive and take it personally, I suppose is probably what's at the core of all of those overreactions, so to speak. They can deal with the difficult conversations in the moment, but these high performing teams are also able to look at the opportunities to improve, look at the options that might help moving forward. So it's obvious why then they tend to outperform other similar organizations in a competitive landscape, for example, or really continually kick goals within the team. I know for me, when I've been a direct manager and I've had numbers of staff under me when I've worked in organizations, one of the things that I often tried to focus on when I was running meetings was allowing those different perspectives and navigating. If there's a cultural norm, for example, that one person's from a culture where you would normally sit back and let other people speak first. I might use structure, like have an agenda item where I'd like an update from each of the team members, or begin going around the circle and talking about your take on this recent change that we've been dealing with what's working and what could we tweak moving forward. But I'm using structure to intervene there when there might be different expectations in terms of what's budding in and what's interrupting and what's being too silent and what's not contributing to a meeting and all of those kind of things. They're essentially value conflict. I've got a different perspective on what's right and what should happen and you've got something else. And that's exactly what I think when it comes to dealing with younger staff in Gen Z, we need to approach it more like when navigating a cultural difference, when we think about country of origin, type of culture, there might be things that we approach in a flexible kind of way, knowing that the other people are going to have different norms and different expectations and different values that underlie those things than us. And that's okay. It is to be expected that people are going to have different perspectives given that they've got different backgrounds. So the challenge for managers often is how do we normalize this, how do we navigate all of this? So I wonder if some of the approaches that you might use when it comes to culture, in terms of different country of origin, type of culture could also be used when it comes to this type of cultural differences, I suppose age related cultural difference almost and all of the different expectations and all of the different beliefs and needs and all of that kind of stuff that comes along with all of that. So when I looked on the Reddit post that this was on, I'm always curious about what the responses are going to be. Obviously nowadays you have to take it with a grain of salt because a lot of the people on these kind of forums are probably just AI arguing with themself. But I have to say there was something about this one that seemed to be a real human. And all of the responses in this particular example did also seem to be from real humans. They said things like, you need to let them know that in the future you will need to reply to emails using emails, not voice memos. Lots of responses like this is expected. Tell them, put it in writing. Give them a final warning, Put them on a performance management plan. Boom. Easy as that. You're sorted. Literally. That's a direct quote from one of the responses that came in. Tell them, put it in writing. Give them a final warning. Put them on a performance management plan. Boom. Easy as that. You're sorted. What is sorted in this person's head who's making this suggestion? Then you would end up with a constant revolving door of dysfunctional team members that are all considered considerably unhappy because they're all on performance management plans at the same time. Yeah, you've really sorted it. That would be such an effective way of responding warning here, wouldn't it? Well done. And the irony is that the person who made the original post said at the risk of like a boomer, and then all of the responses that come through were like, boomer 101 boomer cliche, you know, out of the cliche book kind of thing. And then you deal with the same issue with the next person. It's like they think that they're sorted, but all that they've really done is I think probably what would you say made it worse? At the very least, I think they've left it neutrally and not dealt with it in the longer term. For me, I prefer an approach that tends to think about what's going on for the Gen Z person. And one of the things that I focus on is de escalation. But when I talk about that topic, what I'm really describing is how can we reduce the level of perceived Threat. So what kind of things would this Generation Z person focus on if there was something that was making them uncomfortable right now? When they think about making a phone call, what are the thoughts that go through their head about what might happen? What previous situations have they been in where it was really stressful and they did have to deal with challenges? But what other kinds of stresses can they face in their life? And how do they do that? Maybe this person surfs so they can get up and go out in the water when it's freezing cold. Well, how do they manage to get themselves in the car and out the door or on their bike and down to the

beach or something? You know, 5: 12:36

