The classic issue of "Millennial & Gen Z"

Every year from now Gen Zers are joining the corporate force batch by batch upon graduation, at the same time, more and more millennials are promoting to leadership positions……in other words, it is the era for the Millennials to be the bosses of the Gen Zers. Here is a classic scenario of a Gen Zer and a Millennial:

The Millennial(M) is the boss, and the Gen Zer (GZ) is the fresh grad. When the M assigned a task to the GZ, the M always said: if you don’t know, feel free to ask.

After a few months, the GZ could not perform well and thus failed to meet the expectation.??What’s wrong here? Where has gone wrong?

Here is a big picture of most Millennials:?

Most Millennials are feeling driven, they might be outgoing or outspoken, but it does not mean they can communicate effectively……why? Because they concern too much of the feelings, therefore they can’t go right to the point clearly and directly, thus their minds do not think logically.?

On the contrary, Gen Zers are different, they prefer direct to the point, sharp and clear but with good manner and positive words. Of course, we do have Gen Zers who are more emotional, when an emotional GZ works with the M, it multiplies the challenges.?

Let’s get back to the scenario – here are the key points in general:

1. The M always told GZ: If you don’t know, feel free to ask – the point here is, the GZ was at the stage of “unconscious incompetence” she did not know what she did not know, therefore nothing to ask. It became worse when she found out what she did not know last minute.

2. The M was passive, he did not approach the GZ proactively either to find out or to follow up – he expected the GZ to ask him, but he did not have the insight that GZ was a fresh grad, she was at the stage of “unconscious incompetence”.?

3. The M did not initiate any one-to-one talk with GZ even though GZ kept running into troubles – at the end, the M blamed that GZ could have told him early before the last minute.?

What do you see here? Here are what I can see:

1. GZ has the problem to apply theory to reality, the work – as a fresh grad, it means you have learned the theory without application experience.??The GZ has been struggling in the aspect of application, but this is normal, especially she does not know this is normal because she does not know what she does not know.?

2. The M as a boss, he is passive with weak leadership skills – he does not know that a fresh grad is at the stage of “unconscious incompetence” with wrong expectation. He should be proactively following up and checking on the GZ, instead of waiting for her to come to him. As a leader, the M should take the initiative to approach GZ, either follow up or initiate a talk to find out what the GZ needs in terms of training, mentoring, or coaching. Particularly after seeing the GZ kept repeating the same kind of mistakes.

At the end, it is the coach of the GZ helped resolve this situation. I helped the GZ to understand and see the entire situation clearly, then encouraged the GZ to initiate the talk – to talk it out and clear it out. Before the talk, the GZ was clear about the entire situation, and how to talk.?

During the Millennial era, training has been the most popular way for staff development, why???Because most Millennials are not strong in logical thinking, that means they are good at taking information without seeing the logic and without asking enough why.??They will run into trouble only when they need to apply what they have learned, that’s why there comes frustration, stress, pressure, blame, etc. all the negative emotions.

Now time has changed, a new generation has been cultivated in the past 20 years, and it is called Gen Z, they need more than that. They need to go through logical thinking process before getting into training, during the training and after the training. A logical thinking mind has a lot of questions to ask before they can agree with you, they need to agree with what you say, otherwise, their minds will shut off, although they will still go through the training for the sake of training, when they must.

In a nutshell, you can’t lead the Gen Z without having strong logical thinking……I can see a lot of challenges ahead in the corporate workforce – the Gen Zers need “logical thinking mentors or coaches or trainers”, therefore I want to be the bridge between the Gen Z and the corporate world.?