00am before the surf all kicks off? I wonder what strategies they use for managing their own behavior that works for surfing might work for this other kind of thing. So we're normalizing the fact that many aspects of their work role is going to be stressful, and we are sometimes reducing the level of perceived stress. But when we can't do that, it's often about coaching them to develop the kinds of strategies that would lead them to be more resilient. So what can you do to look after yourself after you've just made a really difficult phone call and your head's all over the place? You probably feel like you can't even put a sentence together. What's a productive way of using your time? Maybe you can do some organizing or planning or download some documents in preparation for a meeting that's on tomorrow morning or something. And in that way, we're stopping ourselves from going down the negative spiral that might happen when they're feeling overwhelmed after a difficult meeting and now their boss is telling them to call a client or something, and it's something that they also find very stressful. Well, we can only take so much of this escalation before we lose it. So the Gen Zs, you know, constantly looking at their phone, I wonder if it's almost like a type of escapism that they just want out of this very uncomfortable situation that they're in in the short term and looking at their phone is this sort of shortcut to dopamine, so to speak. But obviously then the procrastination adds on to the list of challenges and stresses that they're facing, and they might feel more overwhelmed moving forward. So instead of just saying you need to make this phone call after you've just had a stressful meeting, maybe a coaching approach would be to say something like, what do you need right now just to clear your head? Would it be helpful to do a quick lap of the building or go and grab a drink of water, or do you want to duck to the bathroom or something? And obviously this phone call might not be pleasant and you're probably not feeling particularly confident right now to do it. What would help you to prepare so that you're not trying to come up with stuff off the top of your head? What works for you when you're on the phone with someone and you're feeling like the situation's getting a bit heated? How can you keep a level head in all of those kind of situations? So there might be strategies that you've got that you've developed that work for you. Although, to be honest, I think a lot of people go through these challenges just white knuckling it all the way through, and it's just pushed through. And the way that we become comfortable often is because we've been in this experience before and we've learned that this isn't the end of the world, this guy's not going to fall kind of thing just through experience. But that's a very painful and very slow way of learning. The better approach might be something like, what works for you when you've been in these other situations, in this different bit of your life? What do you find helpful there? So de escalation is the first topic for me that I kind of think about or consider. And then the second one would be how can we engage in a way that resonates? And I really like Dr. David Rock's five categories that he talks about here of status, certainty, autonomy, fairness, and relatedness. The way that I think about this is almost like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We need these things to be met in order to consider, what would you say, being generous or being flexible or admit that we're wrong or agree to do something that's going to create extra work for us or it's extra stress, like calling a client when we don't want to. So these are sort of the elements that. When we can communicate this and consider these ways of meeting the person's fundamental needs. Status. People want to feel like they matter and that they. They're important. They want to feel. Feel like you think they're doing a good job. They want to feel like you are aware of all of the effort and the. The extra dedication that they're demonstrating or the fact that they're coming in early, all of these kind of things. Status is a way of saying you're okay, like I accept you, I even admire you. Or it might aspire to be like you in some, some aspects. Certainty is knowing what to expect when there's that high level of uncertainty, we don't feel like we're standing on solid ground. So therefore we're a little bit more hyper vigilant to negative feedback or potential changes that might happen that are going to cause us to need to do additional work or something similar. So how can we provide certainty? Like that's why I think what would help you to prepare? Do you want to just put a couple of dot points on a bit of paper rather than trying to remember it all? Would it be helpful to download those documents ahead of time? All of this kind of thing? It helps us to feel more certain because we know what to expect. Even exploring options with them. If you call the client and they're busy, what are you going to do then? If you call the client and the conversation doesn't go well, what would be helpful for managing that? Some preemptive problem solving can be another way of generating this type of certainty because the person's not needing to invent it off the top of their head. When they're in that stressful moment, which is very difficult, they go in knowing that they have a little bit of a game plan or that the worst case scenario is that the client doesn't hire us and it's not the end of the world. Maybe that's another aspect of certainty. It's the thing that you're worried about might not be as catastrophic as you're thinking. For example, autonomy would be the third one. It's let them make the decisions. What would work for you as opposed to saying what you need to do is this. You need to make these phone calls early in the morning before everything adds up. I've seen what you do. You procrastinate and you put it off and then you never get to it. It's bloody ridiculous. Well, what is the person experiencing them? Would it be a high level of status? Probably not. It's just criticism. It's just saying you should be different. They've got no certainty, they've got no idea about what the specifics are that you're asking them to do. Do it early in the day when like what are you suggesting? But there's no autonomy. It's like you need to do this, you should do this is the lower level, but still the same thing. It's. What would you say? Unsolicited advice would be one way of describing that. And is that giving someone autonomy? Probably not. A better way would Be look, this is an option that works for some of the other team members. How does this sit with you? I know some people find doing a few deep breaths before you pick up the phone helpful or scheduling it in your diary so that you're not rushed and jumping from one thing to another. But I don't know, that might be something different that works for you. What do you reckon? I really do provide that certainty. I'm not giving them a way out. It's like you need to achieve this outcome. These phone calls need to be made. But I'm providing as much option and as much decision making capacity to them at every step of the way. Even like, I'd like to talk to you about the phone calls. Would now be a good time or do you prefer me to come back in an hour or so? Like even that initial choice? Thanks for meeting with me. Do you need a minute to grab a drink or anything? Would you like a cup of coffee? You're probably wondering what's going on. I just wanted to discuss some of the phone calls and what kind of options might be available to get a little bit more consistent within the team around that. So I don't know if you might even have other things that you'd like to talk about as well. That would be perfectly fine. If you want to take advantage of the opportunity, maybe I can give you a bit of background and then I'd love to hear your thoughts and perspective on all of this. So I'm providing even the choice of, do you need to grab a drink of water or something or are you ready to go? Do you want to take notes? Do you mind if I do this? Would this be all right? That kind of thing. Fairness is letting them know that you're not treating them unfairly, like you're not singling them out. So maybe you're asking them to make more phone calls. You might say, look, this is something that's a very common challenge for people who haven't worked in these roles before. These are the kind of things that they worry about and these are the kind of things that it can cause in terms of problems. I wanted to talk to you about some strategies that you might find helpful for managing all of this. Because the last thing that we want is next time we meet in a couple of weeks, the problem has continued or maybe it's even gotten worse. And that's going to limit my options in terms of how I can support you and the different things to consider. And if it's been more times than that, like this is the third or the fourth time you're talking about it, you might say, look, if it doesn't change now, I'm going to need to consider a performance management plan, a performance improvement plan, or if you can do this differently, like if you can make the three phone calls a day or make sure that you're calling the clients back within 24 hours. You and I don't need to have any more of these conversations. I really like that way of structuring even an ultimatum, that it's saying, this is the bad choice, don't make the calls, and this is the bad consequence of performance management plan. Or if you can, what is. What do you want them to do? Make the calls more consistently, what's the good choice? And then we highlight what's the good consequence. That would mean you and I don't need to actually have any more of these conversations. And we can focus more on training workshops for you or something like that. Like, what's the thing that they're actually interested in doing? The good choice will lead you to that good place. The bad choice will lead you to the bad place. But we want to do the positive one second so that it has the most prevalence in the person's memory and attention. All of these things aren't the end of the world, you know, if you accidentally do it in the wrong order or something. And this is all just my take on some of the options that I consider in terms of how I communicate. But I have found that when I'm managing younger staff that giving them autonomy and showing them fairness do tend to be particularly important, I think. And they don't know what's normal. They don't know what's fair. If you use a word like, I don't want to be a micromanager, they've got no idea what micromanaging is or isn't. This is probably the first or second or third job that they've had. So it would be much more helpful to say, look, we're going to need to figure out what works for us. And you and I have a unique relationship. It's different to the others. So I don't want to come with a whole bunch of expectations about what's going to be helpful in terms of supporting you when it won't. So initially we want to normalize the fact that, you know, this has to be give and take. I want this to be a collaborative relationship. But part of that is going to be that we have difficult conversations at times that I let you. When there's a problem, I let you know when there's a problem rather than letting it build up so that by the time we come to talk about it, it's bigger than Ben Hur. What do you reckon? How does that sound to you? Do you have any questions around that before we continue giving a bit of autonomy, giving a bit of status, giving a bit of certainty, etc. And then the final one is relatedness. That's often about the way that we listen to the other person. So we might say something like, look how you're managing all of the phone calls. Probably some things that are going well and has been easier than expected, and some other things that you're probably finding it a bit more challenging than you would have thought. How is it? How have you found the last week or so? What are you doing differently now compared to when you first started? Where are the areas that you feel like you're still getting a bit stuck and what options are you considering in terms of plans for dealing with that? And then we might say what other support would be helpful? You know, all of that kind of stuff, maybe, but. But we summarize it and listen to them first. It's like, let me just heard of. Let me just check. I heard what you've said so far. So it sounds like it's been a bit like this. You thought it was going to be this and then it's turned into this. You're hoping for a bit more support here and your team leader hasn't really had time to do it. So it's something that you're hoping to talk about with him next week. Have I got all that right? So the first step is just the summary. It's the playing back of what the person shared with us. That's often a very lovely, organic way of encouraging the other person to keep speaking. So they might elaborate on one area or correct something or maybe add something that they haven't talked about or whatever. But that's the point where they often feel understood. You'll notice their shoulders drop down a little bit and they let out a bit of a breath and they say something like, that's right. It's not saying I understand, especially if you're going to say I understand that. But I don't know that that's going to be necessarily the best way of helping the Gen Z feel that sense of relatedness, feel that sense of being heard. But what do you think? This is probably an area again, where we're all going to have slightly different perspectives on it. So it's possible that that is something that you focused on being a better listener, so you might have different things that work for you. I'm not necessarily saying that this should be a cookie cutter kind of approach. Even down to the level of the relationship that you have with each of your Gen Zs is going to be a little bit different. And I think an ideal way of thinking about it would be how can I take a flexible approach, not to the point where it's creating endless drama and problems. If you know something about the person, I think it's fine just to say it sounded like this was the way it is for you, if I got that right. But we don't assume, we don't go into it with a decision already made. I think when that happens, we can't be genuinely curious, we can't be genuinely open with what the Gen Z person might be sharing. So there's obviously, you know, ways of phrasing your questions, like how and what questions might be really good options. How did that play out? What happened? How did you respond? What do you think would help moving forward? But if they just acquire it, we treat it like a cultural difference from a different country of origin type of culture, where someone might not be as comfortable talking about this information. And so there would be different norms that you set up, different expectations. And once that precedent is established, I think that's often the point where we can focus on actually improving. But if you don't have that relationship with the person, but your intention is to give them feedback, you know, I'm just not 100% sure how much hope there is for that. So I would probably think about normalizing the distress that the Generation Z staff member might feel. It sounds like you're feeling a bit overwhelmed or you're feeling a bit pushed around that the team leader's not listening to you. It sounds like at times you've even wondered about whether or not you're being taken advantage of and you're still not sure, for example, how a few of the bits and pieces work behind the scenes, like how the marketing team interfaces with your area or something similar. This is new. So there's probably going to be moments when you feel a bit overwhelmed. So when that happens, I often suggest to people to slow down, take a few deep breaths. It's almost like we come back to our senses and then just take it one step at a time. But what works for you when you're dealing with those kind of situations? If we're going to give suggestions, we want to do it in this gentle kind of way? I think so in general, probably short, specific expectations. Instead of saying you need to make these phone calls all the time or moving forward, maybe just say this is what's expected for the next week. Is there any areas there where you think we should talk it through? I'm happy to make any adjustments as needed, but if we finish and this is the decision that we've made, this is what I'll expect you to do moving forward. But it's not like indefinitely or over the next six months. I think short, specific expectations are often much help, much more helpful, particularly when it comes to building trust. Like if we're saying to them, I'd like you to trust me as your boss, you can trust me. What does that even mean? Like, what are you asking them to do to feel differently towards you? I suppose when we say could you trust me? What we're really trying to say is, would you give me the benefit of the doubt and do what I'm asking you to do and trust me in that sense? But I want you to feel trusting towards me. Fine. But they can't wave a magic wand and feel differently. In my experience, a much more helpful way of thinking about trust is these specific expectations that are then followed through with. And so the reason why having short fuse plans like this next week or tomorrow is because we can quickly write something on the board that's going to happen and then it does and we can put a check mark against it, even just mentally. So we're beginning to generate a positive track record so that we can say, I really appreciate the way that we've been able to build trust between the two of us over the past month, as opposed to trust me. I think a lot of managers and team leaders probably would benefit from that focus on becoming a better listener. Using closed ended and open ended questions, for example, strategically or mirroring and repeating back a few of the words that the person said. Introducing those longer summaries I think would often be a really helpful way of taking your listening skills to the next level. Maybe for you it's becoming comfortable with silence. Maybe you constantly talking and blabbing on is overwhelming for the younger person who's already dealing with the technical jargon and stuff. So in their head they're almost having to translate some of the terminology that you might be using and then think about how you can take the focus off them. If there's someone who feels uncomfortable speaking to you, especially if you're on the phone, for example, and they're very uncomfortable, think about ways of Giving them a little bit of a break, even during the. During the conversation, like I often just become the narrator almost of saying, okay, so it sounds like it was this at the beginning and this happened and then this, and Dave thought this, and you did try to explain this, but that didn't go the way that you expected. But you haven't dropped it. You've still persevered and tried to deal with it the next day. It sounds like you've dealt with it in this way and this was the response that you got. So part of the reason that we do that little summary is that it helps the person to feel like we're listening to them and that we've actually understood and heard what they're saying. But it's a bit of a breather. It's a little bit of time that they don't have to be speaking and responding. And I think people often really appreciate that. If you can take the focus off them, maybe you can say, oh, look, I'm happy to get to that though. Before we get there, though, let's just go grab a coffee. I heard this happen last week. Mac was telling me about that. What was your perspective on all of that? That sounded like a really bad day, that day, or whatever. Like we're taking the focus off them, we're removing the bright light that's shining in their eyes, like in the interrogation room, so to speak, by taking a coffee, by doing the narration. Or maybe there's other things that work for you. You. The other thing that we could normalize with the Gen Z staff that we're dealing with is the fact that there are going to be crossed wires at times. We've got different perspectives, we've got different norms and expectations, etc. So of course there's going to be times when I make an assumption about something that you're going to be wanting or needing and I've got it wrong. Or there might be times when I've said something and you think that you've heard it and you've got a few questions, but you don't want to look silly by calling me and asking me a question or something. So there's going to be times when we need to navigate some of these crossed wires. So if you're feeling like I might be a bit frustrated by you, I mean, I might in the very short term. But longer term, I look at this as we need to figure out what's going to work in terms of our working relationship. So there might be times when I need to be very specific. These are the three things that you need to do. I can't be apologetic about that. It's part of my role is to give you feedback and to be honest. But my genuine intention is for that to be a supportive mechanism for you. So that if I'm honest and transparent with you, I suppose in a way it's also hopefully communicating to you that you can be honest with me. Look, we're going to have to develop trust over time. That's normal. But as you hopefully learn the way that I respond when you do begin to feel confident opening up, I think that's going to be the really essential thing between us. Because if there's a problem and I'm not talking to you about it, I don't consider that necessarily to be the most supportive way that I could deal with you as your manager. Part of this might also be that we need to create a little bit of professional distance between us. I tend not to like to go and have beers with the guys that I work with just for that reason that it blurs the lines. You might feel like maybe it's a rejection and I'm not happy with you or something. That's not the case. It's just for me, it tends to work better to keep these things separate. So whatever the expectations are, we need to normalize them. We're going to have crossed wires. I tend to operate like this. I'm a very transparent manager. I'm reasonably direct. I'm time poor. Whatever it might come across like this, like you might wonder if I'm rude or inconsiderate or something. I can fully appreciate how that might be a perspective on the spot. In the longer term, this is how I'm hoping that you might begin to see it. And this is what I'm going to do. Like this is my contribution to that, so to speak. If you do this for me, then this is what I can do for you. There might also be opportunities to use structure in your work and your relationship with the Gen Zs. Like the person who wrote that original post. I wonder if maybe it would work to have more frequent meetings with the staff member or to have an agenda item that every time you meet you'll talk about the phone calls or you'll talk about this issue given the fact that it's been something that's reasonable priority in the recent history. So you might use structure in terms of how frequently you meet, how structured the actual meetings are, what the agenda items are, etc. You might use the agenda to hear from them, like before we get to talking about that first topic that we've been emailing, I'd love to know, just a bit of an update, how you've been traveling, what's been working, what have been the good surprises that you've been dealing with, and what have been some of the more challenging and unexpected dramas that you might have needed to navigate as well. So, you know, I just want to hear a bit of an update from you. If they're a really introverted kind of person, maybe we can use structure for that kind of thing too. The other way I think that we can use structure is we need to demonstrate that we're not lumping all of them in together or all of the things that they're doing at work in together. Like in this meeting, I just want to talk about this issue or something like that. Or I wanted to meet with you independently because there are actually a number of people on the team I want to talk about with this topic. But each of you have different perspectives, and I think you've got a different way that you're treating it as well. So it made sense to me maybe to just meet privately. It also gives you, hopefully, the opportunity to talk about any of the challenges that you might be facing that you might not be comfortable sharing. When we've got the other team members in the room, what do you think? How does that sit with you? So you might say, look, I've seen similar types of behavior in this, but I'm not making assumptions. I'm not lumping you all together. Now, the truth is, the reasons why these Gen Zs act this way, it might all be connected to something like the level of perceived threat. I think that it is. But the reason that they perceive these things as threats would be different for each person, like vastly different. And we need to remind ourselves of that sometimes. Some of the Gen Z's that are in your team might have been sexually abused or they might have parents who have died. Some of them might have kids that they had when they were teenagers or something. Some of them might be carers looking after other family members who have got disabilities or health issues or something similar. They might have some of the different norms that they've got just because they grew up in poverty. So for them, looking at their phone wasn't unusual. That was the way that everybody in their household dealt with it. Everybody just looked at their phone. Especially for the younger staff, the Gen Zs, a lot of them will have grown up with parents who were quite distracted. They would have grown up with parents who were addicted to the Internet and online shopping or porn or drinking or gambling or who knows what it might be. But the reason that people act the way that they do is often because of the things that happen to them. And when we can pause and remind ourselves that all of these Gen Zs have very different backgrounds and we don't necessarily know it, it might not necessarily be appropriate that we do know all of it. Although we're seeing similar kinds of behaviors, the reason why would be different. So I think that almost inherently introduces more of an open perspective that the younger Gen Zs often resonate with, but it helps us avoid making conclusions or, you know, making assumptions and jumping to conclusions when that's not necessarily going to work. Status would be different for some of them. Some of them would just appreciate being listened to. They gravitate towards it. A lot of people don't get listened to in their everyday life. So dealing with someone who actually takes what they're saying seriously, they really do like it. But the way that you deal with listening to two different staff members might be quite different. One person might really appreciate silence and they like to give their thoughts a bit of, what would you say? Reflection before they start speaking. Someone else might find that really uncomfortable and they just can't stop blabbing on. So you might use the trick that I talked about earlier of becoming a narrator with them or something similar. But it's going to be different for different people. The final thing I think for a lot of maybe people who are new team leaders, new managers, sometimes people who have got reasonable experience, though, is that I think one of the traps is that comment that the person made of I don't want to blow up the calm in my team. I don't want to turn into a monster manager. Now, if you're a person who likes interaction and discussion and you try to be a very engaging and supportive kind of manager, it's possible that you've got a reasonable amount of your identity at work wrapped up in this. So one of the, what would you call it? It's almost like traps, I think, that people face is that they want these Gen Zs to like them. They, some of them want the Gen Z's to think that they're cool and to impress them, like show them what a good manager can be, be a good role model for them, or something similar. But when I've dealt with young people in the teenage kind of years, but also in their 20s, what they really want at the core is permission to be themself. I don't think they want to work for someone who's really cool and impressive, like they might on some surface kind of level. But what they want, at least from my view, is that they want permission to be themselves. And the best way that you can give them that is to be yourself. Hopefully you're your best self, you're patient, and you find the opportunities to be the bigger person. Be calmer, be kinder, be wiser. Very similar to the positive parenting kind of principles that a lot of us would aspire to. But you don't necessarily have to be their best friend. And I think at times you probably can't be, depending on the relationship that you're in and the context, etc. So I don't know, maybe that's something even for you to consider. Are there times when you've wanted to keep everybody happy and how come? Or are there times when you didn't want to be the bearer of bad news? And so what did you do then? Maybe you took a very accommodating approach and you had to stay back late doing this extra task instead of asking one of the younger staff that you've got to deal with it. If you can be yourself, including what you need and what you expect and what's important to you and your shortcomings and your own mistakes and all of that kind of stuff. I think that's when the Gen Zs often begin to feel comfortable opening up and being themselves. And it's probably something that just develops over time. So it's something that we could focus on and aspire to. But it's an interesting question, isn't it? Like, maybe the best way that I can manage Gen Z is I just become my best version of myself. The good news there is that that's not going to just help me dealing with the Gen Zs. It will help me dealing with all of the staff that I'm working with and all of the clients and probably my kids and my partner and all of the rest of it too. So it's part of the reason why I think of conflict in more of an expanded way than some people. To me, I can see a lot of the challenges and the stressful experiences that we have in the short term when it comes to conflict often give us this very unique window or mirror almost that reflects and it shows us our own shortcomings. So I think, do I try to impress the people that I work with and how come? It's a very complex question. When you pause and think about it, it's possible that Some of these things have developed in us because of the things that happen to us because of our experiences when we were new staff. Or maybe it's before that when you're at school or something from your family background or something similar. It doesn't necessarily mean that the conflict isn't stressful and uncomfortable in the short term, but for me there is some type of a silver lining in amongst all of this where there's a unique way that we can develop and become better people through the friction and through the challenges as we interact and engage with the other people around us. But I don't know, for some of you listening, I'm sure that probably sounds a bit woo woo or wishy washy or something similar, but what do you think? How has that been for you? Listening to me talking about that case study and some of the main elements that jump out at me, have you found similar challenges balancing, what would you say, like compassion and wisdom, balancing being firm with not wanting to be the monster manager and what worked for you? And if you're dealing with Gen Zs, maybe today has been an opportunity for you to spend a bit of time reflecting and maybe there might even be elements about how the other people perceive you that you might have been focusing on more than you should have been. I'd love to hear from you. If you're listening on a platform where you can make comments like Spotify or YouTube or something, I'd be very grateful if you would just write a quick comment. It's an incredible boost to the algorithm just to show that there's real humans who are listening and engaging in this kind of stuff. And I think it's a bit of a sign too that other people might find the type of resources and stuff that I'm putting on this channel helpful. If you've got feedback, a suggestion for a future episode, or maybe a case study that you would like me to talk about. Email is usually the best way to send it through to me. So it's podcasti@simongoode.com and my name is S I M O N G double O-D-E dot com if you'd like some options for me coming to speaking with your staff or managing a workshop on a similar kind of topic, I'd be perfectly happy to send that through. And I've also got an online course that you can take which is kind of a collection of the best takes on all of this in my experience. Like the best references when it comes to de escalation and the best references when it comes to self regulation and all that kind of stuff and probably a reasonably unique way of thinking about some of those things like relationships. So if you like the way that I approach conflict and the way that I talk and speak, etc. This is like a two and a half hour really focused webinar that I've edited and gone through and sort of picked all of the different highlights. When I deliver online conflict resolution training with groups of staff, download the slides and there's links for additional resources and that kind of stuff as well. You can ask me questions and I do respond to them and I usually respond to them very quickly was what I was going to say there. But I will make sure that I respond always to the people who write to me that are enrolled in the course. But thank you very much for listening. I very much appreciate it and hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast. Bye for now. SA.